A Timely End-of-Year Post for You
This is a quick-and-dirty post because I wanted to alert you to some date/deadline considerations. I’ll be doing two more thorough posts the next two weeks to help you use MailChimp as a follow-up reminder to your end-of-year ask. These are:
What is driving my posts for several weeks is to provide you with some help for the end of the year. I’m taking you along as I’m doing these things myself. Because I’m writing in-the-moment, I apologize that some of this information is already too late for the early birds. I’m running slightly behind myself this year. I would have preferred to have been ahead of schedule and sent you this information well before you needed it. Fortunately, Thanksgiving was early this year, so we have a bit more time going forward.
This post has some dates and deadlines and tips. At the end, I’ll let you know what the next two posts will be.
Dates and Deadlines
Stock Up on Stamps
It looks like postal rates will go up on January 27th so you might want to start stocking up on stamps. First-rate will go from 50 cents to 55. I order online at USPS.com.
#GivingTuesday
#GivingTuesday is today, November 27th. I made a rush of getting something out and messed up. I know God is in control, so I’m just moving on. You don’t have to send an email today if you were going to do an end-of-year ask via email. Do it right, not rushed, like I did.
Reimbursement Deadline
With all that is going on, you may have forgotten another deadline coming up.
All healthcare reimbursements that you would like to go towards this year’s balance must be submitted by December 19th. That is the date they need them in order to guarantee these expenses go towards your 2018 healthcare balance.
Tips
Word Merge Tip
When we had our merge ready to go to mail out our fund appeal ask letters, the merge fields in Word changed size and font after merging. I found a quick fix so all the merged information looked good when the letters were ready to print. Follow these how-tos with your Word document before merging.
More Help for Your End-of-Year Ask
If you missed it, check out Walking through an End-of-Year Ask with Sus. I gave some advice for starting out with your ask, but I also included some ideas you may still want to follow, like updating your give site.
Kudos to Bob and Lynn
After reading my previous post, a staff couple immediately started fixing up their give.cru.org page. More than that, they contacted the help desk with a simple suggestion. It was difficult to find the location for “Update your Give Profile” information, so they suggested putting it under the MPD section. Right away, one of our tech guys put a link in Asking & Collecting. He also added some buttons to the top of the main MPD landing page.
Way to go, Bob and Lynn!
What’s Ahead in December
The goal for the next two posts will be specifically to help you use MailChimp as a follow-up reminder to your end-of-year ask. These posts will also be useful more generally, too.
I will post on December 4th with an inside look at MailChimp that will help you use it more effectively. It will help you to know the difference between segments, groups, and tags, for instance.
The post planned for December 11th will help you with merge codes and such. This post will help you actually put your email reminder together so it goes to the right people.
One fund-raising strategist I read recommended getting a reminder out on December 10th. I know that’s too soon for me to be ready. Hopefully, my next two posts will give you enough time to have your MailChimp emails ready on the schedule I’m proposing.
Whether or not you do my reminder suggestions, you may want to send Christmas and/or New Year’s greetings from MailChimp.
I recommend sending a reminder email on December 28th. The next two blog posts will help you do that and explain why this date is significant.
NEW: If I mention dates, I will put them in the e4e Google Calendar.
AND please don’t be overwhelmed. Pick out what you can do and want to do from this series of posts. I’m very happy to help. I share enough information so you can choose what will work for you and what you can manage with the time you have.
NOTES:
- I created an e4e Google Calendar for all the dates mentioned in this series to help you remember dates in your own calendar. Copy dates to your calendar or follow the entire calendar.
- This post is part of a series which started with Walking through an End-of-Year Ask with Sus. I covered some tasks you might want to do that relate to your ask, some sources for content, and more.
- I also posted more end-of-year tasks in A Timely End-of-Year Post for You.
- Inside MailChimp helps you understand how MailChimp works.
- You’re welcome to watch my MailChimp workshop (held 11/16/18). Follow along with my PowerPoint. My apologies for the lighting and sound. (I can only get better at this.) The shorter video is the beginning of the talk. We had to start back up with the second video. Watch these on Workplace. The slides are here: http://bit.ly/MC2018EOYslides.
My “quick and dirty” photo is by Razvan Chisu on Unsplash.
eQuipping for eMinistry 