+1 (410) 742-9088 david@highcontext.com

High Context Consulting, LLC

Recent Articles from the Blog

September 1, 2010

Example of Providing Options Beyond Basic Online Subscription

I made a short screencast of the Wall Street Journal’s website today, WSJ.com, looking at the subscription pricing model the publisher has in place. There is a great lesson here for associations about offering premium options that give new value to those who purchase it without inherently devaluing the base subscription.

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August 4, 2010

David’s Upcoming Appearances

I have a couple of public presentations coming up that you may be interested in.

First, I’ll be presenting at ASAE’s Annual Meeting in Los Angeles later this month on how to make more revenue online. This session has been selected by ASAE to include in it’s first ever virtual attendee package for this event, so you can attend from anywhere in the world! Session details:

Make Money Online! Unlock the Revenue Potential of Your Organization’s Website

Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

This fast-paced session will identify ways to maximize the revenue potential of your organization’s website. Explore the most common revenue models for association websites, examine case studies of organizations that have achieved dramatic revenue results online, and leave with cutting edge ideas from around the Web that you can adapt. The top and bottom lines of any association, large or small, will benefit from the content in this session.

Next, I’m doing a webinar with Peach New Media featuring all new content about how to embrace entrepreneurism in the pursuit of goals that matter. I’ll cover in depth a lot of the ideas I’ve shared on the Orgpreneur.com blog as well as others provided via e-mail in the Orgpreneur Weekly Tip. Session details:

Be an Orgpreneur: How entrepreneurship is the key to achieving goals that matter.

September 16, 2010 at 12 Noon Eastern

The organizations today that make the biggest differences to their customers, employees and society are those where staff pursue goals that matter with an entrepreneurial mindset. David Gammel calls these people Orgpreneurs and he will show you how to be one in this unique webinar.

David will zero in on topics such as:

  • What entrepreneurship means in the context of organizations and non-profits.
  • Why today’s business and social environment demands an entrepreneurial approach if you hope to be successful.
  • The common traits of an Orgpreneur and how to develop them.
  • How to establish entrepreneurship as a process rather than an exception.
  • Cases and examples of Orgpreneurship in action.
  • How to hire and manage Orgpreneurs on your own team who will deliver exception results.

This session is perfect for senior executives who want to create a more entrepreneurial organization as well as managers and staff who want to dramatically improve the impact they have at work. Register today!

Hope to see you at one or both events!

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July 23, 2010

Micro Payments, Micro Profit?

The only way to make significant revenue with micro payments is to get an awful lot of them.

Any questions? :)

OK, I’ll say a bit more about my rationale for that position.

I work with a lot of membership organizations and the idea of micro payments is often very appealing to their leaders. They provide a very low price point on some products which they can point to when members complain about overall prices of products. It’s also quite trendy, with high profile examples like Kiva.com leading the way with that business model for micro-lending.

Let’s take a look at the math for a hypothetical association. Let’s say they are a scientific society with 20,000 members who pay $399 a year to join. We’ll use them as our pre-qualified base of prospects for a micro-payment product.

Evernote, the very popular note taking application that works on almost anything with a chip and a screen, recently shared some stats. Shortly after they started up, about 1% of their free users converted to paying customers.

If we take a mirco-priced product at $1.00 and 1% of our hypothetical base makes the purchase, then you end up with this:

(20,000 * 1%) * $1.00 = $200.00

Compare that revenue to what they get in membership dues:

20,000 * $399.00 = $7,980,000.00

The organization will literally waste more in jammed paper in their printers than they would make on this single micro-priced product. This is before taking into account the costs of producing the product and implementing micro payments, online access, etc.

Hell, having a single staff meeting to discuss this product already puts it in the hole!

This association would need a base market of about 2,000,000 people to make the revenue even slightly interesting with these assumptions. They still need a lot more people in that market even if you bump up the price and the conversion rate.

Other issues with micro payments include:

The only exceptions I might make for developing micro payments if you don’t have a large enough market include:

I’m sure someone somewhere in the association world has done a successful micro payment model. (Let me know about it in the comments if you have!) But every leader and product manager must go into the decision making process with a realistic understanding of the numbers involved before committing resources to implement this model.

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July 15, 2010

The IE6 Decision

More and more website publishers are deciding to drop support for Internet Explorer 6. This browser has notoriously poor, incomplete, and outright missing support for modern standards in web design and interactivity. Thus making a site that works well in IE6 and current browsers requires significant additional effort. Many web design firms are moving to a model of charging extra for IE6 support on top of regular design fees.

IE6’s days are numbered.

However, many organizations wrestle with when to drop it from the list of supported browser for their site. Total traffic from that browser version is often cited as a metric to use. Only 6% of our visitors use it? Drop that browser like a hot potato!

Hold on though, what if those 6% do something important, like making 20% of your online purchases in your store? Do you want to walk away from that income? Probably not.

Here are a few criteria to use in assessing if you should continue to support IE6 for the time being while we wait for it to finally die off (which is happening more rapidly now).

Do a significant proportion of IE6 users on your site:

You get the idea. If IE6 users are not part of a relevant audience for your key goals online then you are safe dropping them even if they are a somewhat high percentage of your traffic. If IE6 users are valuable to your organization, then you very well may be better off investing in supporting them.

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July 6, 2010

We Have Data! Now What?

Perfectly executed and statistically valid survey results won’t help you unless you actually do something based on the results. The trick is to design the survey and your business processes to enable action. Here are a few tips for doing so.

What questions will help us to determine results and make changes?
This is the most important of the three: considering what questions will best help you to improve the program, service or product about which you are gathering data.

If you offer a training seminar, is the satisfaction of the attendee during the event the most important aspect or are the improved outcomes they create on their job using this new knowledge? Probably the latter, although it is much more common to survey the former.

Who can best answer those questions for us?
Following what to ask is then who to ask it. Continuing the example above, if the key metric is improved job performance, then the right people to ask about that are probably the supervisors or managers of the people attending the event rather than those who were there.

It can often be extra work to identify and contact those who can actually answer your questions but it is critical if you want data that is valuable and enables you to take action.

Build in time and resources for analysis and action.
Even when you ask the right people the right questions, you won’t get anywhere unless you build in time and resources to really go through the results.

Who can make decisions about what to do? Who can best analyze the results and recommend alternatives and changes if warranted? Put time on their calendars before the surveys goes out so they will convene to review results and make decisions.

If you do the above you’ll be much more likely to improve the quality of whatever it is you are surveying about.

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May 14, 2010

Two Opportunities to Hear Me Speak in May

I have two public presentations this month that I want to share with you. One is a luncheon keynote and the other a free webinar.

I am the luncheon keynote for the Association Foundation Group’s 8th National Conference on May 20th in Washington DC. My speech is titled “Accelerating Engagement Online and Beyond” which just so happens to be the same as my cover story article for this month’s Associations Now magazine.

I am also presenting a webinar with Real Magnet titled, Communicating for Impact: Simple Techniques for Breakthrough Improvement. This free webinar focuses on how simple planning, testing and measurement of results can lead to dramatic breakthroughs with your electronic communication. I’ll be featuring several real world cases and examples along with my best tips for creating results with e-mail. The webinar is on May 25th at 2 p.m. Eastern.

I hope you’ll join us at one or both of the events!

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May 6, 2010

Funding Web Projects from Reserves

Should financial reserves be used to fund the development of a website instead of from current revenues? The answer lies largely in the strategic value of the project in question.

Financial reserves are the funds that many non-profit organizations literally hold in a reserve. Since they don’t pay out profits to owners or shareholders, bottom line revenue goes into the bank and is typically invested. These reserves may serve different purposes but they have a role in providing financial security, rainy day resources, and in some cases capital for new ventures within the organization. Funding a website project would qualify under the latter.

My grandfather, a serial entrepreneur in his day, said this: “You can borrow money to make money but you should never borrow to pay for the groceries.” Wise advice all around and it definitely applies to funding your website development and operations.

Delving into reserves to create new capacity, to expand your website infrastructure, with the expectation of significant returns over several years is often a good thing to do. Using reserves to pay for staff or one-off projects is almost always not. The decision to invest reserve capital should always have a tremendous focus on creating significant and sustained new value. It should not be used to cover spot costs or very short-term needs.

This is why web strategy is so critical in a large development project: it gives you and your organization the greatest chance of creating significant returns online when reserve funds are in play.

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May 4, 2010

Sacred Zombie Cows: The Cartoon!

Last year I wrote an article about killing the sacred zobmie cows infesting our organizations. That idea has been marinating since then and I ultimately decided to ask Hugh MacLeod to create a cube grenade cartoon around the concept. These images created by Hugh are intended to spark conversations and get ideas moving.

Have You Killed Your Sacred Zombie Cow?

Please head on over to Orgpreneur.com, my new blog for those who use entrepreneurism in the pursuit of goals that matter, to see the full image and essay on “Have You Killed Your Sacred Cow Today?“

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April 12, 2010

Engagement Triggers

I’ve written a few posts on engagement this year and I have a feature article in Associations Now coming out in a month or so on the topic. One important concept that I touch on a bit in the article is that of identifying the natural precursors to a product or service among your other offerings.

If you review your data you should be able to identify segments of your customers who are more likely to buy product B if they have already purchased product A. Or they may have taken some other action you have captured that represents a meaningful change that opens new opportunities for you to provide value.

You can map out these connections and essentially develop an acceleration path comprised of a targeted chain of value that you can offer to relevant people.

My friend Tom Breur, a master at turning data into dollars, wrote recently in his newsletter about using automated triggers in your database to target customers for additional value when they have made a relevant purchase or taken some other step that indicates they are suitable. With Tom’s permission, I have quoted the relevant passage below:

Transactions Initiate Trigger-Based Marketing

Event-based marketing are actions that are triggered by changes in the customer’s life. The term trigger-based marketing is also commonly used. We would consider an “event” a complex, multi-faceted occurrence in the customer’s life. “Some” (unusual) transaction will be a signal this event has taken place. For instance, a customer who has bought a house will subsequently change address. Or a (female) customer who gets married changes her name. A customer reports a stolen credit card, etcetera. Sometimes it is clear from the transaction which event has taken place (like in the case of a female changing her name after getting married), and sometimes it isn’t.

If you understand the implications of an event to the customer’s life, it can help you in servicing the customer better. Or possibly selling additional products. This can become a very efficient means of interacting if the campaign or dialogue follows automatically from the transaction that triggers identification of the event.

The key, as Tom points out, is to understand the changing needs reflected behind a particular action you record in your database and determine what targeted value you can offer to them.

What are the most meaningful actions you currently capture? Based on that, what you can you offer to those people that is powerfully valuable to them given the new scenario they are in?

If you found the excerpt above valuable, you can sign up for Tom’s free newsletter here.

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April 2, 2010

Making Vague Requirements Concrete

A friend on Twitter asked what you should do when you are presented with a list of vague requirements for a new website that shows no evidence of priority, intent or coherence. The proverbiale laundry list of features with no strategic context.

I offer two solutions for you:

1: The best and most effective thing you can is to hire me to help you draw forth breakthrough results from the chaos.

2: Alternatively, do the following:

Vague requirements shows a lack of prioritization which is an indicator that the higher level goals of the organization were not considered or leveraged effectively when planning the new site.

A website must contribute value to your top-line goals in some fashion if you want it to contribute breakthrough results online. Use those top-line goals to determine what outcomes the site must achieve. If you have a bunch, prioritize them from highest to lowest value. Then use those outcomes to determine and prioritize the functionality the site must provide. It’s that simple.

The actions:

There is more to it than that but that gives you the broad outlines. My book, Online and On Mission: Practical Web Strategy for Breakthrough Results, is a great resource if you want to get very good at this process.

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