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.

 

 

Nonprofits, Don’t Be a Home Invader. Be Welcome

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climb through window

If I don’t answer the door, you don’t climb through the window!

What should you do to interest a potential donor–and what shouldn’t you do? Let me tell you a story that will help you answer the question yourself.

Recently, my wife, Rona, thought about signing up for a service online. She went to the sign-up page, but she was dismayed at how much personal information the company was asking for upfront: not only name and email, but address, home phone, cell phone, location…Midway through the process, she clicked off.

The next thing you know, the company had mailed her at her home address. She knew it was them even before she opened the envelope. She’d used her “maiden name” to sign up, and that was on the mailing!

How do you think Rona felt? (How would you feel?)

Don’t be a Home Invader

Whether it’s a commercial organization or a nonprofit, there are things you just can’t do to interest a customer, or donor, in your business.

Let’s start with: you can’t ask for too much information at one time. It takes too long, and it raises suspicion that you might be using the data for nefarious purposes.

Your landing page needs to be as simple as you can make it. Name and email address might be all you need.

Then: you have to be prepared to take no for an answer. Just because you want that person’s attention–or donation–doesn’t mean they have to give it to you. Pursuing them is creepy…especially if you do it across platforms.

Imagine you knocked at my door, and I didn’t respond. You knew I was there, because the light was on and you heard me moving around. Would it be okay to climb in through the window and say hello? Of course not! Then why would it be okay to send me mail when I hadn’t even authorized you to send me email?

Be a Welcome Guest Instead. Here’s How.

Of course, you do want people who are interested in your nonprofit to hear from you. But there’s a wrong way to do that…and then, there’s a right way. If you do the right thing, you can be a welcome guest in their inbox.

The key is to offer your audiences content that’s so good and so useful to them, they keep coming back for more–and telling their friends. How do you do that? Here are five steps to take.

  1. Commit to doing better. Most nonprofits are happy just to be producing content at all. As Kivi Leroux Miller tells us, it’s time to question that approach.
  2. Know your audience. Know them so well you’d recognize them on the street. (John Haydon’s Nonprofit Marketing Personas Workbook will help you there.)
  3. Have a strategy. It can be as simple as “Who are the audiences we’re trying to reach? What do we already know about these audiences? What do we need to find out to give them what they’re looking for? What will they do differently if we succeed?”
  4. Keep it exciting. Look for ways to give your audiences useful information in a variety of forms—written, visual, online, through social media.
  5. Promote it. Use every means you have to spread the word about your great content. Word of mouth, public speaking, radio, TV. Newsletters, social media, your website. Link to it in the signature line of your emails. Find the hook so a local journalist turns it into a story. Be creative!

Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You

As you provide more value and win the trust of the person you’re trying to reach, maybe they will agree to sign up for your email. Again, keep the sign-up page simple.

Over time, you can ask more questions in an email series and store the answers in your database or CRM. You can start segmenting your email list, so that you send each person the kind of story they’d be interested in hearing.

You can create more and more reasons why the person hearing from you looks forward to your next message. Isn’t that better than having them call 911–block you–because you’ve invaded their online home?

 

 

 

 

TY Thursday: Post-Donation Thank-You–on Your Website!

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post-donation TY pageCongratulations! You’ve cultivated your donor, and she has just gone online and made a generous gift. Now, post-donation, you want to thank her as personally as possible, as soon as possible.

But how?

Your First Chance to Show the Love

Just because a donor has made a gift to your organization, it doesn’t mean you have won their heart. Not forever. Maybe not even for today.

You’ve heard of “buyer’s remorse”? That feeling  you get when you’ve finally plunked down your credit card or signed on the dotted line and agreed to a purchase…and then you say, “Wait a minute, did I just make a big mistake?”

Donors to nonprofits go through that too. They give on impulse, and then they wonder, “Did I really do the right thing? Is that nonprofit really what I want to be supporting with my hard-earned money?”

The moment they give, you want to send them a message that says, “Yes! You did the right thing.”

Your Website Can Be Your Thank-You

All online fundraising tools will let you send a receipt to your donor automatically, to let them know their donation actually went through. But that’s the equivalent of the cashier handing you a receipt after a purchase. It’s minimal and impersonal. Your nonprofit can do better than that!

Some tools will let you customize the receipt. If yours allows you, definitely say “Thank you, Dennis, for giving $100 to Social Justice Organization. You’re already helping to save the world in this way!”

Some tools, like PayPal, won’t.

But–PayPal will let you return the donor to your website after he or she makes a donation. So, why not set up a post-donation thank-you page that shares all the love with the donor, right there on your website?

11 Things You Can Do on Your Post-Donation Thank-You Page

The thank-you page on your website can give your donors more than just a verbal “thank-you.” Here are 11 things you can do there to give the donor the feeling, “I made the right choice when I gave to this organization.” (The first nine are from Joanne Fritz  and the last two from Tina Jepson of Causevox.)

  1. Invite donors to follow you on social media. 
  2. Invite donors to watch a video.
  3. Invite donors to volunteer.
  4. Gather info with a little survey.  Ask just two or three questions on the thank you page, such as how they found out about your charity, why they donated, and how they want you to communicate with them.
  5. Connect your donor with resources.
  6. Gather feedback.  Explain to your donor that you always want to improve your service and ask her to help by leaving feedback about the donation process itself.
  7. Provide testimonials from the people you serve.  There’s no better way to reassure the donor that his decision to give was a good one than by listing a couple of testimonials from the people you help.
  8. Invite donors to something special.
  9. Remind your donor of an additional way to give (as charity: water does in the thank-you page pictured above).
  10. Add an email newsletter subscription option.
  11. Highlight impact.  By closing the loop on the donation, you ensure that your donor knows that your organization is making a difference because of their investment in your cause.

It doesn’t take any more technical knowledge to set up a post-donation thank-you page than to add any other page to your website. So, why not give it a try? See if your donors appreciate it!

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