Introduction

This is a guide for improving and expanding internet presence. Most museums can benefit from expanding both email and website strategies. Consider this while you’re soaking up the ideas below: email is generally underused by museums; instead a great deal of resources are exhausted in developing a state of the art website. In his recent email manifesto, Michael Gilbert begs nonprofits to consider that most people read their email far more often than they visit websites. He issues a call to action I want to echo here: "Stop waiting for people to discover your web site and start discovering their in box." The major components of this article are:

1—Email

Lists & Consultants
Ideas for reaching email oriented museum users
Guidelines for successful email newsletters
Using email to involve people

2—Websites

General Management & Design
Service Providers
Shopping Sites
Giving Sites

3—Online Store

4—Summary

Email

Many museums have developed group mailing lists (ListServ® from L-Soft is the most widely used commercial product) to keep in touch with their members. There are free software programs developed to manage lists in-house, such as Majordomo; there are also online list managers like Topica. In one museum I worked with, we developed a list of about 350 interested non-member visitors. The list grew from addresses given on-site by museum visitors in the spring/summer of 1999.

Another option for capturing addresses is to enlist the professional services of a direct mail consultant, such as Mal Warwick and Associates or WhiteHat, an email marketing firm on the forefront of the campaign against spam. WhiteHat ethically collects "opt-in" email lists, and they also engage in list management (handling culling, unsubscribes and bouncebacks).

To reach email oriented museum users:

Use strategies such as give-away-something-free-drawings for people who leave their email addresses in a collection jar. Make sure you use email to let them know they’ve won!

Add the website URL (yourmuseum.org) and general or specific email addresses to all stationary, business cards, signs, press releases, educational flyers, brochures, T-shirts, etc. If your name or address appears on something, the website and email address should be included.

Using small tablets and a collection jar or box placed at the front desk, ask visitors to sign up for the email newsletter or the printed newsletter. Put these tablets on the table when signing people in for events, camps—anything. Use collecting addresses as the corollary to promoting the website URL and general email address.

Use a newsletter article to publicize the fact that an email list is being developed. Include an email or web address readers can access to add their names to the list.

Create a regularly distributed email newsletter.

Add a "please send me updates and newsletters via email" form to the existing website to capture the names of people already using the web to reach the museum. If people sign up, you must be sure to follow through by sending updates and newsletters via email!

Design a special "Emembers" category for a very reduced price. This category will involve an internet-oriented market segment, and also appeal to interested website or museum visitors who live too far away to feel a regular membership is useful. Emembers must include their email address whether they join at the museum or online.

Emembers automatically get the e-newsletter and occasional private emailings including learning activities to do at home, a special "e-membership card" for reduced rates to the museum and in the store, and any other cool add-ons you can think of.

Guidelines for Successful email Newsletters

Email newsletters range from glossy mini-web pages, which most computers can download, to lower-tech typed versions. They should be delivered at least once a month, and are best when they are short. In fact, a newsletter should contain 3 or 4 brief articles, and be as big as the average computer screen. Casual readers don’t usually scroll in email or on websites.

Articles should be slightly different from the printed newsletter. Make use of the "quick" media to highlight key points from the printed newsletter and change them weekly or monthly. Use the opportunity to add information that became available after the newsletter was printed.

Example:

There are only ten tickets left for Thursday night’s performance of
Marionette E-motion! Don’t miss a wonderful evening with internationally recognized puppeters Darlene and Bruno Frascone, fast becoming a popular fall tradition. Call (123)456.7890 or email events@yourmuseum.org now for your tickets!

Using email to involve people

Surveys
Test-market ideas via email. It’s cheap, and response rates are generally high. Forms can be generated in-house, or software purchased. Decisive.com and Zoomerang.com produce survey-generating and analyzing software.

Event Invitations
Augment or issue invitations via email—include a response form.

Fundraising
Include a place for donors to include their email addresses on campaign (or other donation) materials. Add a box to be checked reading "please email me information about the campaign’s progress!" Send press releases, brief letters from the Director or Campaign Leaders, information on goals made. Include a link to the donation page of the website in these updates. Always offer the option of unsubscribing.

Websites

General Management & Design

The key to successful internet management is timeliness. Internet users expect information to be updated regularly, meaning at least once a month, weekly updates are more successful in maintaining visitor interest. Frequent change will bring the interested visitor back, offering the opportunity to increase their contact and involvement with the museum. Static sites are easily recognized, and obsolete information will turn off visitors. Response times for email or inquiries from the website should be no more than 48 hours. 24 Hours is the guideline for customer-service oriented businesses. I recommend testing your museum’s response time by making a basic inquiry and waiting for a reply.

As mentioned with regard to email newsletters, an important design feature for internet communications brevity. "Blurbs" are best, a short paragraph, white space, then more text.

Be sure to imagine the finished product the size of a standard computer screen—not the size of a 8 ½ by 11 page! Keep text large with standard spacing and capitalization so that it is easy to read. Stick to the basic fonts. Use black on white as the primary design colors. Red will provide the penultimate level of contrast, followed by yellow. Use these colors primarily. The key is legibility, so shadows and cursive fonts are to be avoided.

Always provide a "back" button and a navigation bar at the top or side of a page. The viewer should always know where they are in the site, and what else is available.

Add a "give" button to the website! There are many formats for adding this type of feature. The Nature Conservancy homepage () offers a great example with several portals to "join" pages or "give" forms.

The Tech Museum has a lower impact format that makes a lot of information available. The "join" page has links to 5 types of giving information.

"Become a Member: join or renew online"
"Support our Mission" which links to pages spanning Individual to Corporate donations. Each of these pages supplies information on how to join/give in the specified category, and also serves as a recognition page where donors are listed. In-Kind Giving provides information on what’s needed for Capital and Annual Fund In-Kind Donations, and includes a phone number and email address for the In-Kind Coordinator.
Jobs: new positions are updated weekly.
Volunteer: outlines opportunities available, provides an online application requesting the volunteer applicant to "tell us about yourself".

Put information on the website about affiliations with giving sites and online shopping sites that donate part of the purchase to the museum. Online visitors are most comfortable with transactions on the internet, and may very well shop or give online.

Service Providers

CharityWeb offers online credit card, check or ETF processing for a setup fee of $1095. The service includes:

giving page, customized to match the look-and-feel of your web pages
tribute or memorial donation page
print-out-and-mail-in form
on-line and email receipts
purchase page or shopping cart (initially, or whenever you're ready, with no extra charge)

Nonprofit Zone offers a wealth of free services, including free banner ads on their website, local business and media lists, job postings, lobbying lists at the State and Federal levels, and world wide web support: they will submit the museum’s website URL to the top internet search engines directories.

Shopping Sites

There are also many shopping sites such as mycause.com that let shoppers do a good turn while costing the nonprofit nothing. Participating retailers at mycause.com include Amazon.com for books, music and videos, Beyond.com for software, MagMall for magazine subscriptions, and Travelocity for travel services. Nonprofit Mall also provides online shopping at 140 sites. A complete list of participating merchants is available on their site.

When staunch museum supporters email their friends about shopping online at one of these sites, the museum benefits from the domino effect, so the key is to making these sites worthwhile is to publicize such listings with your membership on-line, in print, and in person!

Giving Sites

Giving sites are available for online donors. The best of these portals allow donors to plan, track and make donations online.
Webcharity.com offers numerous services including online credit card donations, internet only and simulcast charity auctions, an online store or virtual thrift shop. WebCharity also supports an online auction program which is more nonprofit-friendly than sites such as Ebay, which requires the organization to comply with their regular fee schedule and does not offer discounts or waivers for charity auctions.

Benefice.com is an online site to visit "when you want to learn about a non-profit organization, make a pledge or donation, or get more involved in philanthropy." It inspires great confidence, and provides ample information about the nonprofits listed. Benefice has resources in their Information Center, reports in the Research Non-Profits link, and information on events and volunteer positions. Their philosophy ties closely to the concepts of newtithing (a donation philosophy developed new Claude Rosenberg) and provides a way for museums to reach serious online philanthropists.

Those who give through Benefice develop a Personal Giving Plan (PGP); a framework to help control and focus the individual’s donations. It lists the donor’s primary causes, helps the donor set a target for giving throughout the year, and records contributions for the donor. Developing a PGP is free to the donor, and the information is confidential. Benefice offers nonprofits the opportunity to participate in their electronic campaign for workplace giving, and a multimedia listing on the Benefice CD-ROM, as well as presence on their internet site.

Listing fees are based on the organization’s annual revenue. The fee is paid annually and includes the ability to sell merchandise through the Benefice On-Line Mall, to post job listings, and to interact with companies seeking cause-related marketing relationships. The subscription ensures that museum is included in 2 releases of the Benefice CD-ROM. A 30 second audio visual or set of photographs can be added for an additional fee.

Museum Store Online

Yahoo Store is recommended in "The ABCs of E-Commerce" and provides a small online store for $100/month. This includes up to 50 items for sale, plus as many additional information pages as the organization desires. Upgrading to a larger store is possible at any time. A large store is $300/month and allows up to 1,000 items. All stores developed through Yahoo are included in the Yahoo Shopping listing. Building a store on Yahoo Store involves the following:

The organization builds the store on Yahoo’s server using point and click methods developed by Yahoo.

There is no software to install, an ordinary browser will do.

Yahoo hosts the finished site. The address can be stores.yahoo.com/museumnamehere, or can the store can have its own www address.

Orders are encrypted, and can be forwarded from the Yahoo server to the museum either via fax or online.

The museum can log in and retrieve orders or change the site from any browser.

The museum can scan images from disk into the store site. Yahoo will automatically help make "thumbnail" images for use, if wanted.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is an example of a museum store website developed with Yahoo Store.

Summary

While I’ve detailed some useful types of website interactions for museums here, it is imperative to remember that email is the easier, more personal method of communication. Use this to your advantage! Take action! If you’ve already got email, why aren’t you using it more? If you haven’t got it, get it and use it! The first thing I do when I fire up my modem is check email. What about you?