Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Online marketing for your nonprofit can be simple as 1, 2, 3

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A guest post by Kelsy Ketchum

All ages are online!

In today’s digital age, online communication is essential. Donors need to know exactly what your nonprofit is about and what they can do to help.

Most of them are looking to the web for that info.

Your digital communication strategy needs to encourage people to support your cause. You likely already have a traditional marketing plan, and the good news is that much of it can be adapted to the internet.

You don’t have to be a technological wizard for online communication to work wonders. Here are the three steps you can take to create an effective digital marketing plan.

Email campaigns

 Whether you want to increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter, recruit volunteers and get them to stay, or start a new fundraising campaign, email is a cheap and relatively simple way to get the word out.

But you don’t want to just send out a quick message with a lot of text and be done. Your emails should be interesting and interactive. Think through their design to make sure it matches your organization’s brand, and provide pictures or graphics to support your message.

Reminder:

  • Avoid spamming inboxes with a lot of messages. Limit your communication to a few times a month and clarify why you’re sending each email.
  • Customize the email to your audience.
  • Is there a call to action you want people to follow? Emphasize it! People are more likely to participate if they know exactly what they need to do.

You’ll also want to track how your email campaigns are doing and manage your analytics, which can help you see where you’re succeeding and what your organization can do better.

Savvy marketing pros who need advanced reporting capabilities may want to consider a business intelligence solution for their nonprofit to combine multiple data sources together.

Social media

To succeed at digital communication, your nonprofit will need to go beyond email and dive into the realm of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Snapchat are all useful tools to get your message across and bring new donors or volunteers into the fold.

Social media lets you share info more frequently than email, so you can provide daily updates on certain projects. It also has a wider reach, since you can use hashtags or post in specific groups to reach new audiences who may not follow your organization directly.

Social media posts can be slightly less formal than email or official correspondence, so have fun! Encourage employees to share your nonprofit’s posts on their own social media feeds – word of mouth is still a great way to spread your ideas, and social media makes the process easier.

Website and donation pages

Crafting a compelling website with powerful donation pages can bring in even more donors than other digital communication strategies.

Your priority should always be clarity of information. Label the sections of your website and pages clearly and double-check that your contact info and other essentials are easy to find without digging through multiple web pages.

Highlight important links and create a section for recurring donations to encourage people to donate more often. The easier it is for people to donate, the better your fundraising will be.

Don’t forget to use all the online tools at your disposal. Share your website and donation pages with friends and followers on social media and put a link to the website in every email so people can access it effortlessly.

The takeaway

It doesn’t take an IT pro to improve your digital communication and get the word out about your nonprofit. You can get started today, with these three steps.

No matter the goal, whether it’s increasing your donors or finding volunteers for your next event, better online communication can get you there with minimal cost or time, which is particularly helpful for smaller organizations with fewer resources.

 

About the Author: Kelsy Ketchum is an editor for Better Buys, helping organizations to find and select the right software solutions.

 

 

Effective Marketing for Nonprofits

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A guest post from Superhuman.com

Maintaining loyal donor bases is crucial for your nonprofit, and doing so requires cultivating relationships with your donors. You’ll find email marketing is very helpful in this respect.

macbookDespite being relatively “old” when compared to new channels like social media, email remains one of the most effective marketing channels on the Internet.

That’s partially because it gives marketers the opportunity to stay in contact with followers over a long period of time, giving them many chances to boost engagement.

Want to use this channel to promote your nonprofit? Keep the following tips in mind. They’ll help you use nonprofit email marketing to its full potential.

Personalize Your Content

No email campaign will deliver results if your followers don’t actually read the emails you send. Thus, it’s important to take steps which have been shown to boost open rates.

Simply adding a recipient’s name to an email subject line helps. Evidence suggests this may boost open rates by as much as 50%.

Segmenting your email list is also necessary. You want to make sure your followers are only receiving relevant content.

For instance, maybe you represent a large nonprofit that regularly hosts fundraising events in various spots throughout the world. You might use your email newsletter to promote them. However, not every follower will be able to attend every event.

west coastSomeone on the west coast of the United States probably can’t attend an event being held on the east coast with a week’s notice. An email about such an event would simply clutter their inbox.

Don’t let this happen.

When asking people to sign up for your email list, include a few short questions about the type of content they want to receive. Use this information, as well as basic data such as geographical location, to segment your email list. This is another way to boost open rates.

Have a Reason for Each Email

There are various reasons you might send an email as a nonprofit marketer. Again, maybe you’re promoting an event, or maybe you’re soliciting donations. Maybe you’re sharing information about a recent achievement.

Consider why you’re emailing your followers when creating content for each message you send. This has two purposes. One, it helps you create a more effective call-to-action. It’s easier to know what action you want readers of your email to take when you know why you sent it.

Two, deciding why you wish to send each email in your campaign prevents you from sending useless content that doesn’t offer your subscribers any value. You need to send valuable content to make the right impression.

Make it Readable

Did you know a person is more likely to check their email on a mobile device than via a computer these days? Remember this when designing your emails. You want to be sure the content is easy to scan on a small screen.

You can achieve this goal by:

  • avoiding large chunks of text
  • including images and video to break up text sections, and
  • using formatting elements such as headers and bullets to generally organize your content.

Keep these points in mind when developing your email marketing campaign. They’ll help you make the right impression on donors. With a strong email marketing campaign, your nonprofit will be better equipped to do good than ever before.

Nonprofits, Are You Telling Your Donors “I Don’t Know You”?

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Do you know me?You probably donate to some nonprofit organizations. You may even attend their events.

What if after you attended an event, the nonprofit called you and showed they had no idea who you were?

This Really Happened to Me

I attended a thought-provoking webinar about creating a monthly giving program at your nonprofit. The Nonprofit Know It All, Danielle Johnson-Vermenton, gave the webinar, and you can find her follow-up talk on video. I recommend it!

The company that sponsored Danielle’s webinar shall remain nameless. Here’s what they did: they sent me an email afterwards that assumed I was a nonprofit organization.

Now, you know me, right? I’ve worked for nonprofit organizations. I consult to nonprofit organizations. My mission is to help nonprofit organizations win loyal donors.

But Communicate! Consulting is a business. You know that. You read this blog, and perhaps you follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

This company didn’t do its research. And it showed.

Lesson #1 for nonprofits:

Before you send email to a prospect, know as much about them as you can. Otherwise, you may be offending the people you're trying to attract. Click To Tweet

What Happened Next (it gets worse!)

I politely wrote the company back and thanked them for providing the valuable webinar. Even though I’m not a nonprofit, I explained, I work with multiple clients who might be interested in your product. Let me take a look at it on my own and compare it with some others in the field. Please touch base with me in a couple of weeks.

Fine.

Two weeks later, the company rep reaches out to me by forwarding the original message.

I was miffed. Had she forgotten we had ever been in touch before? Or did she think that somehow, I was the one who owed her a follow-up message? Either way, I did not feel like a valued customer.

Lesson #2 for nonprofits:

Know the history of your relationship with the people on your email list. Refresh your memory before you write. (A good database or CRM helps!) Click To Tweet

How Nonprofits Should–and Should Not–Automate Their Messages

When a potential supporter shows they’re interested in your nonprofit, you want to respond right away. But because you work at a nonprofit, you have many other things to do. It’s hard to find the time to respond before the interest fades.

Automation could be the answer–if you use it wisely.

Most email platforms, like MailChimp or Constant Contact, will let you set up auto-responders. When a person out there signs up for your email list, they get an immediate reply. When they sign up for an event, they get information about the event, and so on.

It saves you time, and it gives the potential supporter what they’re looking for.

What could go wrong? Well, exactly what happened to me!

The first message I received was a canned message. The automation filled in my name and email address and sent out the same content it would send to a nonprofit.

The second message could also have been automated, if the company’s system was set up to repeat the same email to anyone who didn’t respond to the first.

And in either case, what saved the company time might have just lost them a customer–or several customers, if I had decided to recommend them to all my clients!

Lesson #3 for nonprofits:

Use automation to make your messages more personal, not less. Set up your system for the different audiences you hope to reach. Click To Tweet

 

 

 

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