Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 363. What's Working in Nonprofit Marketing + a Crash Course in Using Digital Ads to Grow Your Impact - Aidan Augustin

Transcript

363. What's Working in Nonprofit Marketing + a Crash Course in Using Digital Ads to Grow Your Impact - Aidan Augustin · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm Jon.
• 0:02
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Becky Endicott: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community, we're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Yo, yo, Becky. Exciting day around here, huh?
• 0:38
  Becky Endicott: Favorite human alert, in the house. Yep, it's happening. Can I like get up on my confessional a second before I introduce our guest? Because our guest has taught me something about humility and empathy. But every time that someone reaches out that's, you know, kind of in the tech for nonprofit, for the first time, would it be fair Jon to say that we're a little guarded, because we get a lot of people in the tech industry that want to connect, and we were so short sighted when we met Aidan, Augustin, because he is without a doubt, one of the kindest, most empathetic, most brilliant thinkers that we think we've really met in this journey in the tech for nonprofit. And so it just seems like a long time coming. And we're so excited that today is here that we get to have him on the podcast to talk about why marketing matters. But we want you to get to know his story, because I think it's really, really fascinating. And he is the co founder and president of Feathr that's feather without the second e but Aidan has this really interesting story. He attended the University of Florida then dropped out in 2012 to start Feathr. And now today, Feathr has over 130 employees and serves over 1200 mission based and membership based organizations. And so this really cool software that we have been in here, we love it, we're not getting paid to say it, we really do authentically love it. And the way that it brings digital ad campaigns, email automation and web analytics into one platform.
• 2:05
  Becky Endicott: It's just that ease of use that nonprofits need to be able to flex their tech so they can move on to other things. And the thing that so great about Aidan is gosh, is he's human. When he's not leading Feathr. He's out there trying to kayak. He's singing karaoke. He's taking his Eagle Scout skills and all of his knowledge as a band kid marching in the drumline and just being somebody who leans into community leans into joy, and it's just a joy to know you in this life. We're so excited that you're in our house, come on in and get up to the table and talk to us.
• 2:43
  Aidan Augustin: Wow. First of all, thank you for that kind intro. I'm stoked to be here.
• 2:48
  Becky Endicott: I mean, I teased a little bit of your childhood just because I think you have such an interesting background.
• 2:53
  Becky Endicott: I mean, one of the first times we met Aidan, we like had just seen his wedding photos. And it was the most amazing Alice in Wonderland meets like Tim Burton wedding, we may have to drop one of those in the show notes. And we're just like, who is this incredible human being. And so take us back, like tell us about little Aidan and what led you to create this incredible company that's doing so much good in the nonprofit sector?
• 3:16
  Aidan Augustin: Well, first off the wedding was a surrealist circus ball, just to be clear.
• 3:18
  Aidan Augustin: That was the theme.
• 3:21
  Becky Endicott: Love it, the photos are incredible.
• 3:24
  Aidan Augustin: I guess a little bit background about myself, military brat, my parents, mom and dad were both Marine Corps officers. So moved around a lot as a kid, you know, to form a household of high expectations.
• 3:34
  Aidan Augustin: And, you know, I guess I went the other way and grew out my hair, became a hippie in response to that, but that was kind of the grown up. Boy Scouts was definitely my first exposure to what I call like a service and a lot of volunteers and through that my first exposure to nonprofits and say proud to be an Eagle Scout, like said, ended up in Gainesville, it's where University of Florida is not graduate, but still big fan of the Gators and have really fallen in love with the community here. I'd say I'm very much a think global act local believer and so got involved with a number of nonprofits here in Gainesville, ranging from brand new ones less than 10k budget enough, just volunteers all the way up to more robust one to two, two and a half million and 20 staff so in love with the community, local community building love Gainesville, so a little bit background about me.
• 4:25
  Jonathan McCoy: I love it. And I mean, your team at Feathr, I feel like there's just a community I mean, the people we've gotten to hang out with, it's just like this great dynamic there in Gainesville. So I love that you built that. But I want to give you space to tell a little bit of a Feathr's story because as fellow entrepreneurs I love that. It was just kind of a little bit of a winding path to figure out where your sweet spot is and just continue to hone to how you're showing up so specifically today, serve in the nonprofit space to kind of take us back to starting a business and what it looked like to grow it.
• 4:52
  Aidan Augustin: Yeah, totally.
• 4:52
  Aidan Augustin: And I guess the personal time for that was I was studying engineering never had any exposure to business really growing up again, military parents thought I was going to be an engineer and for doing more of the technical route, but had this silly idea on my first time professional networking, going to some meetups, realize that most of the world was still using business cards. And this was 2011 when smartphones were going mainstream, and so here was 21 year old Aidan thinking he's going to change professional networking forever.
• 5:16
  Aidan Augustin: And we thought, surely we can do better than that handing out paper business cards. So well, a student, some friends of mine in college, we decided to work on an app as a side project to make digital business cards and this is hard to remember. But at that time, less than 50% of people had either Android or iPhones.
• 5:33
  Aidan Augustin: But it was very clearly on the rise. This is kind of the year when there's an app for that campaign was the turn of the day. And so every startup that year was probably a mobile app for blank. And we were mobile app for business cards. So that was the original project that was Feathr. That's actually where the name comes from birds of a feather flock together. And we were trying to help people connect. So the name stuck. The solution didn't we obviously failed to get rid of business cards. Business cards are still alive and strong. You know, here we are 10 years later.
• 6:02
  Becky Endicott: We do not have any if it makes you feel better.
• 6:04
  Becky Endicott: Started that way and we never will.
• 6:08
  Aidan Augustin: That was the original premise for Feathr is trying to help people in this time of supercomputer of pocket, how can we connect? How can we not just exchange contact info but stay in touch online through social media after the fact like so you send your digital card through Feathr and it would connect on LinkedIn, send a twitter follow connect on Facebook, all at once.
• 6:28
  Jonathan McCoy: Dude there's still a market for this, can we
• 6:29
  Aidan Augustin: In our case, you know, one thing led to another just go ahead and say?
• 6:31
  Becky Endicott: I was like you're ahead of...with that.
• 6:31
  Aidan Augustin: Again, that didn't work.
• 6:32
  Aidan Augustin: at least so you know, even though we didn't solve that we kind of failed forward and like a lot of startups, you know, we pivoted and I think it's the case with with most entrepreneurs, right, you think you have an idea. But it's rarely like idea number one that actually is the one that delivers real value and kind of clicks. And that certainly was the case, not even I did number two for us. But I did number two for us was hey, a lot of networking happens at networking events, particularly business conferences. And so maybe we could rein in our vision and focus specifically on facilitating attendee to attend a networking status chapter to a Feathr. And that was where we stumbled into the not for profit world. So most of our customers were professional societies and trade associations. And we were trying to help them help their members connect with each other, and particularly at their conferences, facilitate networking amongst attendees.
• 7:26
  Aidan Augustin: And so we're working with all of these 501 C6 nonprofits, membership based nonprofits around professional networking.
• 7:32
  Aidan Augustin: And that was a modestly successful this chapter to a Feathr. But then we kind of failed forward once again, I would say, into the modern era, which is we realized that these same organizations, these membership based nonprofits, were asking us a lot of questions about, you know,
• 7:45
  Becky Endicott: It's just so funny to me that Aidan like digital outreach, recruiting members, keeping members engaged year round, promoting their programs. And ultimately, those were not things that a mobile app for an event or mobile app for networking was the solution to really what they were asking for were marketing solutions, and particularly online engagement and digital marketing, to help pursue those outcomes. And so we pivoted again threw out the the previous product entirely. And that kind of began the modern era Feathr, which is building nonprofit marketing software.
• 8:20
  Becky Endicott: built an app in his downtime in college, and I was sitting there playing like innertube water polo for fun. It was like what you were doing was so constructive. It literally is leading to changing the world.
• 8:31
  Becky Endicott: And I want to give you a compliment, because even knowing the case studies that we've seen on the back end of what you've helped nonprofits achieve, it just tells me you are sowing your sweet spot right now, because I want to love on nonprofit for a second, before we dive into why this really matters. As marketers disguised as fundraisers, Jon, and I have been trying to convince our organizations and our colleagues and our peers for forever, that investing in marketing with your mission is one of the most profoundly important investments that you will make. And it's one that compounds and it's really hard to track and measure it specifically, you know, in things that are social, and how does that connect directly to donations. And I don't think we're there yet. But I think that that most of America post COVID Post pandemic sees the value in digital marketing and sees that they need to be there.
• 9:30
  Becky Endicott: But the problem that we're seeing right now, Aidan, is that people want to be there. They just don't know what to do. They don't know how to get in the game. They it feels really like a heavy lift. And it seems so technical. And there's so many widgets and automations to figure out and it feels like you guys are kind of just taking the hands of people in a way and taking some of that fear and trepidation at it and creating a roadmap. So I want to get your philosophy on this and I want to see if you're seeing this as well talk to us about why marketing is so important for nonprofits. And what an opportunity exists for it today that nonprofits can seize.
• 10:12
  Aidan Augustin: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think the truth is people spend over eight hours a day, adults United States over eight hours a day online, right. So when you have that background fact, you have people checking their phones 150 times a day, if you're going to reach donors, supporters, populations that you're trying to serve. If you're trying to raise awareness of your organization of your mission and the problem, you're trying to solve the solutions and programs that you're offering to do. So you need to reach people where they are, and in the US in particular, but broadly true across the world where people are, is online, for spending time on various devices and various forms of digital media. But it's over eight hours a day. It's a staggering set that's from 2021, it goes up every year, it was seven hours and 50 minutes, and 2020 was seven hours and change in 2019.
• 11:01
  Aidan Augustin: So every year that number increases. So for us part of the background to this like acknowledging what is what is happening in the world that we live in, and where people spend their time. And it's a constant challenge to win and keep the attention to activate people, everyone is distracted, if you're going to kind of win the fight for attention and win activation from people, whether that's followers or subscribers, whether it's donations, whether that's volunteerism, you need to engage where people are, and you need to do so with ideally, you know, the techniques and the technologies and the best practices that are available.
• 11:34
  Jonathan McCoy: It meets the moment and it's it's evolving all the time. And I think, you know, you just listed off a few ways that people engage. And to me, those are like just different signals of engagement.
• 11:43
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, someone clicking like is maybe one signal, a following is a different, maybe it's clicking through is a different one. And as nonprofit professionals today and marketers that now matters.
• 11:53
  Jonathan McCoy: And that the like in the beginning, it was like that's cute that you have social media, like our intern should run that and nice. Now it's like, no, that person is showing intention that they want to either be connected or they see it as part of their identity. Or maybe they want to help rep or be a volunteer all these different things that those signals need a way for us to process them. So we can turn them into whatever our mission is trying to perpetuate, whether it's an advocacy organization or trying to raise funds. So can you help like break down? Like, how do you start organizing around this? Because it feels overwhelming. Because there's so many places to show up, you know, how does someone that's in nonprofit today, see that and start to organize their thoughts of like, where do I invest in?
• 12:33
  Jonathan McCoy: Where do I start?
• 13:08
  Aidan Augustin: Yeah, and before getting into channels or tactics, I do think that it is important to talk about mindset and organizational mindset.
• 13:13
  Aidan Augustin: First, I think something we observe is one of two things, either marketing is not being valued as an important function or investment in many nonprofit organizations. Or it may even be like there's an aversion to marketing. And sometimes that's you know, is that the word marketing, and particularly the word advertising, I think there's there's some negative connotation in many spaces. And in many organizations, we're so we're often still seeing one of those two things, either. Just not thinking it's important or actively having like, you know, again, an icky feeling of we don't, we're the good guys, we don't want to do marketing or advertising or we don't want to engage in that. Facebook is evil, we don't want to participate in that. Right. So.
• 13:58
  Aidan Augustin: So that's one thing that is aspirational, we have so I do think an organizational mindset of viewing marketing is good, right? If you're doing good work, then you doing marketing of your organization of your good work is good. Nonprofit marketing is good. It's not merely a necessary evil.
• 14:14
  Aidan Augustin: Marketing is good. So that's, that's something I think, first of these be addressed. And willingness to invest time energy resources. I mean, you mentioned, you know, the intern can do the digital stuff, right.
• 14:25
  Aidan Augustin: And then I think too many organizations still might have some of that mindset to it, as opposed to treating it as a professional discipline and being willing to invest in attracting and retaining talent that has the professional professionalism, or the professionalization of marketing. The skill sets is interested in learning that discipline already has it. And I think many organizations do themselves a disservice by only having it be the job of an intern or having kind of one junior person as the sole marketing or communications role at organization. As opposed to treating it as an amplifier, commission and amplifier programs and amplifier fundraising. I mean, all of the the core most important things, marketing should be part and parcel that should be viewed as an essential driver of mission and impact. So
• 15:12
  Jonathan McCoy: I love what you said there because I do think in today's world in this very moment, the marketing can be part of your mission, because you're not trying to just get people to do things like actually storytelling and changing people's perspectives on thing or painting a different picture of maybe what people think, is part of our work and part of maybe some of the injustice is we're trying to sell All through our nonprofits.
• 15:33
  Jonathan McCoy: So I think that reframing is a powerful one. And it is holding back at the leadership level, if you don't have that fundamental understanding, I think of like the conversation with Eric Ressler, which we can drop in the show notes, where he just is reframing marketing. And that entire line of like, in this attention economy, like we should harness its power, to really perpetuate our missions.
• 15:52
  Jonathan McCoy: Like what a very cool tool that we have in our toolbox nowadays.
• 15:56
  Becky Endicott: I couldn't agree with you more. And I also just think this whole evolution of digital and global community changes everything about marketing. And I think, you know, before, proximity was so important, because our donors and our in our believers were geographically around us, they were in our community for most nonprofits. Now, the world is your oyster. And if you're just putting out a message on your website, or on your social media channel, it's almost like you're screaming into the wind just a little bit. And I really think the direct marketing, the targeting ads, those kinds of things, they take your message through the wind, and they get it to the right person who's actually looking for you.
• 16:41
  Becky Endicott: They're looking for the solutions that you have that you can offer, they're looking for a way to engage, they just didn't know you existed. And so I do think that these tools are just incredible connectivity vehicles to be able to find not just donors, but the believers that we talk about who want to show up in more ways than just financially giving to us, they want to show up in all the ways.
• 17:04
  Becky Endicott: So I just think marketing is such an amplifier for that. And I want to get into these tactics that you mentioned, a little bit Aidan, because there's a lot of them. And I think it's easy to get really overwhelmed. And when I think about a nonprofit professionals, specifically someone at a very small nonprofit, digital marketing 101 basics are going to be absolutely critical. And a lot of them are relying on best practices. But marketing requires so much more intentionality than just magic.
• 17:36
  Becky Endicott: So talk to us about some of those best practices that you're seeing in digital marketing today that are kind of rising to the top and take us Michael Scott, back into like, explain it like we're five years old, so that somebody who's new to this can really understand it at a base level.
• 17:52
  Aidan Augustin: Sure. And so let's start with digital advertising, because I think that is one that that is often overlooked by nonprofits. So we we have the opportunity today with the tools and technologies available that you can get very precise in showing ads to very specific groups of people online or to very specific segments of your target audience. So for example, retargeting is a great place to start. So you have your website, and you have website traffic that's already coming in. These are people who know who you are, that you've been to your site. If you have website analytics set up, you can track or who comes to not just the homepage, but clicks to a second page who's been to our donation page, for example, who's been to that donation page, but didn't actually make a donation, right.
• 18:37
  Aidan Augustin: So those are all behaviors that you can use to create target segment segments. And you can run an ad retargeting campaigns, for example, let's just show an ad to the people who visited the donate page, but did not donate.
• 18:49
  Aidan Augustin: These people are hot leads, right? They've been not just your site, they're look, they're considering donating, they're on the they're on the edge. And for whatever reason, they got distracted, they got cold feet that couldn't find the credit card. They didn't do it. So that's a tactic often called shopping cart abandonment. It's used extensively in the online retail world
• 19:07
  Jonathan McCoy: Say this is when your Christmas list haunts you and spoil everything you've been shopping for, right?
• 19:16
  Aidan Augustin: That's right.
• 19:16
  Aidan Augustin: Although if done correctly, you know, they should stop at a certain point. Right? So I think some people say oh, you mean those ads that follow me around for three months after I already bought the thing, right. And so for the record that is poorly executed ad retargeting, so you can set a condition that would be after somebody comes back and donates, stop fooling around with that, so it gives them a break for X amount of time you can, after they've seen an ad for a few weeks, you can give up on them after you know, 14 times or whatever might be so you can and all this stuff, you can set this level of precision. And hopefully that doesn't crosses come across as intimidating but rather how cost efficient this can be right you could choose to only spend money on the very specific people who have been to your website who've been to a specific page. And you know just didn't follow through on the donation season madness an example here so ad retargeting.
• 20:03
  Aidan Augustin: You can do this through display ads, which certainly a banner ads is the classic, you know, banners that show up on many different websites and will follow someone around the web with a goal to bring them back.
• 20:10
  Aidan Augustin: You can also do this through social ads. So through something like the meta ads manager onto Facebook and Instagram, or Twitter for that matter, or LinkedIn, where you can use those tools to target ads, same idea to people who have visited your website, visit specific pages. Another nice thing you can do here is you can test different messaging very quickly. So digital advertising is very cost efficient way to find out different copy and taglines and imagery that might work that you might want to consider using in your broader campaigns. You can test it first and cheaply through digital advertising before deciding to maybe do some some print of if you're doing a direct mail campaign, or if you're doing some other types of physical brochures are might be so digital advertising, because it's so cost efficient is a great way to quickly test, different messaging. And again, you can also test different segments. So the people who have been at this page website but not that page, another good place to start when we're talking about digital advertising is just think about warm audiences. So people have been to your website, that's a warm audience, but also people on your email list. So you can run a CRM retargeting campaign, also called Email mapping, custom audiences, these are all phrases for the same idea, which is using your email lists or your CRM data. That could be previous donors, it could be volunteers, it could be people who attended your events over the last two years, maybe it's people who attended multiple years ago, but not this year, whatever it might be. And those are just ideas for how you can segment the data you already have. And then same thing, you can target a digital ad campaign to a specific email list. And that doesn't require actually sending emails that's just using the data of the email list to find them or on the web. And then they'll be followed around with those same types of ads essentially, like a drip campaign, that drip campaign through advertising. And that being said, you can do this in conjunction with email, that's like a one two punch, where you're sending emails maybe over four weeks, where you have one email a week for four weeks. And in parallel to that, that same email list, you do a list match, and then you're running a retargeting campaign to that same email list over the same four week period. And that type of multi channel approach both it will increase the efficacy of the email campaign, as well as of the ad campaigns, because again, it's just how do you not shout into the void or shot into the wind, but actually try to have a sustained, methodical, and measurable approach.
• 22:37
  Becky Endicott: Taking a quick pause from today's episode to thank our sponsor, who also happens to be one of our favorite companies Virtuous, you know, we believe everyone matters. And we've witnessed the greatest philanthropic movements happen when you both see and activate donors at every level.
• 22:52
  Becky Endicott: And Virtuous is the platform to help you do just that. It's so much more than a nonprofit CRM.
• 22:55
  Becky Endicott: Virtuous helps charities reimagine generosity through responsive fundraising, volunteer management, and online giving. And we love it because this approach builds trust and loyalty through personalized engagement. Sounds like Virtuous might be a fit for your organization, learn more today at virtuous.org, or follow the link in our show notes.
• 23:21
  Becky Endicott: I love how calm you are to explain this, when I'm thinking you're so calm and measured and what you're talking about. And I'm having this explosive mindset of, oh my gosh, if a nonprofit would even just try this, with their year end campaign this year, the results would be staggering. The retargeting would not allow your believer to forget about you at any point during that, I mean, they're going to be shopping for all their family, why would they not want to be giving their year end give? This is really revolutionary, and I'm here for it.
• 23:56
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, I'm thinking kind of the same thing you are, Becky, because I think it's easy to hear all of this, and you've gone through it so well. And that it feels like it can feel really overwhelming, though, of all these different options. But I'm viewing it as like, man, look at all these opportunities, you know, because there's probably a few organizations that are doing all these things well, and you have options on the table, the fact that you could literally have a way to get back in front of people that care enough to get all the way to your donation page. Like how greatest tech like can we just like celebrate that that exists out there? And then I think, you know, is there a case study that you can kind of share an organization that maybe employed some of these ideas? And what kind of results did they see? Because I think it's fascinating to see how just tweaking just one thing could be all the difference and whatever campaign you have coming up, there's a case study you can think of.
• 24:43
  Aidan Augustin: Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of other customers, I can highlight, you know, different ends of the size spectrum. You know, we work with a local humane society here in North Forest, the Human Society of North Florida. They about a 2 million organizations, single digit staff and the similar to what you just mentioned about you know, end of year giving or Giving Tuesday, they use Feathr to kind of juice their giving day, it was a local giving day, it was the same idea. And they used in the lead up to that, in the days leading up to that to reach the same people who had donated previously on their emails and so forth. And they had great results and they were an example of spending only a few $100 and getting something like 8x or 9x return on investment. On the other end of the spectrum. We've had organizations use Feathr such as the International Justice Mission so that's more like a 90 million year you know 100 plus staff large organization, international in scope. And they might spend single digit 1000s of dollars or even more over the course of a given campaign. They had all success, they saw over 7x return on ad spend with their campaigns, I think that was more of an interviewer giving one so.
• 25:47
  Aidan Augustin: So we've had organizations at different ends of the spectrum, see results of this. And that is a nice thing about digital advertising is it can scale that you can do it, you can test it and start small and then when something works, you can put more fuel on that fire and scale it up. You can use it for those kind of like amplifying things you're already doing, as well as for reaching new audiences to bring them in for the first time.
• 26:09
  Becky Endicott: I mean, I think it just crystallizes for people when they see somebody else doing this, and the idea that, you know, a modest spend of a couple $100 could yield such a large return. And I just think, honestly, if you have a couple$100, I just want to put that out is like maybe something to test Giving Tuesday, year end is such a good time to test something new what Jon, we were just talking about this Giving Tuesday, it was like 80% of nonprofits try something new for the first time on Giving Tuesday. And if you have a couple of $100, and you are trying to convince your board, or you're trying to convince your ed that this is where you need to be moving, get a couple$100 and just see what can happen because I think just starting to play, and this playground is going to do a lot of things. It's going to draw eyeballs, it's going to draw attention, it's going to get people curious. You're going to draw people to your website, you may not get them to the exact endpoint. But this is a warm guys. This is what we know what our, our sector is all about identification, cultivation, then we solicit so that cultivation period is a long warming cycle in digital is can be no different. But I do think that digital transacts so much more quickly than somebody else that you're having to meet with one on one. So I want to talk a little bit though, about testing. And so as you know it, everything about marketing is about testing about measuring about learning about failing forward and figuring out, talk to us about why this matters, and digital marketing and how people can flex it.
• 27:52
  Aidan Augustin: Yeah, so I think, you know, an experiment mindset of being willing to run experiments is the first thing you've been willing to try something be okay with the idea of it failing and treating that failing as a learning. And I'm glad you mentioned the idea of warming, right and nurturing cycle in a lot of the fundraising practices. Yeah, that's something that's very well accepted. But I think sometimes with maybe a new digital marketing tactic, so we might try it for a few weeks, and then throw up their hands and conclude, Oh, it didn't work. I guess we shouldn't do this thing. And instead, what I would encourage was an approach of like, yes, some digital marketing tactics can be very impactful immediately and quick wins. But marketing is a process, right? It's being methodical about it running an experiment. And it's okay, if it doesn't immediately drive results. But what are you learning from that? Are you learning about certain response rates of certain messaging? Are you learning about maybe certain segments that we're going to respond to? Are you learning how to use a certain tool or technology that you're getting better at over time? So even if there was not an immediate result? You know, that doesn't mean like, oh, I guess digital marketing doesn't work. But instead, having this approach of running an experiment, learning from it, measuring the results, that's one of the beautiful things about digital marketing, and digital advertising in particular, but all digital marketing, it is measurable. And to show advertising in particular, you can see dollar spent people reached, how many times per person? How many of them clicked or engaged. What happened next, you know, did they convert? Did they donate?
• 29:21
  Aidan Augustin: Did they sign up on the newsletter, whatever the call to action might have been? And the ability to track all that just lends itself very well to this experiment, mindset, AB test as much as you can.
• 29:34
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, yeah, you may be in your digital business card phase of ads, right, like you're figuring it out, then that's gonna be the thing. But I'll just say personally, we have not used paid ads until earlier this summer. And we didn't get a return on investment right out of the gate. But as we looked back, we were like, oh, my gosh, this is worth so much, to get the feedback to get the impressions to figure out what messaging doesn't connect. And like, I look back, and I'm like, man, we have to do more of this.
• 30:02
  Jonathan McCoy: It's just like us flexing our muscle to to try different engagement strategies. And so I'm just really intrigued and we're, we're laboring right alongside you, if you're listening and starting to dip your toe into paid ads, like we're trying to explore that too. But it's a lever we all need to like understand and not be afraid of. And so I think this conversation is really pointed me in that way. So I'm really excited. But Aidan, you know, we gather around this table because we love philanthropy and now you have slid fully over you know, y'all serve so many nonprofits now, but you volunteer your personal time. Is there a moment in your story that you'd point back to philanthropy that really has stuck with you over the course of your life.
• 30:38
  Aidan Augustin: You know, I think what I would have to point to as the most recent example, that's been quite impactful to me is the Patagonia story. So Patagonia was always an inspirational story for me of, you know, just seeing how they had such a commitment to breaking the rules of business.
• 30:53
  Aidan Augustin: You know, that was a direct quote from the founder, and continuously living that out over the course of their story and transparency, kind of like unnecessarily so opening up about, you know, don't buy this jacket, and the campaign's everyone like that. So, as well as the workplace environment that they tried to provide. And then most recently, the owner donating the entire company, and all of the ownership stake that they had for this $3 billion company and donating it all, to a trust with the rules around it and unrevocable donation and the rules around that trust governing that all the profits go to a specific set of nonprofit organizations that are around conservation and fighting climate change. And that was just to me, like the ultimate follow through on what they had been trying to bake into their company throughout. So that's one that I guess as a as a founder of a business really has stood out to me, and then that that final act was recently of donating all of it and setting up in that way. I'd say also like that the donation is only meaningful if the company continues to operate successfully. And so I kind of liked it. It's trying to harness the mechanism of, you know, if Patagonia continues to be successful, the more successful Patagonia is, the more profits get donated. So that alignment seems a second innovative structure for that. So both Patagonia kind of living out throughout its growth story, and the founder making the final donation of it, were pretty impactful.
• 32:18
  Becky Endicott: That was such a profound moment to me to Aidan.
• 32:21
  Becky Endicott: I mean, I think we all felt changed for that, I'll tell you something, that maybe this was one of their ideals, but I doubt it, I ended up sharing that story with my 12 year old daughter who's a big environmentalist. And she was like, oh, and you know, she doesn't fully understand what that means for business. But she loved that somebody was going to give a company back to the environment. And she said, we should buy something from them to say, thank you. And I literally bought her a little hoodie off of Patagonia that day. And it was like that act of generosity inspired brand loyalty in us because it was so bold, and it was so forward thinking and of course, I love anything disruptive, for good, I'm like, gonna try to power that a little bit more. So I love that you lifted that story.
• 33:08
  Becky Endicott: And I really hope it you know, I think all of us hope that in our heart of hearts, that creates a cascade of other companies doing the exact same thing. So, okay, Aidan, we're getting down to the end of our conversation. And, you know, we're gonna round it all out with a one good thing.
• 33:26
  Becky Endicott: So we'd like to know what your one good thing is, you'd offer up to the community today.
• 33:30
  Aidan Augustin: My one good thing is lead with vulnerability. And this really has nothing to do with the content of digital marking that we've talked about today. But while listening to this very podcast a few months ago, you caught me at a very key time, it happened to be the 10 year anniversary of my father's death. My father committed suicide about 10 years ago, and I was listening to you interviewed Dana Snyder on this podcast, and she was opening up about a tragedy she had experienced. And it made me realize that I had never allowed myself to share this story of mine, and to be vulnerable with with myself and with others about the pain that I had experienced the tragedy of thatexperience there. And that cascading effect of allowing me to share that story in a public forum, which I did thereafter.
• 34:19
  Aidan Augustin: And then the responses that I received, and the cascading of others sharing and opening up about tragedies that they had experienced seem to do a lot of movement for, for myself and for others. And I attribute all that back to the two of you here for kind of modeling that behavior of leading this vulnerability of normalizing sharing openly and vulnerably, particularly as leaders, particularly as leaders in a business, professional context. So yes, that that would be my one good thing is lead with vulnerability as a leader, and we withhold our ability in interactions with others.
• 34:49
  Becky Endicott: You're being very generous trying to give that to us. And I will accept your compliment for a hot minute, but I gotta flip that around. And just say that post Aidan was so powerful. And I'll tell you, it opened our eyes to you and the human you are that we hadn't seen before, in the most authentic way. And and I want to I want to honor your father here. What's his name?
• 35:21
  Aidan Augustin: Walter.
• 35:22
  Becky Endicott: I want to honor Walter on this episode, because I know how much you loved your dad. But I just think that was an extraordinary act of courage.
• 35:29
  Becky Endicott: It was you leaning into your thought leadership in such a painful way, but just such a vulnerably helpful way. I saw myself in it and in different ways. And I want to thank you so much for believing that you could do that. And I just I have to ask, even though I know it's the end, like, how did that make you feel at the end? Like, when, when you got those responses, I'm gonna guess you got some DMs, and you got some people reaching out to you? I mean, did that change your outlook at all?
• 36:04
  Becky Endicott: Did that have any profound sense of change within you?
• 36:10
  Becky Endicott: Absolutely. You know, first, I thought it was just going to be a cathartic release for myself, which was very needed. But the secondary and tertiary impacts of people, family members I hadn't spoken to, in a long time, reconnecting, friends, people I had met in passing and didn't know personally well, you know, thanking me for which I was like, wow, I was appreciative just that anybody read it, and gave me the space to share that, but that people were thanking me for, you know, allowing them to in turn feel empowered to share their stories and, and that opened up a lot of both connectivity with several specific relationships in my life, as well as with this larger sphere of people who it seems equally impactful or more so for them to then be able to share and this normalizing that type of vulnerability and sharing and, you never know what other people are caring and the powerful educational experiences for me, as well a release st.
• 37:09
  Becky Endicott: Thank you, my friend for sharing that and just for sharing just even any level of spotlight in that feels really humbling. So thank you.
• 37:18
  Jonathan McCoy: Agreed, and I think you pave the way for other people to feel safe doing that.
• 37:20
  Jonathan McCoy: And I know it even challenged me to like want to go further. You know, whenever you shared that, that day. So just grateful for the way you're leading. And, you know, actually doing that tangibly while you're trying to shepherd this flock and there's there's your pun of the time, your flock out there at Feathr.
• 37:38
  Becky Endicott: We're gonna get through it without one. I'm glad we didn't.
• 37:41
  Jonathan McCoy: But thank you, I really appreciate that. And I mean, let's talk about how people can connect with your incredible team out in Florida and what y'all help kind of just the services you provide and how people can connect with Feathr and you personally.
• 37:53
  Aidan Augustin: So feather without the second E, as you mentioned at the beginning. So Feathr.co is the website, feathr.co. It's easiest way to for me personally on LinkedIn, it's probably the best way to so it's Aidan Augustin on LinkedIn.
• 38:08
  Aidan Augustin: Quick summary of what we do here at Feathr is we make digital marketing software, specifically for nonprofits. So we help with digital marketing, such as advertising, email analytics, all in one software tool. And we also provide training, support, and optional is an add on services where we will actually help execute marketing campaigns on behalf of your team.
• 38:29
  Becky Endicott: Just want to thank you again for coming on to the show. We want to thank you for this beautiful tech that you've brought into the world.
• 38:33
  Becky Endicott: We're so glad that you meandered from business cards to conferences and found your way into the do good space because we're so glad you're here and we need you and just grateful for your ally ship and your friendship in this work.
• 38:48
  Jonathan McCoy: It's such an honor.
• 38:49
  Aidan Augustin: Thank you so much for having me and for doing everything you're doing.
• 38:52
  Julie Confer: Hey, friends, thanks so much for being here.
• 38:54
  Julie Confer: Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics? Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community. It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode. You can sign up today at we are for good.com backslash Hello. One more thing If you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find our community.
• 39:25
  Julie Confer: Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is Sunray by Remy Borsboom.