Adam Penenberg challenged the white-hat hackers at SpiderLabs to penetrate his digital life. They found fewer ways to break in than at their corporate clients—but once in, they had access to everything:

With me, however, there were fewer paths that could lead to the mother lode: my laptop, email, bank, social media accounts, and home. Once in, though, his team found few firewalls protecting my data, and mostly in the form of a pastiche of passwords and log-in credentials. These, I quickly learned, were not secure.

Sobering.

Are you looking to raise money online? These four tips may be helpful:

1. Make sure people can donate on your web site
2. Build an effective e-mail program
3. Make sure you’re mobile-ready
4. Use social media to build relationships, not to drive gifts

But the number one trick to being a great online fundraiser? Assume you have no idea what actually works.

I elaborated on these points in a presentation last week at the Leadership Institute. My full slide deck is below.

The adage “learn from your mistakes” is a bit misleading, Mig Reyes argues. Instead of trying to fail, we should just try:

The makers of our world would be better off mimicking scientists with their work. Harp on deliberate practice. Reinvent their processes daily. Share every discovery. And most importantly, try new things often…

When everything’s an experiment, you shed the fear that comes with trying new things.

Consistent experimentation is the key to success, whether in marketing or any other field.

The three most important lessons online fundraisers should keep in mind are:

1. Don’t trust your gut instincts
2. Test everything
3. Always ask, “Can I do better?”

That was the message I presented last night, using examples from my work at The Heritage Foundation, at an event sponsored by Empower Action.

My full slide deck is below.

It’s easy for you to fall into bad habits as an online marketer, especially when it comes to data analysis. And your decision-making using misunderstood data may be just as bad as your decision-making based on gut instinct.

The tools you’re given of of little help. They bury the useful data deep in report pages.

My e-mail tool, for example, will tell me how many times a fundraising message was opened or clicked. It requires more work to determine how many donations that message generated and for how much money—and those are the numbers that matter in a fundraising appeal.

Three terrible data practices make Loren McDonald’s list of a bad online marketing habits:

1. Relying on meaningless metrics: “Process” metrics like opens and clicks are easy to measure and have value, but “output” metrics like conversions and revenue per email measure email effectiveness more accurately and resonate with management.

2. Data laziness: Are you drilling deep into the numbers to gain useful insights — or just scanning the default reports from your email technology? High-level reports and dashboards are great for taking the temperature of your program, but for making decisions and truly understanding your customers, you need to transition to a deeper analytics and business intelligence mindset.

3. Benchmarking bunk: Stop obsessing about the latest benchmark study that claims the average open rate has declined 0.7% over the previous quarter. Hogwash. “Average” is the new bottom. Benchmark yourself against the best performers, like-minded companies, similar email program types — and, most importantly, against yourself. Then hold yourself accountable for acting on your findings — otherwise, what’s the point?

What bad habits do you see in your work? Let me know in the comments.