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During this week’s broadcast of For Immediate Release with Shel Holtz I talked about how the Harvard College Fund enriched their fundraising efforts with alumni by asking not just for funds but for stories about their fondest memories of the Ivy League.
Their challenge was an ongoing one – how do you engage alumni for annual contributions?
Harvard had an active list of email addresses for their alumni community and had traditionally blasted it in pursuit of straight-up requests for funds.
For the campaign I spoke about this week, Harvard leveraged PollStream’s Poll in Email to complement the request for funds with an engaging and emotional opportunity for alumni to reflect back on their college years.
Whether their strongest memories were about their academic, extracurricular, or the friendships they made the aim was to tie the request for funds to the college experience that the participant identified as being the most impactful.
The first question of the poll was:
Who at Harvard had the most positive influence on your undergraduate experience?
- Professor/Teaching Fellow
- Academic Adviser
- Classmate/Fellow Student
- Extracurricular Leader (Coach, Employer, etc.)
- Harvard Administrator
To Harvard’s surprise and excitement, open rates soared and 85% completed the poll, spending nearly 4 minutes each to tell one of 500 submitted stories, some of which were selected for publication in The Yard.
A great example of how giving your community an opportunity to give can result in riches you’d never anticipated.
I thought I would direct everyone’s attention to part three of Omar El Akkad’s four part series on cloud computing. PollStream is mentioned in this Globe and Mail article on choosing the right cloud provider.
Have a read!
As our American cousins sit down to feast I thought I would throw my hat in the ring to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving on behalf of the gang here.
I also thought I’d share a couple things that I’m thankful for.
I’m thankful to work with an insanely talented team at PollStream. A group of super smart developers, marketers, customer focused account managers and visionaries who make every day different because they dare to dream.
I’m also thankful for one colleague in particular, the one and only Dzung Tran who spends his work day making everything you see from us look amazing and his personal time raising funds for prostate cancer.
Walk this way and donate to Movember!
So I challenge you to take Dzung’s lead and walk this way – make a Movember donation now!
Happy Thanksgiving!
As we talked about in today’s broadcast of For Immediate Release with Shel Holtz, our customer TD Canada Trust was looking to promote financial literacy amongst Canadian holiday shoppers. Based on what they’d learned from their annual holiday survey, TD is providing tips on how to prevent the worst spending blunders as Canadians begin their shopping.
To get the word out TD not only embraced traditional media through press releases but social media, a tactic that included the use of an engaging quiz poll from PollStream.
The quiz was included in the press release to drive up interest, and allowed the press and the public to determine what kind of holiday shopper they are and then share those results with their friends on both Facebook and Twitter.
Not only did this approach earn significant media pick-up, but since the average quiz participant had more that 300 friends on Facebook alone the quizpoll greatly multiplied the reach of TDs message. That’s the kind of gift that keeps on giving.
I encourage you to take the quiz yourself and share it with your friends to see just what kind of gift giver you are – http://vote.pollstream.com/4513
We’re thrilled to announce our support of the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF).
A nonprofit organization that addresses youth unemployment and under-employment in Canada by providing programs that support young people who are creating their own employment through entrepreneurship, CYBF is using a custom poll template to allow the public to vote for their favorite video submission as part of this year’s Chairman’s Awards.
As our president Steven Green says in today’s press release, CYBF has a great track record of championing the leaders of tomorrow and we’re excited to be associated with them.
I attended Marcus Evans 6th Annual Conference on Internal Communications and Employee Engagement in Orlando for Senior Communication and HR professionals. It was an intimate group of fifty or so senior professionals sharing their organizations’ stories. The economy had affected almost every business. Some interesting themes emerged in the two days. There were great discussions about how to make leaders more visible, how to rebuild an organization’s culture, how to create transparency, and even reexamining the employee value proposition.
It was implicit that these themes and many of the associated tactics are central to organizations’ objectives of trying to rebuild trust. In this severe recession, it’s not just politicians and political institutions that Americans don’t trust.
Employees don’t trust their leaders. This lack of trust has bottomed out and according to Edelman’s trust barometer, while still very low, has increased 18% over the past year.
The communicator is central to rebuilding trust. Angelo Ioffreda, Senior Director, Employee Communications of NII Holdings (Nextel Latin American) said the communicator has a unique role within the organization that at times can be in conflict. They are both the voice of the corporation, its brand and culture and they are also the advocate of the employee.
Kraleigh Woodford, head of internal and client communications for UBS America gave really good advice on how to become a better employee advocate. When working with senior leaders, she thinks it is imperative that the communicator ask the really tough questions, not to be afraid to push back and be strong enough to say no.
In order to be a strong communications counselor, Jeffrey Brooke, director of employee communications at the US Government printing office implores communicators to get out of your office to listen and meet with your employees – informally on the shop floor, in the lunch and break rooms as well as formally by conducting engagement surveys and focus groups. Measurement and hard data help him build credibility with leaders.
Listening and feedback was important to almost everyone at the conference and helps the communicator become a more effective employee advocate. It was great to see so many communicators really embracing the spirit of social media. That it isn’t about the bells and whistles or a passing fad but can be a powerful way to create spaces for conversations, connections and communities.
Lisa Gick, VP Employee Relations at Macy’s has created a conversational culture with listening chats, rallies and giving employees tools to recognize each other with their innovative peer to peer “Making Magic Every Day” campaign. Employees can give each other “You did something great today and I noticed” cards and each time they recognize each other they are entered into a prize drawing.
How do you see yourself as a communicator? Corporate spokesperson? Communication counselor? Employee advocate? Or do you create spaces for conversations and dialogue? Contact me – I’d love to know.
The Associated Press confirmed on Wednesday that Google will give a 10% pay raise to their 23,300 employees next year. Some suggest this signals a return to the not so distant good old days of free grub and bean bags chairs. Others have wondered aloud if this is merely a stop gap measure to prevent an exodus to competitors like Facebook.
It’s given me pause to wonder if pay hikes are enough to prevent your employees from taking a hike? I think the answer is no.
Leigh Branham wrote about this years ago in his book The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave. He noted a massive disconnect between the real reasons why employees leave – the work, the culture, the manager – and a manager’s perception of why they leave which almost always boils down to the bucks.
In our experience, while pay raises are great they’re not what motivate most employees. In fact our partner Roy Saunderson of the Recognition Management Institute speaks often about the importance of striking a balance between rewards and recognition.
We’ve written about this recently as well, here, here and here.
In my opinion, a great way to achieve that balance – or what Roy calls real recognition – is to engender an environment where all employees, regardless of their place on the org chart, feel encouraged and empowered to declare and compare ideas, share opinions and earn recognition.
As I’ve said countless times, this is more than a warm fuzzy or a nice to have. It is mission critical for organizations looking to retain their best and brightest.
So, what do you think? Let’s talk.
What’s New @ PollStream
November 18, 2010 in Steven Green | Tags: api, cleveland clinic, comment engine, hive, ontario place, poll, poll in facebook, poll mobile, pollstream, rbc, sparkplug, the the hive | by Steven Green | Leave a comment
It has been a while since I have sent out an update to members of the PollStream community. There has been so much going on these past few months that I just have to stop for a moment to share some news with you all.
In June we moved to our new offices located at 18 Hook Ave in Toronto’s up and coming Junction neighborhood. The new office is large, light and bright and ready for guests, so feel free to drop by any time!
On the project side of things we have been very busy with client implementation since the move to the new office. The Cleveland Clinic’s employee communications program is well underway, the Ontario Place public consultation enjoyed fantastic participation and RBC has launched their Pollution Probe annual quiz. I was shocked to discover that I only scored 3 out on 10 on the Pollution Probe quiz – I couldn’t believe how poor my ‘energy literacy’ was!
Currently we are busy with a new Hive implementation with our partners over at Rideau Recognition Solutions. I recently spent a lot of time with the gang from Rideau; Peter Hart, Peter’s son Jordan and Max Brown, while at the VPHR conference in Paris. It was my first time presenting outside of North America and it was wonderful. Paris is certainly a lovely place – even in the midst of month long national strikes.
The PollStream developers have been incredibly productive this fall and have delivered a ton of new functionality that many of you are familiar with first hand by now. For those who may not have discovered these new enhancements….read on!
The New Year is just around the corner and from our view is gearing up to be a breakthrough year. I thank you all for helping us get to where we are today and for staying with us as we grow together in 2011!
Best,
Steven Green