Your donors are hungry for content about your organization. Even with your content team constantly developing new offerings, are you delivering the right kind of content to feed their needs or are your donors feeling malnourished or unsatisfied? The details that you deliver to your audience can turn a one-time windfall donation into a multi-year major donor — simply by ensuring that their needs for information and engagement are met in an acceptable format. Although you have many stories to share, your connection to your donors will not deepen without a solid plan in place. Instead, look for ways to create an emotionally compelling need for others to engage with your organization. The vehicle for creating that connection is meaningful content.
Content Does Not (Necessarily) Equal Engagement
No doubt you are creating content that is meant to drive personal engagement with your donors. You are demonstrating thought leadership by generating blog posts and articles. You are hoping to drive personal engagement with donors through social media posts, while adding videos and downloadables that help you gather people into your donor moves management funnel — However, how sure are you that this constant churn is gathering the interest and movement that you need to be successful? Closely tracking your content and how it is being used is the first step towards successful content marketing.
Your Donor’s Perspective
How can you solve the burning issues that keep donors up at night? Your organization has so many inspiring stories that have the potential to connect one-on-one with your unique audience while, at the same time, cultivating an emerging interest in your organization. By strategically planning your content, you will address the trigger points of every donor. Your current and prospective donors are looking for a reason to fall in love with your organization and support your goals to change the world for the better. A consistent, personalized email campaign containing relevant content will allow you to regularly communicate when you are unable to personally visit with each high-potential donor.
Audit Your Valuables
The content that you’re producing likely comes in a variety of different formats and messages. Have you ever stopped to think about all of the pieces that you have available to your donor management and communications teams? Your annual report that was created for leadership and key stakeholders may have pieces that could be leveraged to share with major donors. Swap it up and utilize a portion of a printed flyer to send in an email to major donors. When you create a content inventory and better understand the digital and physical intellectual property assets that you have available, you’re able to leverage this content to deepen the connection with donors.
Build Bridges Internally
Your digital moves management (DMM) strategy is only as powerful as the teams supporting it. When you expand beyond the traditional borders of your donor management structure, you’ll find a powerful partner for your success in working with donors: your communications team. They are truly the best allies you could ask for in your effort to engage with donors and expand your overall audience — and you will see the impact of this partnership when your gifts begin to grow. The success of your moves management strategy could rest on how well you and your team are able to collaborate with your communications partners.
Creating an Agile Communications Strategy
Your constituents have unique needs and requirements, and they will not all gravitate to the same type of content. Now that you have your content audit completed, you should be able to segment your audience and effectively map what type of information will appeal to different groups of constituents. Capture data from your audience based on their interests such as a preference to support a domestic versus international cause. Understanding your audience groupings helps you determine the type of content that will resonate and perhaps shift individuals further down their customer journey towards becoming an ongoing major donor and advocate for your cause. You can utilize marketing automation tools to create a donor development strategy that runs 24/7 — attracting new leads and engaging constituents even while you sleep. You can read an in-depth overview and tips for your first agile communications project, but here are some spotlights at a glance to jumpstart your strategy:
- Build a team of dedicated communicators and donor development professionals
- Plan and execute your first sprint
- Complete work and close out your first spring with a solid introspective
The key to staying on track through the process is to start with a robust project management tool. Implementing digital moves management may be a challenge, but the benefits of aligning your donor development platform with your communications infrastructure are well worth the effort. Learn more about digital moves management and how you are able to respond to changing conditions by contacting MagnifyGood at 941-953-9191 or scheduling a no obligation 30 minute consultation here.
