You and I both know that donor engagement is a key element to a solid fundraising strategy. Want to better engage your supporters? Use automation! By utilizing automated nurture campaigns as part of your marketing strategy, you can keep your supporters engaged all year round. You’ll ensure that your supporters are not receiving too many or too few emails from your organization. Keeping your supporters ‘warm’ to your cause will prevent a donation ask from seeming like it’s coming out of the blue, while ensuring that you don’t email them too often will reduce the likelihood of those supporters hitting the dreaded ‘unsubscribe’ button.
Marketing automation is certainly gaining traction in the nonprofit space, but if your organization is not taking advantage of it yet, or you feel your automated series needs some revamping, I’d like to offer you four core tenants to consider:
Goals
Like any strategically formed campaign, your marketing automation efforts need goals. Not just any goals though. Your organization needs to develop specific, time oriented goals that are realistic. Your goal will affect how you go about each of the following tenants, so craft them wisely.
Personas
Gone are the days of blanket emails going out to your entire mailing list any time you want to engage any part of your constituency. Segmentation marketing is an effective way to be able to reach the most appropriate audience with each communication piece. Personas will help you identify how to communicate with each segment of your audience. There are lots of different ways to identify personas, but we suggest keeping it simple if you’re just starting out and definitely keeping your goals in mind.
Content
Your goals and your personas will lead your content creation. Tweaking your message depending on who you are talking to is an effective way to increase donations and retain supporters of all types. You should have unique content for each of your personas; making each piece of content as unique as a snowflake will make your personas feel like you’re speaking directly to them. Don’t forget, there should be some consistency, such as look and feel and connection to your mission.
Analysis
Maybe numbers don’t make your jump out of your chair with excitement, but I cannot emphasize the importance of measuring and analyzing enough. As with any campaign, examining what worked and what didn’t is how you will improve and increase its effectiveness in the future. Just because it’s automated, doesn’t mean you can set it and forget about it. If your analysis does not show the results you expected, it’s time to tweak your goals, personas or content… or all of the above!
There are many software companies out there that lead the way in marketing automation, but your nonprofit can apply these fundamental ideas to your marketing and fundraising efforts even without one of the fancy tools. Keep each of these four tenants in mind and review how they are working independently and together within your overall strategy. You can then let your automated marketing nurture supporters with relatively low involvement.
To learn more about marketing automation check out the new npExpert’s Future of Fundraising ebook!
By Donna Wilkins on Apr 29, 2015
Tagged: analysis content data analytics Donor Engagement fundraising strategy marketing automation personas