Over
the past couple of weeks I have been tackling a lot of different projects
including helping organise kids for photo shoots for the 2013 PMH Foundation
calendar, interviewing and writing up stories of kids at PMH for the Ambassador
program, visiting some in hospital dressed as the Stitches the Bear, writing
and changing the monthly media report template and finding stories to pitch to
journalists who wanted to write articles about the Foundation. Through all of
these different activities I have been amazed at how versatile our team has had
to be in adapting and accommodating key stakeholders. Each person has a
completely different background, relationship to the hospital and the
Foundation, interests and experiences. The Foundation does a lot of qualitative
and quantitative research on its key publics through online campaigns, database
information, commissioned reports and media monitoring to keep updated with
changing social trends, issues and behaviours. I have noticed that the key
concept used to successfully engage key stakeholders is to customise all
messages and make things as personal as possible. Two recent tactics PMH
Foundation is thinking of adopting to achieve this are email testing and a
proposed online newsletter.
Email Tests
As discussed in my last blog,
I have learnt a lot at weekly team meetings. We recently talked about testing
donor responses to ‘thank you’ letters and welcome packs by sending one letter
to half our database and a different one to the other half to see which one
gets a better response. I was interested to learn how tests such as these help
organisations better understand their key publics and tailor their messages and
activities to suit their supporters needs and interests.
Online Newsletter
Proposal
Another proposed activity was
the idea of creating an electronic newsletter for our donors that could be
tailored to suit individual interests. For example there are some donors who
participate in certain events every year and are only interested in this,
others are keen to give specifically to something like research and others who
just like supporting PMH through buying merchandise. There would be significant
benefits in creating a newsletter that could customise, and essentially
personalise, information to suit certain stakeholders. The concept would be to
make sure people are targeted individually and not made to accept a ‘one size
fits all’ template. This way donors and supporters are not hassled by things
they are not interested in and maximum awareness is stressed about things that
do interest them. I have recently been involved with research into different
online services that help to facilitate this sort of online newsletter, a
service I never knew existed. I was introduced to http://mailchimp.com/, one such service that
impressed me so much that I wrote up a recommendation and proposal for its use
by the Foundation.
It has been fantastic to see
how even up until my last days working at the Princess Margaret Hospital
Foundation I have continued to learn so much about the many functions and
activities associated with public relations. Although a lot of the activities I
have been involved in often cross over into marketing activities, I still
strongly believe that each one helps build relationships and communication
channels with key stakeholders and thus falls under the PR banner. I have
thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Foundation and it has helped me better
prepare for a life outside of university both professionally and personally. I
would like to personally thank all the staff at PMH Foundation for having me
and investing time into giving me such an amazing and beneficial experience. Thanks also for offering me a paid position! PMH Foundation is an awesome place to work and I love the added benefit of knowing I am helping sick children and the WA community. At this point I am proudly going to say non-profit is the best PR sector :)
