Talk:2011 Fundraiser/Launch email

Wikimedia UK?

I think this is more like the appeal banners than like the thankyou letters etc. To get people to make donations, we need to ask them to support "Wikipedia". Once they've done that, we can start building more of a relationship with them explaining the cool things that they do (as we're doing in the thankyou letters / emails). The Land 10:40, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't say I agree Chris. I think its important to differentiate ourselves as a British chapter. Words like "public park" come out easily from our founders voice, but he would be the first to tell you that he's not in charge. I think this is the time when we should tell the what we did with the money. Victuallers 00:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, the focus of this email is about asking people for money, and we know that our biggest draws for that are saying "Keep Wikipedia free". Jimmy is also a fairly safe bet. It's basically like another appeal landing page. (And the links in the email do actually go to an appeal landing page; the only one of those we have built for this purpose is a Jimmy one, because I wasn't actually expecting this to be controversial)

We might as well try testing a version from Jimmy and a version from someone from Wikimedia UK (probably you!) and see if there is a measurable Jimmy effect. And we can talk more about Wikimedia UK's work in the PS. But we need to settle today what launch email (if any) we are sending on Monday. The Land 11:12, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

• Two thoughts: I find "thanks" (as opposed to "thank you") too informal to end a sincere appeal, especially an email asking for money from a stranger; and if we're going to mention WMUK, we should give the recipient some idea of what it is. Also, is there any way to customise it to address the recipient by name? Knowing exactly how much money they donated but not their name might raise an eyebrow among the more cynical. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:07, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

In an ideal world we would personalise by name. However the records we have would make that a little hit and miss. Some people would get "Dear Chris", others would get "Dear C", "Dear CHRIS", "Dear JO BLOGGS TRADING LTD". Generally speaking poor personalisation < no personalisation. ;-)

And I think Jimmy can be informal. The Land 10:08, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to draw this discussion to a close, I sent a few thousand test emails earlier today, some from Jimmy, some from ... er .... me. I was disappointed, but unsurprised, that the Jimmy ones performed better. In fact, one of the versions of the Jimmy email currently has a click-through rate of above 8%, which is the best performance on a fundraising email I have ever seen.... a benchmark for a successful fundraising email might be 2-3%, and many are unsuccessful. On the basis of this, the rest of the database is getting a Jimmy version. Proper writeup sometime later in the week. The Land 22:13, 13 November 2011 (UTC)