Crumbling cookies: how are you capturing electronic information?

Simply sending out an email with a link to your organization's Website can result in a wealth of data--who clicked on the link, how many times the person clicked on it, from where the person clicked, what computer the person was using when clicking on the link. Simply sending out that email can also result in a wealth of, well, wealth.

All this can be made possible using a relatively inconspicuous, and often misunderstood, key or hook on your organization's Web site, that ties the data back to a particular computer and allows you to match sets of data. The industry term is "cookie," and its origins are as mysterious as the tool itself is to most computer users.

The main purpose of cookies, according to David Crooke, chief technology officer at Convio, is to identify users and prepare customized Web pages for them. "The way the Web was originally designed, it didn't have any concept of sessions or logging in. You loaded a page and that was it," said Crooke. "But if you're going to interact with a Web site, do things like make a donation, the Web server is going to want to keep some information about what you're doing, remember who you are each time you load a new page."

And these days, it's all about online interaction. "(Cookies are) a prerequisite, really, for delivering an interactive Web site," added Crooke. "They allow you to deliver a session-oriented Web experience." Cookies are also useful for email tracking, preventing duplicate responses to surveys and such, and for Web traffic analysis, he said.

Crooke noted another benefit of using cookies: funnel analysis, which he defined as "finding where users are dropping out of the process and not completing a form or not making a donation, and then you can improve on your content, and so on."

Funnel analysis is what the leadership at TechSoup is seeking through the use of cookies. According to John Coate, director of the CompuMentor subsidiary, TechSoup employs two types of cookies. The first, a "remember-me" cookie, knows if a user is a return or somebody who's never visited the site. The second cookie saves shopping cart information for visitors to TechSoup Stock, the California nonprofit's technology distribution service.

Coate said TechSoup is planning to add a cookie that will say whether or not somebody's a registered user, "not because we're trying to follow individuals around, but because we're trying to figure out who uses all of our site," said Coate. "We have this product offering that we do, we have editorial material, we have community activity, and we don't really have a good way of tracking right now who uses all of those services."

Surveys are one alternative for data collection, but, said Coate, they "tell you what the survey takers think, which is always valuable but it's an incomplete picture." Ultimately, Coate said TechSoup wants to uncover its services' effectiveness, "because we spend a lot of resources on people writing articles, we manage a community, so we're just trying to see the crossover, how good it is."

Nearly 99 percent of the big, consumer Web sites use cookies, said Crooke. More than that, "they simply won't work without cookies." And according to Crooke, the three Web browser products that have "virtually total market share," which includes Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla/Firefox and Safari for Macintosh, "the way they work out of the box is they just accept cookies."

Probably the most appealing benefit of using cookies is they can enable a nonprofit to better target its Web content to its constituents. Case in point: an ongoing email campaign the New York City-based ASPCA launched a few years ago.

The ASPCA, a Convio client, first tested the campaign during 2003, segmenting donors into three groups: dog people, cat people, and unknowns. The test resulted in nearly double the amount of donations from constituents who received the targeted material versus those just getting the generic mixed dog and cat stories, said Crooke.

"The ASPCA is a great example of an organization that provides a rich, personalized Web experience to donors and other constituents, through ethical use of voluntarily provided information," said Crooke. He said a key component of that is being clear and open with Web site users about data collection and the privacy implications. On its Web site, the organization states: "The ASPCA collects non-personally identifiable information about you through your IP address, computer settings and/or most-recently visited website." It goes on to re-state that no personally identifiable information is collected, unless voluntarily submitted by the user.

The personalized, targeted email campaign remains a standout initiative for the ASPCA, added Crooke, who said the charity has seen a 960-percent growth in its email roster.

DONOR PRIVACY

Protecting donor privacy is an important consideration for all nonprofits. That said, some covet the anonymity of their constituents for more serious reasons, and thus refuse to use versions of cookies that go beyond simply remembering the user's name or login ID, and can remain in a computer's browser indefinitely.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is very sensitive when it comes to data collection. "They voluntarily elect not to use all the tracking power that's in the Convio software," said Crooke, "because they feel that consumer privacy is more important than the value they get from that data."

Another area where there's somewhat more emphasis on privacy is in the arena of domestic abuse organizations, said Crooke. He explained that if a victim of domestic abuse was to visit the Web site of an organization against domestic abuse, the victim's abuser using the same computer could via cookies easily find out. "I advise clients on how to advise the people coming to their Web site how to anonymize that Internet access, to clean out the browser on their computer and leave no trace." Ultimately, said Crooke, it comes down to whether the convenience of using cookies is worth the privacy issues.

The American Lung Association (ALA) weighed the privacy issues and the convenience factor, but the decision whether or not to use cookies wasn't only a case of privacy versus convenience.

"The cookie situation, we've kind of outsourced to our (Application Service Provider) to make sure that the encryption was above standard," said Todd Whitley, assistant vice president, online services at ALA. Whitley, who said ALA is a Kintera client, uses cookies to authenticate donations and for registration on the charity's online smoking cessation program, Freedom From Smoking Online.

"We don't have a lot of personalization on the Web site itself, where cookies would be much more helpful," said Whitley. Instead, the ALA's personalization comes through follow-up email communication. "We're not examining the cookie or path experience outside of our Web trend reports (from Kintera). What we're looking at is the opt-in for the end user, what they supply willingly, and we're following up in-kind," said Whitley, who said ALA's approach is to be as consumer focused as possible.

Whitley said the email follow up is more overt than a cookie, because the focus is on what information is voluntarily submitted. "And then we have a somewhat intense email outreach program." The outreach program is done through topical enewsletters and emails, with the aim of pulling recipients back to the ALA site.

American Lung's approach has evolved, said Whitley. At first the charity wanted to optimize its site for data collection in "a very business-standard way." A by product of that, added Whitley, was a big response by people signing up for one or more of the 14 e-newsletters. "And so we thought, this is something to look at further." All of the email communications tie back to either LungUSA.org, or to portals linking to local lung associations, he said.

Whitley said the ALA's seen a steady increase in the growth of both its online contacts and online donations. The charity's e-newsletter subscribers grew by 40 percent from the second quarter of 2006 to that same period in 2007. Total opt-in email contacts during that time grew by 65 percent, and general donations grew by 38 percent.

"When people are working with a nonprofit, whether it's a donor or a volunteer, advocate, service recipient, whatever, it's a much deeper and more personal relationship," said Convio's Crooke. "So what nonprofits need to do is engage those constituents over time, and get them excited about your organization, send them a regular newsletter, and find out what they're interested in."

4 Steps To Working Online Relationships

Engaging your constituents online can be as simple as a four-step process. David Crooke, chief technology officer at Convio in Austin, Texas, provided these suggestions:

1. Get people on the path early. Set it up so they can go to your Web site and just give you an email address and nothing more. No cookies are involved at this point.

2. Start sending them an e-newsletter. Let them know about the great things that your organization is doing, what your mission is and what the programs are achieving. Get them excited about your organization. Ask for a donation. Get them involved.

3. Ask them what it is about your organization that really excites them. Is it installing water wells in Africa or is it providing people with cows, clothing, or shelter?

4. Build information. Collect an information profile about them, not for any pernicious reasons--and make that clear--but so you can get them excited about particular things that your organization does.