Cover Story : A Healthy Relationship
NAMI's acceptance and understanding of mental illness aids in online data capture
August 2009 By Heather Fletcher
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The lovable curmudgeon’s psychiatric care will undoubtedly be explored as the series continues. But for those interested in an uninterrupted conversation, “House” is referring them to nami.org. The show does this through display advertisements on the official site for “House” and on the site for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which features the show’s stars garbed in black T-shirts bearing the “House-ism” that “Normal’s Overrated.” In both locations, visitors learn that proceeds from T-shirt sales will benefit the Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit charged with a mission of improving the lives of those affected by mental illness.
It’s this type of partnership that typifies the integrated approach NAMI is taking with its communications efforts. Each smaller effort is part of a larger whole—the goal of making NAMI a household name, says NAMI Communications Director Katrina Gay. And an integral part of that integrated effort is nami.org’s data collection.
To that end, NAMI takes a drip irrigation approach to gathering information. Starting with something as basic as understanding its nameless, unique visitor traffic—such as a “House” site referral—the organization then builds audience trust. Once nami.org visitors reach the member stage, they’ve often revealed as much about themselves as their exact relationships with specific diagnoses (i.e., a veteran reveals he has post-traumatic stress disorder or a woman says she’s been raised by a schizophrenic mother). NAMI then tailors its site and outreach to fit this information, continuing the cycle of gathering more data.
In all, the integrated efforts really have seemed to gel since January and result in large increases in many metrics, Gay says. For instance, April brought NAMI a 71 percent year-over-year increase in monthly online donations. (That’s often due to clickthroughs from NAMI’s e-mailed appeals and does not count donations from NAMIWalks, Gay points out. That effort, in which volunteers walk to raise money for NAMI, experienced 15 percent more donations than the previous April.)
“It’s dramatic for us,” Gay says. “Because there wasn’t really any other reason why it would’ve happened, except that the integrated effort is working. And it’s using data to help drive donations by communicating information back to our audience. In addition, the effort is successful because we’re using better message crafting that’s more targeted, more connected with the larger branding strategy and bringing in some pop culture to make it interesting.”
The Data Collection/Trust Cycle
Acceptance. Understanding. Help. Those who visit nami.org expect a lot from the organization.
So NAMI immediately has a Web site data collection challenge that many do not. The organization straightaway must gain the trust of that visitor, who may have more than the average Web browser’s concern for privacy.
Yet NAMI seems to be doing so quite well, according to its statistics.
Gay says that as of September 2008, nami.org was seeing more than 600,000 monthly visits and had about 200,000 registered site users. (Site registration requires creating a user name and password; providing an e-mail address, name and physical address; and accepting NAMI’s terms of use and privacy policy.)
By April 2009, nami.org hosted 685,000 unique visitors and boasted 426,000 registered users.
“You want people to know us, to recognize us, to trust us, to value us. That’s our mantra,” Gay says. “And when they value you, how do you know those things? When you look at your data. Are they donating to you? Are they joining your organization? Are they sending their friends e-mail? Are your traffic stats up? Are they engaging in other conversion methods? Are they signing up for walk teams? Are they engaging in your advocacy/take action? Are they buying T-shirts? And there’s a list. We have a data dashboard that we track every quarter … and we look at it as indicators of our effectiveness.”
NAMI’s dashboard measures 17 areas of the site’s effectiveness, Gay says. The categories include everything from monthly Web visits and new registrants to site hot spots. While her team collects the data monthly, it analyzes it quarterly to avoid overload.
Drip Irrigation
Gay calls him “the mechanic.”
NAMI Web Services Director Don Lamm knows NAMI’s Web data down to the molecule, or MSSQL.
In addition to the high-level traffic data and more detailed information donors provide, Lamm says nami.org collects more granular bits during the sign-up process, through house advertisements and via registered users’ refinements of their “myNAMI” accounts, which customize their site experiences.
“We collect data in several different ways and places. The main place is through the user registration,” he comments. “We have a … tiered registration on the Web site. … [for] discussion groups, myNAMI. ... Giving and purchasing things, to some extent, require registration in that we ask for shipping and billing information, which then goes into the database as information that we later use. We generally use ... I guess I would call it a drip irrigation approach to data collection,” Lamm continues.
“We try to ask for as little as we can up front and present them with additional opportunities to enter data throughout their experience on the Web site,” Lamm explains. “So, for example, you may go in and register and just answer your basic user name and password and your basic information, e-mail address, that sort of thing. Then we will prompt you to get more information, such as demographics. ... And then really the next step to getting data is driving people towards becoming a member. And that’s where we can get a little more granular, get them assigned to a local NAMI [chapter] and continue to collect data from there.”
Along the line, NAMI is steadily building trust to gain more user information. For instance, when registering to use the site, visitors can check a box to opt in to receive e-mail updates. In the welcome e-mail they receive immediately after clicking “submit,” recipients learn that they can create a myNAMI preference center to receive e-mail notifications of new site content. If new registrants don’t opt in to either opportunity, the e-mails end there. But every time registrants sign in on the site, they see opt-in requests that involve further data collection.
Each stage passed, from visitor to registrant, registrant to myNAMI account user and myNAMI user to member, builds trust (with donations possible at every level). So, Gay says, “Ideally, I want them to join, to renew and to donate. Because that tells me they value the organization and our brand is really strong and they trust us and they know us and that … we’ve become a choice they’ve made. Not just once, but over time. So those are the things that we really look at.”
Friends Are the Loveliest People
Once a site visitor joins, Lamm says NAMI sends that person’s information to state and local affiliates so the new member can participate at the chapter level. Similarly, if someone joins at the state or local level, that information comes to NAMI headquarters through the microsites the national nonprofit manages for the affiliates. Gay says as of April, NAMI was hosting 244 microsites (or 25 percent of NAMI affiliates’ sites).
“Membership data comes from affiliates and states where we have a distributed membership management system,” Lamm adds. “The states and affiliates manage their data via the Web, and it all goes into a central database for direct mail and everything else. E-mail marketing and online marketing is all driven through the Web site and is all opt-in marketing.”
One of the main changes Lamm has noticed during the past year at NAMI is that the communications team has worked together to refine “our message by trying to show a connection between their donations and the good work that we do” and to increase e-mailed donation requests, which redirect recipients to the site’s donation page. “We’ve probably doubled our asks,” he estimates.
The Final Frontier
The more data nami.org users provide, the more NAMI can tailor its content to fit their needs. So, Gay says, the organization recently began scheduling its editorial focus and content around those topics, lasering its communication efforts on funneling people into areas of the site where they’ll find the information they want.
For instance, nami.org is one-up on the new push among direct marketers for user-generated content. Its registered users have been helping each other out in the “Communities” area of the site for years, which Gay says already provides the site with great search engine optimization. However, that always can be improved, and Gay plans further outreach in the social networking arena.
“I think, really, the main point of the success of the NAMI marketing team right now is … that it’s been a team effort,” Lamm concludes. “I think everybody gets it; everybody gets the Web. People on the Web are not so siloed that they don’t understand print. We’ve got a lot of people that have a lot of experience in different media. They all have a good understanding of all of the different components—from PR down to copywriting. … I think we’re just seeing the culmination of efforts to build a cross-functional team.”
So, in answer to the often asked, “Is there a doctor in the house?” In NAMI’s case, there seem to be quite a few.
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