A new way of tithing?

The Chronicle of Philantrophy (CoP) recently highlighted a new level of “sophistication” in the way people tithe. Of particular interest is the way technology has a role in the said developments. Highlighting a New York Times report, CoP writes that the “collection plate is being superseded by technology.”

The article is a reminder of the new perspective on giving - more and more people look at their donations as investments. These investment-oriented donors are quite involved in securing where their money goes. They want to make sure it is used well so they research the organizations they give to. They want to track returns (albeit non-monetary), so they keep abreast on what the organization is doing. Technology allows them to do that by specific communication sent by way of emails, website updates, or even personal logins to see their donor history, among others.

Read the original article on “Tithing evolves as donors gain financial savvy: Churches turn to technology to keep congregants giving” by the New York Times and let us know what you think!

Catasrophemail?

Some corners of the web-design community are up in arms about a recent Microsoft decision to dump the current HTML email engine for Outlook 2007, instead adopting an outdated and flawed engine based on, no, really, Microsoft Word. What’s on the chopping block? Consistent support for background images and colors, nice margins, and overall control of object placement and spacing inside emails. If the rumors are all true, a lot of emails are going to start looking bad, and a lot of email designers are going to be tearing out their hair.

More after the jump:
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Beyond Open Rates

The most frequent email related question we hear at Silas Partners is: “When should we send out our mailing” The industry standard reply is by and large: early in the week, early in the day. This conclusion is often based on open rate analysis.

I’m seldom happy with “industry standard” and “by and large.” In order to be able to give more specific and more helpful advice, you have to go past open rates when looking at email performance. To this end we recently compiled a sample of email statistics and performed some new analysis on this data. The results validate some of the industry standard thought, but they also give more insight.
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