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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

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

 

 

 

Nonprofit Marketing: Communications with a Purpose!

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Marketing.  It sounds so commercial, doesn’t it?  But don’t be put off by the term.  Your nonprofit organization can steal marketing secrets and use them for a good cause.

What is nonprofit marketing?

Marketing  is business-speak for “communications with a purpose.”

purpose

Communicate with a purpose!

Your purpose may be to improve public health, enhance democracy, end hunger or homelessness, or enhance people’s lives through the arts.

Whatever it is, if you tailor your communications to a purpose, you’re doing marketing–and you can look for ways to do it better.

What is your nonprofit marketing strategy?

Strategy means keeping your purpose in mind and letting it direct your activities and the way you use your time.  It means knowing how you will approach your goal and not making it all up on the fly.

So what is marketing strategy? For businesses, the term means:

An organization’s strategy that combines all of its marketing goals into one comprehensive plan. A good marketing strategy should be drawn from market research and focus on the right product mix in order to achieve the maximum profit potential and sustain the business.

How do we say that in nonprofit?

  • Market research for nonprofits is whatever you use to get to know and love your audience. Depending on your organization. your research could be hiring an outside professional to conduct surveys and focus groups–or going through your files and asking your staff and Board members what they know.
  • Product mix is the services and benefits you offer.  When you know and love your audience, you figure out what they need.
  • Instead of profit, you aim to maximize good outcomes for the people you serve.  You can only do that if they know about your services and use them.
  • But you still need to sustain the business.  And unlike a for-profit business, you can’t count on the people who use your services to pay for them.  So, “sustaining the business” means raising funds from donors, foundations, corporations, and government, or through events or sales, to pay for what you really are “in business” to do: your mission.

Let’s put it all together.

When you develop a marketing strategy, you are making a commitment.

You are promising that everyone inside your organization will know whom you are trying to serve, what will help them, how you are providing that help, and what difference it makes.

The people who use your services and the people and institutions that pay for them will know that too.  All your communications will help you convey that message, and your programs will help you make it reality.

Make that commitment and keep to it.  That’s how you say “marketing” in nonprofit.

What Nonprofits Can Learn from Librarians

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My friend Sam Musher is a librarian in a public school, but she knows marketing. Librarians can do it

Sam recently posted on Facebook:

Dear everyone trying to advertise events to teenagers: Make. A. Poster. I would love to post your event on my bulletin board! But I will not be creating a sign for you. Give me a PDF, or I’m out.

Look at the valuable marketing lessons Sam the librarian has packed into these few lines!

  1. Know your audience. Teenagers in Sam’s school will pay attention to a poster on a bulletin board. They will not give a sheet full of text a second glance. You have to know the people you’re addressing and what will attract their interest.
  2. Know your influencers. Sam is the person who can potentially show your event to thousands of teens. It would pay you to please her. You have to know the people like Sam who are in a position to spread word about your agency far and wide.
  3. Make it easy for people to do what you want them to do. Everybody is busy. Don’t ask for free labor.
    • If you want an announcement to go on a bulletin board, send a poster.
    • If you want news to go in a newspaper, send an article that’s ready to print–with a photo!
    • If you want people to forward your email, give them a one-click forwarding option.

And a final word from Sam: “Bonus points if the poster looks really good in black and white. A surprising number of us don’t have regular access to a color printer.”

Take it from a librarian: many people use the library because they don’t have access to a landline phone, or a desktop computer: only a mobile device. Use the format that your audience will like.

 

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