S1:E7 Digital Creative
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[00:00:00] Jeremy: What's good? What's good? It's the Jeremy Haselwood show. What's good? What's good? Let's get ready to go. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood show. Plug in, turn it up. Let's go. Hey, hey. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood show. Push play, let it roll. Let's go. What's good? Welcome to my show. In three, two, one. Let's go.
[00:00:31] Jeremy: Welcome to today's episode where we will be talking all about digital creative for nonprofit fundraising. But before we get started, make sure you tap, click or smash the follow or subscribe button so that you'll be notified when each new episode drops. So this episode is "Creative that Converts: digital creative for today's nonprofits".
[00:00:53] Jeremy: I have our second guest of the season, Todd Bemis. Let me read the, your intro and then [00:01:00] We'll get some opening words from you. So Todd is a versatile and strategic innovation leader. He has over 25 years of experience, inspiring diverse teams and bringing innovative human centered concepts to life throughout his distinguished career.
[00:01:14] Jeremy: He's helped raise billions of dollars. And I can attest to that for some of the most beloved nonprofit brands in the world, ultimately impacting countless lives globally and beyond professional accomplishments, Todd is genuinely a Happy Person (c), trademark navigating life With joy and dedication to building a brighter future.
[00:01:31] Jeremy: Raised as an expat, he grew up immersed in different cultures, speaking multiple languages and learning these valuable lessons. Number one, there is more than one way to say something. Think before speaking. Number two, always be mindful of the culture around you. Be an ambassador. Number three, approach all things with benevolence.
[00:01:50] Jeremy: Kindness wins the world. And number four, if your host smiles a certain way before a meal, it's best to reconsider eating it. Todd carries these lessons [00:02:00] into every endeavor, combining empathy, culture, awareness, and optimism to team leads and initiatives that make a real difference. So welcome to the show, Todd Bemis.
[00:02:09] Todd Bemis: Thank you, merry, much for the lovely introduction that I wrote that feels good. Those are wonderful words.
[00:02:16] Jeremy: So Todd, tell us a little bit about your experience working with nonprofits.
[00:02:21] Todd Bemis: It is a long and storied career with a lot of tears and anguish along the way and a lot of joy for sure. I guess I should say that I'm very old. The first website I built was in 1998 and it was for Save the Children. So I started off in the right vein working with nonprofits for sure. And then had a mix of clients at a couple of different agencies that were for profit and nonprofit started off in the digital realm for sure and then grew as digital grew and became more of a strategic lead and a creative lead.
[00:02:57] Todd Bemis: Technical lead in some aspects, but always had [00:03:00] true developers to work with, to make ideas actually happen as opposed to be fanciful, like a creative would but yeah, my, my experience with nonprofits has been from. Your local animal shelter or your local food bank all the way to big national clients that everybody's heard of.
[00:03:18] Todd Bemis: Everything from doing little minute text campaigns that are triggered by events in a metro area all the way to national broadcast efforts. Everything in there and along the way, these last 26 years, everything is sloshed between channels. So heavy and digital and display and email and things, and then sloshing over to direct mail depending on the clients and the campaigns and who the targets are, of course, different channels work for different targets.
[00:03:47] Todd Bemis: So yeah, touched on everything along the way.
[00:03:50] Jeremy: Yeah that's great because you have a really good perspective of the big picture of fundraising, not just silo digital, but also how it impacts direct [00:04:00] mail which leads to my first question, which starts with the basis of copywriting. Direct mail versus digital, you write things a little bit differently.
[00:04:09] Jeremy: So from your experience and your perspective, how would you describe some of those differences of writing a direct mail letter versus writing an email?
[00:04:16] Todd Bemis: Even prior to that question, you need to elevate just a little bit and consider what is the grand theme, right? Why are you writing whatever component it might be, digital or direct mail? So if you have a unifying theme across channels then that kind of helps because you do write differently for direct mail versus digital.
[00:04:38] Todd Bemis: Emails tend to be a little bit shorter than direct mail packages. A lot of organizations tend to target differently and think of themselves as having a different audience in direct mail as they do in digital. What we're finding out and what sort of research is telling is, Some of that's true and some of it's not.
[00:04:57] Todd Bemis: People are going to get hit in multiple channels. [00:05:00] And that's why I always recommend having a grand theme over a campaign or even over a quarter. And then having multiple campaigns along that timeline that have some unifying factor. The unifying factor can be really loose. But let's say that we're talking about a specific element within a campaign, a specific hit in direct mail. It tends to be a little more formal. Indirect mail, again, depending on audience you have salutations, you have sign offs it's supposed to feel like you're receiving a letter from somebody because that's what it looks like in your mailbox. In digital, you have an ability to work in a spectrum between this is a blast communication to an entire community.
[00:05:44] Todd Bemis: And it can feel loud and hey, pay attention with exclamation marks. And you can actually then downtune that and be like, Hey, I'm talking to you, Jeremy, I need you to do something here for whatever reason might be, whatever the cause is. I think that [00:06:00] we do find a lot more flexibility in digital. Whereas direct mail, everybody feels pigeonholed into one audience.
[00:06:07] Todd Bemis: Let's say it's 65 and over. But that's, this is a theory of mine. Everyone says direct mail works for the older audience. And that's because direct mail is engineered for an older audience,
[00:06:18] Jeremy: mm
[00:06:19] Todd Bemis: right? If you started designing and writing direct mail to feel and look and sound like a webpage, you might have success with a different audience.
[00:06:30] Todd Bemis: And in fact I've done that with a large national client where we took a direct mail package and just made it feel like a website. And it worked great. It beat the letter package.
[00:06:41] Jeremy: That's
[00:06:42] Todd Bemis: So there's something there. I think in every case though, Jeremy, I'm sure you've beat this into people by now, but test, test everything and see what you come up with.
[00:06:51] Jeremy: But I even like what you're saying. Almost testing. Digital or online approach to your direct mail. And that's something that [00:07:00] nobody's talking about. That's even a new idea for me, the way that you just described that. Like I hadn't really thought of that, cause I'm so focused on digital with what I do anyways.
[00:07:07] Jeremy: But with your purview of having your hand in both of them, . What I would like to see is nonprofits testing more in both realms, like even having a percentage of whatever their overall revenue is as a test fund. And most just aren't going to do that. One of the other things that I think about when I think about specific differences in nonprofit Direct mail versus digital is even down to the execution of the writing, how in direct mail, you'll have underlined words that might be in red and how, if you're doing that in an email, it's like that signifies that there's a link there.
[00:07:40] Jeremy: But if you come from, if you're a direct mail, nonprofit writer, and you're writing the exact same, like you're actually misleading and providing not the experience. It a counter experience to what you're hoping to get in an email versus direct mail.
[00:07:53] Todd Bemis: just made me think of something, the there's a saying, it's not just content, it's context, [00:08:00] right? That is super important for how people absorb information and essentially generate their own feelings and perceptions on what we're showing. So if you think about, I'm Jeremy probably know better than I do, but something like 70 percent of all emails are opened on a mobile device, right?
[00:08:17] Todd Bemis: So I'm going to say 100 percent designed for mobile. And then people who are looking at that on a desktop are just going to get a great big impression of your, let's say it's an email.
[00:08:29] Jeremy: Mhm.
[00:08:31] Todd Bemis: Your real estate is limitless in digital. You can scroll, 10, 000 pixels down if you need to, which means that you can use size and hierarchy in very different ways than you can in direct mail.
[00:08:44] Todd Bemis: Cause in direct mail, because of costs, you're going to be limited to two sides of a sheet of paper or maybe four sides of a sheet of paper kind of thing. But yeah, use. Each of these channels like digital in the best possible way. And, for a long [00:09:00] time, we always mimicked direct mail in our emails, right?
[00:09:03] Todd Bemis: Oh, I got the mail piece. This email feels just like it. It creates recall, which is a thing. But use the channels and optimize your design and your writing for them. We always say that, you write shorter for digital. You can use a 48 point font as opposed to a 14 point font.
[00:09:21] Todd Bemis: Yeah. It, and I think it's important for anyone listening to this is Trust your creatives and tell them to be weird and then test.
[00:09:28] Jeremy: Yeah, always like I'm, that's one of the biggest things like always, always, always test. If you're sending out one email, send two, a B version. Let's learn something every single time that we do something and you can do it so quickly in digital with minimal to no cost. My next question for you is, You've had your hand, so I've heard, in a few different fundraising campaigns over the years.
[00:09:53] Jeremy: What would you say nowadays are some good elements for digital [00:10:00] creative?
[00:10:01] Todd Bemis: I think that receiving an email on a phone where you can't really read the font because it's too small is just a bummer.
[00:10:10] Todd Bemis: I think that organizations and designers not taking into account dark mode is a real bummer. Because, things won't show up or your logo is sitting there on a white field on a black screen. It's just, it's 2024. Smarten up. Get some real designers, get some real coders and get that help that you need to put your best foot forward as an organization.
[00:10:33] Todd Bemis: But the, there's essentially no best practices, right? Because everything right now is in a massive state of innovation and flux. It feels like back in 2003. In a way, a little bit of the Wild West going on because of AI and the utility of AI, not just for, say, generating images or generating copy, but for generating variants of all of these things so if you're an organization that has the means [00:11:00] to segment your list, segment your audience in some way.
[00:11:04] Todd Bemis: And then if you have a way to then append certain data like education level or anything like that then you can go ahead and create multiple variants of your content and then use those in a targeted list again, say for email. So you might end up with. 25 different emails that get sent, but you don't need to employ a copywriter to create each of the 25 versions.
[00:11:27] Todd Bemis: It's a big time saver, but you do need to review them as a human to make sure that they still make sense. Cause I don't think we're at a point where we can trust AI a hundred percent when it comes to content generation yeah, I have a saying like chat GPT is great for showing you what not to do, because it gets cheesy and played out, which. Is great for them saying, okay, now I know I don't use that word. I don't know, leveraged or foundational or something like that.
[00:11:55] Jeremy: anytime I get an email that says I hope this email finds you [00:12:00] well, I just always, 100 percent of the time, I assume that ChatGPT wrote it. I'm like, it's the same every single time.
[00:12:07] Todd Bemis: Yeah. I would say another thing with digital right now is video, moving image content, however you would want to say it. you can say so much, on a small field of real estate, you can do whatever you want basically is so much storytelling available. And that actually is a nice hook over from say something like direct mail, just give somebody a QR code to go and jump, see the rest of Jeremy's story over here.
[00:12:36] Jeremy: Yeah. And I, even with video, like I'm have this love hate relationship with really not hate. It's a love like relationship because a lot of clients they want to do more video content and I believe that they should, but I think the way that video is used, it needs to be very strategic and intentional because if you're putting a video On a donation page that could, you have to test and [00:13:00] determine whether or not that's actually increasing your abandonment rate on your donation page.
[00:13:04] Jeremy: Whereas maybe when video first came out and became available, maybe, I don't know, seven, 10 years ago, it seemed to help with donations because people were more engaged by video. And so they would watch the video and donate. Whereas now at least my observation, I'd love to hear your thought is.
[00:13:20] Jeremy: Because time is so short when people hit that donation page, that video could actually be a distraction and take away from that person donating, maybe they intended to donate, but they're watching the video. And then they got busy. An email came in, a child came in the room, something happened and they didn't make the donation.
[00:13:38] Jeremy: So what is your take or experience with using video on donation pages?
[00:13:46] Todd Bemis: I think that, you put on your direct response hat, of course in fundraising and direct response would tell you. Have as few distractions on the actual donation page as possible. Maybe you don't even have [00:14:00] navigation on that page. You have a singular focus for the visitor of that page and that is to fill out the dang form and be happy about it.
[00:14:08] Todd Bemis: That's not to say that you. In, in nonprofits, we always want to try to gain sustainers, right? They just have such a higher lifetime value, long term value. So maybe if you have a utility for a video, I would make it an option. If you really need sustainers at a certain time of year.
[00:14:29] Todd Bemis: Maybe you have a Johnson box on that page. Some kind of call that on that page that says, see all the benefits of being a monthly donor or a sustainer, or if you have a name for your group and then pop a window with a video in it, but don't let them leave the donation page. And, try to, I, I still, again, as I mentioned, 2024, I still see a lot of organizations with extraneous fields on the donation forms.
[00:14:55] Todd Bemis: Like you don't need the title,
[00:14:56] Jeremy: right, mr. Or
[00:14:58] Todd Bemis: name, address, [00:15:00] email address, phone, if you want, and credit card information, get the hit first. Yeah.
[00:15:07] Jeremy: No, exactly. And I think a video is maybe a better use in channels like social media. So you've watched the video and now you make that decision to make a gift so when you get to the page, it's just easy peasy. You've already seen the video. So I'm not going to show it to you.
[00:15:23] Jeremy: Or if I've shown you the video, I'm not going to show you the video again. Let's keep everything simple. But along the same lines of video, Let's talk about images for fundraising because to me that's an extremely important piece that often falls to the back of the mind of a lot of nonprofits, they take pictures and they have a lot of pictures and you've seen this, I'm sure with your clients, the clients I work with, I'm like, Hey, send me some pictures for a campaign and they send me pictures.
[00:15:51] Jeremy: And out of 20 pictures, maybe one is decent. So I have my ideas, but you're the creative guy. So I want to hear [00:16:00] what makes a great fundraising image.
[00:16:02] Todd Bemis: There, there's so many components into it, right? The, Antiquated saying is a picture's worth a thousand words. We know it's way more than a thousand words. I'm also a photographer. I'll tell you what data tells us first. We've run a lot of surveys. I think you recently spoke with Lori Collins.
[00:16:22] Todd Bemis: She and I have run a lot of surveys and we use a lot of imagery and we try to glean What do people react to when it comes to images what sensations do they derive from looking at images? And that's all well and good. But I think that as nonprofits, one thing that is incumbent on all of us is to make sure that we maintain dignity for the people or the animals or the situations that we are trying to benefit.
[00:16:49] Todd Bemis: And so that leads to an understanding that, just, Poverty porn, as it's called, throw it out the door. You don't want to leverage poverty porn.
[00:16:57] Jeremy: How would you describe that when you say that? [00:17:00] What
[00:17:00] Todd Bemis: poverty porn,
[00:17:00] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:17:03] Todd Bemis: you're the starving child with the fly on his face. Kind of thing, the abject looking person experiencing homelessness, like covered with garbage or, whatever the absolute stereotypes, the worst of fundraising from the last 40 years or something. Yeah, the slang term is poverty porn.
[00:17:21] Todd Bemis: But what we're finding out in our data and in results from campaigns is that. If you have an opportunity to utilize success and dignity and strength in the character of the image, what you're doing is you're founding a partnership with your new donor. If you utilize the worst of these, so to speak the poverty point angle, what you get is people giving you money because they want it to go away.
[00:17:51] Jeremy: Mhm,
[00:17:52] Todd Bemis: I don't want to see that anymore. Like here, take my 20 bucks. I never want to talk to you again. That's not what nonprofits want. That's a really short [00:18:00] term play. So much of what agencies do of what nonprofits do is try to generate these very longterm relationships with donors. So I understand.
[00:18:10] Todd Bemis: And I also know that if you ran a direct AB test and acquisition, the horrifying image tends to win.
[00:18:16] Jeremy: yeah,
[00:18:17] Todd Bemis: As far as response rate. Right. But if you look then two years later,
[00:18:21] Jeremy: mhm
[00:18:22] Todd Bemis: it didn't win perhaps. The calculus there would be scare people a little bit, perhaps with an initial view and then give them the success afterwards.
[00:18:33] Todd Bemis: And, perhaps you see that in animal welfare causes where you have the dog that looked like it was really having a hard life. And then you have the successful happy dog living with his new forever family. So you do get a little bit of the emotional rollercoaster, but specifically on imagery. Yeah, man, it's all eyes. It's all faces. If we got Lori back, she and I could certainly talk at length about what we found, even in environmental causes. [00:19:00] Do you show the destruction of landscape or do you show the beautiful landscape? Do you want to show what you're trying to negate or what you're trying to create?
[00:19:08] Todd Bemis: It's different. I think a lot of the variance on image strength is coming down to targets. Who you're targeting. Younger people react differently than older people to images. Older people react to the stereotypes a little more strongly than young people. And by young people, probably Gen Z and millennials want, and basically are accustomed to demanding in their subconscious DEI.
[00:19:33] Todd Bemis: In the images, if you're doing a veteran's cause, for example, show a female veteran,
[00:19:38] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:19:39] Todd Bemis: people react to that. People on the younger side of the scale react very well to that because it feels inclusive. Like I said at the beginning, I'm old, so I'm, I'm gen X, I'm in the middle. I want all the D E I, but I still get tugged by the stuff that my grandma made me give to when I was a kid.
[00:19:57] Todd Bemis: Yeah, and this is a long answer, but it's a [00:20:00] crazy subject because this is one of the most difficult things for nonprofits is the imagery, like you said. And so now we have the advent of AI and I would. Definitely say mid journey is at the top right now when it comes to realistic Gen ai and imagery and a survey a national survey We recently ran it showed people a bunch of pictures In specific spaces like humanitarian aid international humanitarian aid versus say human services here in the country Or say veteran services.
[00:20:33] Todd Bemis: And in each of the sets there of set of four images, there was one that was completely gen AI and we didn't tell anybody and we just looked at the answers, which of these would make you feel most compelled to help this cause. And then at the end of the survey, we asked, what are your.
[00:20:50] Todd Bemis: perceptions and thoughts on the use of gen AI images and nonprofits. And almost everybody was against their use. They're like, it feels disingenuous. It feels [00:21:00] dishonest. This, that, the other, all these kinds of negative statements made about using AI images. But then when you look at the data, the AI images did pretty well.
[00:21:09] Jeremy: Wow. Did the, did the AI images win? Did they outperform the other four?
[00:21:13] Todd Bemis: No,
[00:21:14] Jeremy: Okay.
[00:21:15] Todd Bemis: but they might've come in second out of four.
[00:21:18] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Todd Bemis: don't think No, in none of those different batches, did the AI image come last?
[00:21:25] Jeremy: Okay,
[00:21:26] Todd Bemis: So it's really interesting.
[00:21:27] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah I wanted to touch on that during our conversation too is like what you're seeing with ai because when clients don't have good images you don't want to get a stock photo You know because most of the stock photos look stock.
[00:21:39] Jeremy: They look staged and they don't look right I haven't really done much with, or really anything at this point at the time of this podcast, posting with AI images for nonprofits, but I know that there's some work being done out there. . All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this message.
[00:21:56] Jeremy: Okay, and we are back on the Jeremy Haselwood show, having a great [00:22:00] conversation with Todd Demas about digital creative for nonprofits. And I want to get into now a little bit about testing. I know we've talked about a lot of things so far. You've even mentioned some testing here and there.
[00:22:11] Jeremy: for having me. But when I think of testing, I want to think of subject lines, images, long versus short copy. Any even when it comes down to ads, what kind of ads may be static versus animated. So I want to talk about insights that you may have from testing digital creative. I know that's a big shotgun and it's a broad statement or question, but what do you have for us?
[00:22:35] Todd Bemis: Let's talk about email first because you need to Test everything in email, certainly. Time of day used to be a test, which to me was really boring. Nowadays you can do analysis via AI to figure out what time of day would work best. And it actually fundraise up, I think, as an organization that recently was attending a conference and had a presentation about what they [00:23:00] found out through AI.
[00:23:01] Todd Bemis: And it's stuff like at three in the morning. Certain kinds of things do better. And the giving level goes up and I'm like, that's cause everybody's drunk at three in the morning, you know?
[00:23:12] Jeremy: Let's give
[00:23:12] Todd Bemis: Yeah, and they, but they also had AI findings about when dark mode is activated, results change, for emails, it kind of interesting details, really interesting details.
[00:23:24] Todd Bemis: So yeah, I think it's fundraise up that was presenting. I'll try to find you a link, Jeremy, maybe you can share it with your group here but I. I still believe the most important component of email success is the subject line.
[00:23:37] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:23:38] Todd Bemis: I think that it is also by manpower, so to speak. By human effort, it is the lowest barrier to entry to testing because you can test 10 subject lines given that you have a large enough list that you're sending to one thing we know is that Enigma does tend to work very well, fairly well in subject lines.
[00:23:59] Todd Bemis: And by [00:24:00] that, not quite click bait but you know, a subject line that. People need to find out the answer to because they feel there's a threat or something behind it. Not a personal threat, but like how can we let this happen right here in Boston as a subject line. And you're going to be like, Hey, wait a minute.
[00:24:17] Todd Bemis: I live in Boston. What are they talking about? And it might have to do with childhood hunger. And that's actually something that we did test. We had a subject line was how can we let this happen in Boston? And somebody clicked on it and made like a 35, 000 donation.
[00:24:30] Jeremy: You go. This podcast is over you. You've done your due diligence. You've given the $35,000 tip . Thanks for tuning into the Jeremy Haselwood show
[00:24:39] Todd Bemis: you.
[00:24:39] Jeremy: Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
[00:24:40] Todd Bemis: but yeah, email subject line is really easy to test. Once you get into, like multivariate things it does get a little more expensive. I mentioned before the idea of using a GPT to help you write lots and lots of variants of copy. That's easy to test. You know, it might, Sound complex, but it's really [00:25:00] not.
[00:25:00] Todd Bemis: You can just create variants of your emails and whatever platform you're using. It does. It takes a little bit more from the production team to put the content in. And if you're trying to do it by night dynamics, where you have, donor IDs tagged a certain way to pull certain content. Yeah.
[00:25:16] Todd Bemis: There's just a bit of a build in the background there. As far as, A great thing to do if you don't have the money as an organization to run big national surveys or even AI fueled analysis of surveys and things like that just run a bunch of different display banners and social because that stuff is so quick.
[00:25:36] Todd Bemis: You can get a read on it really quickly. It's inexpensive and display and, paid social You can come up with 10 ideas if you can come up with one and you'll find out immediately, does the black child work better than the white child in this instance? Or, if you're discussing homelessness, is it women, is it men, is it families?
[00:25:55] Todd Bemis: So you can get a read, a very specific real world read, because we all [00:26:00] know that subjects are a little bit tainted by people understanding that they're, Surveys are a little bit tainted by people taking them because they know they're taking a survey. Yeah, but as far as like cross channel stuff, test everything, have you ever done a text campaign?
[00:26:13] Todd Bemis: Try it. But you got to have people's phone numbers.
[00:26:16] Jeremy: Yeah. Exactly. And that's a whole nother episode for another time about list building. But yeah, no, I like what you said about the email. And that's one of the main tests that I always suggest because clients will want to talk about, testing the images in the email or the call to action in the email, which I think are good ideas, but I'm like, man, if we can't get people to open this email, then nothing else matters.
[00:26:39] Jeremy: We've got to focus on getting more people to open this email. So let's really hone in. On the types of subject lines that work for your audience. And then once we're comfortable with that, now we can start to test some of the different nuances within your email, whether it's images or calls to action or short versus long, or any of these other things.
[00:26:58] Jeremy: So I think that's [00:27:00] a great point. ,we talked about a lot of things that nonprofits should do. What are things creatively that nonprofits should not do?
[00:27:07] Todd Bemis: Oh, there's so many. But they're really,
[00:27:10] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:22] Todd Bemis: I'm like, Oh, the more beautiful we can make this thing, the better. And it's not always the case, right?
[00:27:29] Todd Bemis: Because you run into a perception at a certain point. Yeah. With your donating populace or with all your prospects, they're going to say this looks expensive. Why are these guys spending so much money on advertising if they're supposed to be, helping chimpanzees? And it's really strange. I know in direct mail, it's, you test a black and white image versus a color image and it's, it gets weird.
[00:27:54] Todd Bemis: It depends what the appeal is. Sometimes the black and white image wins, I think in digital though, [00:28:00] It's okay. Just use colors, use rich storytelling. Maybe there's a cause and a case to do something that looks co created or from the field, shot on a phone kind of stuff versus deeply produced with, text overlays and things like that.
[00:28:20] Todd Bemis: But what not to do.
[00:28:21] Jeremy: Let me add to what you just said though about The images and it being overproduced , I've worked with clients Like we want our emails to be beautiful and they compare it to like apple sends these amazing emails And that's how we want ours to look, but what i've found and i'm sure you have as well is like A lot of times in the email, like those underperform.
[00:28:40] Jeremy: And I think some of it is attributable to what you're saying. And maybe the perception is that there's all this money going into design, but also what I've found is they look like a marketing piece or they're too distracting from the message. And so people see it and it looks too much like I'm being sold to or there's just too much for the [00:29:00] eyes visually and mind to take in at once.
[00:29:02] Jeremy: Cause they're processing images and texts. What I found a formula for me is two options. We're just going to send a straight up text text based email, which works really good. It looks more personal. Or we're just going to put like a header image to give some context around the story or the offer that's being told in the email.
[00:29:20] Jeremy: And those typically will outperform a very well designed, quote, unquote, Apple looking email.
[00:29:26] Todd Bemis: Yeah. Yeah. If you're a nonprofit and your advice to your designers is make it look like Audi. Then you're not doing it right. It needs to look like hardworking people doing things for the right reasons. My backgrounds in architecture, actually in construction lines, right?
[00:29:45] Todd Bemis: So when you do a drawing, the lines extend a little bit beyond where they're needed and it shows how something is made. So there's a little bit of that in, in trying to create a, from the field, right? Or, here's what happened in our kitchen last night. Element to it. And [00:30:00] that doesn't mean use crappy images.
[00:30:02] Todd Bemis: It just means don't overproduce everything. Rounded, rounded corners and, while that's super easy to do with CSS and whatnot, it just, it lends a feel of over finesse in a way. I think that specific with emails and I want you all to hear me on this, please. Your email, the body section of the email needs to have borders or needs to have a background color.
[00:30:28] Todd Bemis: That's different
[00:30:30] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:30:31] Todd Bemis: if you don't have a background color, you're, you might have a great hero him, hero header image. And then it's just boundless and your copy sits in a straight line, but there's no definition between your email and the rest of, say, Gmail.
[00:30:45] Todd Bemis: So make sure you have some kind of borders on the edges of your emails or make your background a very slight shade of something.
[00:30:52] Todd Bemis: So it stands out from a white background. And also if you're, you're encountering dark mode, people might not be able to read your email. [00:31:00] So it, it is, probably nine keystrokes. To fix that.
[00:31:05] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:31:06] Todd Bemis: try to make sure to do that. I think the other things not to do we have the poverty porn discussion.
[00:31:13] Todd Bemis: It's don't turn the subject of your appeal into an object,
[00:31:18] Jeremy: Mm-Hmm.
[00:31:19] Todd Bemis: right? Never, take a child or an animal or an adult, anybody, and, create a silhouette of them. Take out the background. They need to be held in context of what they're going through. Because otherwise they're just a pair of Nikes.
[00:31:32] Todd Bemis: And that's not something you want to do with any anybody's causes. I think that there's so much that can be said about audiences and segmentation. If you truly want to gain impact for your cause, figure out the Hispanic market. There's a lot of nuance there. These are deeply passionate communities.
[00:31:56] Todd Bemis: They want to help. They have their whole own set of [00:32:00] things that they want to see happen. They want massive systemic changes that happen at a local level as well. And so you need to create variants of your appeals for different communities that might exist in your market. That, that's like the best of the best.
[00:32:17] Todd Bemis: So don't just. Take your stereotype of who your donor is and create one version and then wonder why you're always complaining that you don't have any young donors because you're not targeting young donors with anything that you're creating. What not to do? I think we're all still going through withdrawals or exiting shell shock from all the texts we got leading up to this election that we're just like, Hey, Jeremy, I'm like, what the hell?
[00:32:46] Todd Bemis: None of my friends None of my friends would say, Hey, Todd,
[00:32:51] Jeremy: Yeah,
[00:32:52] Todd Bemis: , above all, just be pleasant.
[00:32:54] Jeremy: yeah. I do wonder how the political campaign and texting is [00:33:00] going to impact. Text campaigns from nonprofits now because we got so many of them. Whereas it used to be pretty effective. I wonder if that's, I imagine it's probably going to weigh in a little bit as a result of the bombarding. And it may be different cause you and I are both here in Georgia, which was a swing state.
[00:33:16] Jeremy: I don't know if they were getting as many texts and other states that are not swing states, but I know we got hit pretty hard. These are all great insights. We're going to get to where we're wrapping up here. So I'm going to break out the clarity cards. So yes, this is the finding your edge clarity cards.
[00:33:34] Jeremy: And this is what I created to help people grow personally and professionally. And when I have guests on, I like to bust them out, ask a question because it's a question for you, but also for our audience to think about. Your question is, describe a turning point in your life that led you to where you are now.
[00:33:53] Todd Bemis: For me, that's an easy answer because I have a kid who's 21 [00:34:00] years old. And it was 21 years ago that I said, all I want to do is work with nonprofits. And now everybody's thinking, Oh yeah, you had a kid.
[00:34:10] Todd Bemis: And you said, what am I going to do with my life? Well, when my kids showed up, only weighed two and a half pounds. And that has a very sharp focus and a painful way of making you understand what you need to do with your life. 70 days in a NICU wondering if your wife is going to survive, wondering if your kid is going to survive.
[00:34:34] Todd Bemis: It it makes you consider what do I want to do besides sell ceiling fans and emails?
[00:34:43] Jeremy: yeah,
[00:34:44] Todd Bemis: And that, of course, that was a big jolting one that I hope nobody ever goes through, not even my dog. And it has a simplicity about it, lay awake and just think about what do I want people [00:35:00] to think about me in 10 years? And I think that is a way to truly define your path. And then the rest of it's easy. It's just making it happen.
[00:35:08] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. Putting forth that effort, man.
[00:35:11] Todd Bemis: Yeah. And I had wonderful support with the agency I was at and all my friends and everybody I worked with which made it far easier than perhaps others would have it, but it was definitely the turning point.
[00:35:21] Todd Bemis: It defined my entire career
[00:35:23] Jeremy: no, that's powerful, man. And you've survived it and your daughter's doing great, so that's great to see the other side of that. Thank you for sharing that with me. If people want to connect with you, what is the best way? If they want to follow up with questions or just need further advice or tips, what's the best way they can reach out?
[00:35:38] Todd Bemis: If you want to see some photography, you can just go to Todd Bemis. com and there's a contact form on there. Or just hit me up at Todd dot Bemis at gmail. com and I am happy to respond. I've been at this for so long, but I'm still really curious.
[00:35:56] Todd Bemis: And I think a Above all else, I like being a [00:36:00] problem solver and a partner in solving problems. So if you've got some kind of hitch you're trying to get over, reach out. I love that stuff.
[00:36:09] Jeremy: And you brew beer.
[00:36:10] Todd Bemis: You and I beer.
[00:36:11] Jeremy: Todd Bemis, thank you for joining all around a great marketer. Great, creative, great human being. Thank you for being a part of the show today and thank you all for tuning into the Jeremy Haselwood show. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to follow or subscribe.
[00:36:26] Jeremy: So you're always up to date when the latest episode drops until next time. Keep following your dreams to find your purpose.
