My apologies kids, I was out of town this weekend but did get a chance to watch much of GameDay. All I can say is holy sh!t, that was incredible. Every time I got a chance to put on ESPN on Friday it seemed 10 minutes couldn't go by without us getting some kind of mention or exposure. Really sucks we lost. Real heart-breaker but given the week's climate not too surprising a kick in the ballz like this would happen but if the rest of the season goes right that loss will be an afterthought.

The good news is the vast majority of the nation saw more of our GameDay-related stuff vs the game, and what they saw is no FCS school. We proved we're not a "small" school, just a school whose athletics program hasn't kept pace with its growth.

Below are the stats for the website this week:

$90k in new pledges
46 new registered supporters
1,400+ new (unique) visitors

Over 1,000 of the new visitors were over the weekend. We had a lot of folks register and not pledge (very likely due to being in the middle of the chaos) but we have all their email addresses and I'll be sending out a newsletter this week. I also imagine a lot of the visitors didn't convert for the same reason.

As with all marketing campaigns it takes time and impressions to get people to step up to the plate and the past week has been more than we could ever hoped for in that regard. Over the next couple months we just need to leverage this week's events as well as some great upcoming press we're going to get to keep pushing forward.

Thank you everyone who put your heart and souls into making this week happen and basically thrusting JMU into the national consciousness. We were bred to be on the national stage and the past week proves that. My take is the national reaction to JMU is less of "wow, I didn't realize FCS schools had so much to offer" but more of "what the hell is JMU doing in FCS???" Go Dukes!

Good job that is a very nice increase, way to go :).

(10-25-2015 06:10 PM)hburg Wrote:  Good job that is a very nice increase, way to go :).

Ditto

Nice!!!

Great job! Getting good awareness/traction, now we just need to work on conversion rate.

There ought to be some excellent media coming out of this weekend (articles/pictures/video) that would be great to use or link to.

Another thought - a little bit of SEO and some ad spend on google keywords or facebook, etc may be worthwhile once we figure out how to drive pledges.

Prior to the game think I estimated we would need approximately 1100 people pledging to hit $5M ? About 10% to that goal? Does that sound about right?

(10-25-2015 06:22 PM)JMURocks Wrote:  Great job! Getting good awareness/traction, now we just need to work on conversion rate.

There ought to be some excellent media coming out of this weekend (articles/pictures/video) that would be great to use or link to.

Another thought - a little bit of SEO and some ad spend on google keywords or facebook, etc may be worthwhile once we figure out how to drive pledges.

Prior to the game think I estimated we would need approximately 1100 people pledging to hit $5M ? About 10% to that goal? Does that sound about right?

At the current rate we'd need about 1,500 pledgers but I honestly think there are two factors that could dramatically reduce that. One is that there are probably folks who are interested in supporting FBS but might be looking at this as "sure, I throw a little something your way" and making a marginal pledge. Our campaign is so new and none of us really has a sense of how effective this effort will be. But I imagine that as we get more traction and make more waves they'll start kicking in more.

The other, and perhaps more crucial factor is the lack of "large" pledgers at this point. We have a few, but I think once more of them feel comfortable enough to make their presence known it will double and triple our current total. My hope is to actually get some of them to tie large pledges to pledge drives where they'll match "X" amount in pledges made within a certain timeframe. We could build an entire campaign around it.

I talked to a number of folks yesterday and many support the move but don't want to pledge on the site. They are concerned about people seeing their pledge or that it leaks out about their pledge. There is big money coming into the FBS pot if JMU announces a move.

What am I missing here...is it a security, or privacy concern?

(10-25-2015 07:21 PM)bcp_jmu Wrote:  What am I missing here...is it a security, or privacy concern?

A little bit of both, but even I had those thoughts/concerns on a smaller pledge amount. In the end decided it was worth the risk and that the information if exposed would not be that devastating. Maybe we can organize another way to collect pledges via mail-in form or other means as well?

Wonder how the UAB folks did it? We could learn a lot from their campaign - they brought football back from death.

$23 million...

Generosity is rarely devastating

(10-25-2015 07:34 PM)bcp_jmu Wrote:  $23 million...

Generosity is rarely devastating

My real question was what techniques were used to raise those UAB pledges/funds both in terms of campaign and sign-ups. I'm sure it was more than a website.

If credit card or other financial details were requested I would not have signed up online. Email/name and mailing address was enough to give me pause. Many people exploit this type of info. Once someone hacks your email they can do a lot of damage.

(10-25-2015 07:53 PM)JMURocks Wrote:  

(10-25-2015 07:34 PM)bcp_jmu Wrote:  $23 million...

Generosity is rarely devastating

My real question was what techniques were used to raise those UAB pledges/funds both in terms of campaign and sign-ups. I'm sure it was more than a website.

If credit card or other financial details were requested I would not have signed up online. Email/name and mailing address was enough to give me pause. Many people exploit this type of info. Once someone hacks your email they can do a lot of damage.

The number one thing they had was their head coach leading the charge.

UAB is apples and oranges. The school announced they were killing the program. Any school that gets a whiff of that would have fundraising leverage that's completely unique.