We’re looking for the biggest bubble your lungs can deliver with your choice of Bazooka or Dubble Bubble bubble gum.

That’s right, The Engage Group is holding a bubble blowing contest at NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco this year.  So, start conditioning your lungs, make sure you add those lip exercises to your workout schedule and plan to visit booth #36 at the Science Fair on Tuesday, April 3rd from 3pm to 8pm.

We’re giving away a Flip Video camera for the Biggest Bubble and an Amazon Gift Card for the Biggest Bubble Catastrophe.

The Engage Group is pleased to announce that we are an official member of the Cvent Supplier Network.  This means that we are fully versed in all that Cvent offers nonprofits and associations to manage their events, conferences and meetings.

The Cvent platform is a robust event management tool that helps organizations increase attendance and decrease expenses on large scale events as well as organizational meetings.  With Cvent, you can create and send emails, build an event specific website, handle online and offline registrations, manage membership, conduct fundraising and integrate your social media.  The platform also delivers the ability to gain insight into your attendees through the use of web surveys to test markets and gauge opinions.

Interested in knowing if Cvent is a fit to help you better manage your next event or meeting?  Already have Cvent but want to use it to its full potential?  Need an extra set of well qualified tech hands to tap into all that Cvent has to offer?  Give us a call or drop us a line.  We’d love to make your next event or conference a stress free success.

Some key points from the press release:

- Combining strengths will provide a comprehensive and compelling set of multi-channel supporter engagement solutions to nonprofit organizations of all sizes
- Combined company has over $440 million in trailing twelve months pro-forma revenue (9/30/11)
- Acquisition expected to be accretive to Blackbaud’s 2012 non-GAAP EPS and contribute to substantial free cash flow

See a press release style video from Blackbaud here.

Knowing how your communications plan compares to other nonprofits is a great way to help you plan for the future as well as measure the success of your efforts.  There are many trends that we have seen in the past year with our clients and we thought we’d share our observations.

A strong, donation-based website is at the core of a nonprofit’s communication’s strategy.  Many organizations are redesigning websites to be visitor friendly and optimized for easy donations and constituent engagement.  This includes strong donation paths, easy ways to get connected and highly desirable information placed front-and-center for site visitors.  Our experiences are echoed in the NonprofitMarektingGuide.com’s 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report where 68% of nearly 1300 nonprofits surveyed reported that a website was a ‘Very Important’ communications tool.

This past year was also the time when many nonprofits really stepped up their emailing efforts.  We saw many increase their communications schedule with not only appeals, but alerts, newsletters and updates to keep their donors and members informed.  According to the same report respondents who deemed email as very important plan to email at least monthly which is an increase of 81% over 2011′s survey.    We found nonprofits relying on email to get communications out quickly and loving the ability to tailor messages not only to specific audiences, but specific donors.

Social media is being embraced, somewhat timidly by many, as a tool to connect with supporters.  Many organizations are using social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to keep supporters informed and to grow their lists.  We’ve seen social media campaigns raise funds, raise friends, poll supporters and demonstrate progress.  We expect more and more nonprofits to use social media, in conjunction with their websites and email communications even more in 2012.

Much of the work we helped our our clients with in 2011 is echoed in the 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.  You can download a copy to see how your organization compares and use it to shape your plans for 2012.

The Engage Group is proud to be presenting at The Professors’ Institute.  Hosted by the DMAW Educational Foundation, this annual event allows college professors from the mid-Atlantic region to learn the latest direct marketing trends, strategies and techniques from practitioners in the field.

Our very own Debbie Young will be sharing real-world techniques and examples in her session, Digital Marketing for Fundraisers.  What’s really cool is that her insight will be taught to hundreds of students at the college level as a result of presenting to the professors in attendance.

Everyone at The Engage Group wishes you and yours a very happy holiday season. We appreciate your business and look forward to working with you in 2012.

Our holiday hours:

Thursday, December 22nd we’ll be closing at noon for our holiday luncheon.

Friday, December 23rd through Monday, December 26th the office will be closed.

Monday, January 2nd the office will be closed.

Given the fact that 40% of online gifts are made in December and 40-60% of those are made the last two days of the year, we thought we’d share our suggested timeline and general plan to help you formulate your Down To the Wire, Year-End Online Campaign.

Boost 2011 Online Year End Giving with this Campaign Time Line

December 20-21

Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, so we recommend an email on December 20 or 21 that shares a compelling story about who/what your organization has helped, advanced, saved, nourished, prevented, etc. along with a strong ask, of course. If you have a “gift membership” or “in honor of” donation option, don’t forget to include that in the email.

December 28-30
Remind people of the tax benefits of giving with a brief recap of your accomplishments of 2011. This should be a strong ask.

December 31st
This is it – your donor’s last chance to make that tax deductible donation and you want to remind them of this fact. Consider “last chance” wording in the subject line. It is this final day of the year that they can do anything to offset any taxes – and you want your organization to be top of mind.  Be sure your email is delivered into inboxes in the morning so they have time to act before ringing in the New Year.

This simple 3-part Down to The Wire, Year-End Online Campaign timeline will help you capture many of those gifts made the last few days of the year.

Stay current on mobile opportunities and how you can prepare to reach mobile users. Read AMA’s white paper on mobile marketing strategy.

The whitepaper covers:

• Top 10 app’s for 2012
• How to measure mobile stats
• Using the web as a guide
• How to encourage usage
• and more…

Download Mobile Marketing Strategies

We are really looking forward to DC WEEK.

Just what is DC Week?  It’s a week long festival in the US capital focused on bringing  together designers, developers, entrepreneurs and social innovators of all kinds.  The events begin on November 4th through November 11th.

It’s a series of 100′s of distributed events powered by the community and complemented by core conferences, parties, and projects created by  the festival organizers iStrategyLabs and Tech Cocktail.

You get your pass and then show up to the events that are of most interest.  Get your badge here.

The Engage Group is moving in with the rest of The Production Management Group, Ltd. family members on November 18th!

PMG, MMI Direct and The Engage Group will all be in the same office, making fully integrated direct marketing even easier.  Our direct mail production, online fundraising and data processing pros will now be sitting right next to each other.

Offices will be closed during the duration of the move (November 18th), but if any assistance is needed during our relocation, account managers will be available via phone and/or personal email. Our offices will be fully functional as of Monday, November 21st, and will resume normal activity.

All email addresses and phone numbers will remain the same, but please be sure to update your database with our new mailing address:
7160 Columbia Gateway Drive, Suite 300Columbia, Maryland 21046