Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

TY Thursday: Loyal Donors Matter Most

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loyalty

Who is your organization’s best friend?

Every nonprofit organization has one: the most loyal supporter.  The person who gives as often as she can, or as often as you ask.  The one who volunteers for all your events and brings her friends.

You’d like a thousand like that.  You’d like to clone her.  What if you could?

Businesses have time-tested strategies that create loyal customers.  Some of these strategies work especially well on social media. Nonprofits can adapt and adopt these strategies to thank our donors, volunteers, and supporters.

Danny Maloney, CEO of the social media firm Tailwind, lists “4 Ways to Turn Social-Media Fans Into Raving, Loyal Customers”:

  1. Use a targeted approach.  Find the people who are already talking about you on Facebook, Twitter, and the web at large.
  2. Let your fans know you’re listening.  “If they took the time to share a blog post you wrote or to give you a positive review, be listening for it and thank them.”
  3. Target your special offers.  Businesses give loyalty discounts.  What can you give your most loyal supporters that they would enjoy: a chance to write for your blog? lunch with a celebrity who also supports you? an award?
  4. Curate compelling content.  That’s jargon for finding and sharing information that interests your supporters.  It could be an insider analysis of where their favorite legislation stands in Congress. It could be a video that explains the issue you and they both care about.

Sharing this content with your most loyal supporters makes them feel smarter and happier because they’re associated with you.  It shows them your gratitude. It keeps them coming back to your social media.

And it keeps them advocating for your organization, increasing awareness of you among their friends…who may become your next most loyal supporters.

Fundraising Tuesday: Write the Best Fundraising Letter of 2016!

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Girl escaping ISISIt was only April, and I had already received the best fundraising letter of 2015. And they had me after the first sentence.

MADRE wrote:

Dear Rona and Dennis,

I have an extraordinary story to tell you about how six teenage girls escaped from the extremist group ISIS–and into the care that MADRE partners in Iraq provide, thanks to you.

All right, I quit. After that sentence, you want to hear the story, right? My piddling little blog post is not nearly as important as six teenage girls escaping from ISIS.

And that’s the point.

  • MADRE found a compelling story.
  • They made it personal. (“One night, 16-year-old Ola managed to slip the drugs meant for her into her captors’ teapot.”)
  • They made it topical and created a sense of urgency. (ISIS!)
  • They connected it to their work.
  • And they used the magic word, “you.”

Because of all that, you want to know what happens next. You’re probably cursing that Dennis Fischman guy who’s talking about how the letter worked–instead of just letting you read it.

Do your donors feel that way about your appeal letters? Do they give them a quick glance and file them, or recycle them?  Or…would they feel cheated if they couldn’t read them to the end?

How Good is Your 2016 Fundraising Letter?

I challenge you. If you think your letter might  be the best fundraising letter I’ll see in 2016, take a moment right now and share the first sentence of that letter in a comment. I’ll tell you what I think, and so will other readers.

Go!

Halloween in September–on Your Communications Calendar

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Halloween lawn

The lawn was eerie. Long strands of spider web draped over its length, a bat hovering over the withering shrubs, and a gravestone poking up from the dried grass.

The scariest thing was, it was a full month before Halloween!

As you can guess, I’m not a big fan of Halloween in September, or Christmas in October, or back-to-school in July. But you should be-when you’re filling in your communications calendar.

Creating a good message takes time.

For that article you want to write or that video you want to record, you may need to find facts, or set up a photo shoot.  You may need to interview someone. How long will it take to schedule that meeting? You don’t want to do any of that at the last minute.

Schedule that message weeks or even months in advance. Then schedule the steps it will take to create that message. Put them on your calendar.

Your audience needs time to respond, too.

Have you ever received an invitation to attend an event the day after you were supposed to RSVP?

If your message is inviting people to attend an event, “call your member of Congress TODAY!,” or anything else with a deadline, you need to send it to them well in advance.

That means you have to start creating the message even earlier, and send it out more often. Put creating it AND sending it on your communications calendar.

Yes, you can wait until the last minute to create your message and hope inspiration strikes. Yes, you can gamble that your supporters will drop everything to respond to your call to action.

But that’s like Halloween in September. It’s just…scary.

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