If you’re a donor development professional for a nonprofit, you understand how challenging donor retention can be. Maintaining donor relationships is a continuous challenge for nonprofits. But if you’ve been following our series on Inbound Marketing for Nonprofits, you’re on your way to finally executing a stronger and more sophisticated donor retention strategy.
Once you’ve successfully attracted your organization’s prospects, you might think your inbound marketing efforts are over. But continuing to keep them engaged in your mission is essential to maintaining their support. Today, engaging and delighting your supporters is personalized, segmented and defined by two-way communications.
New technologies that produce continuous, low-maintenance and personalized interactions have given nonprofits the opportunity to create deeper connections with current and prospective donors. Now that you’ve converted your prospects into donors, your organization can focus on nurturing its relationship with these soon-to-be passionate advocates of your mission.
Marketing Automation
Meaningfully connecting with and engaging your donors on your organization’s various social channels and platforms can seem like a daunting task. But what if you could schedule personalized email campaigns and social media, while building and segmenting your donor database — all in the same place? New, easy-to-use and integrate technologies provide a seamless blend of email marketing, analytics and automation that enable organizations to build deeper relationships with donors.
Marketing automation systems such as SharpSpring come equipped with social media content calendars, landing page and email newsletter templates, and the capability of collecting information about your donors and prospects that allows you to capture their interests, values and where they spend their time. In addition, this system enables a 24/7 donor development strategy with automated email campaign capability.
Personalized Email Marketing
The power of marketing automation tools makes it easier for your organization to segment its audiences, keeping supporters engaged with personalized content and messages. Have you ever gone online to book a flight and noticed an ad for the same airline on your Facebook or Instagram page the next day? Advances in technology have made it easier than ever before to meet individuals where they are, with personalized messages and calls-to-action that drive engagement.
Think about the way you currently connect with both small and major donors. Are your major donors interested in the same opportunities to get involved as your smaller donors? Would you send major donors an email newsletter promoting volunteer opportunities? Would you send your small donors an email newsletter promoting a gala or high profile event? While it may seem like everyone in your donor database wants to receive the same information about your work, each donor is different and has diversely invested support in your mission.
Social Media
Social media has transformed the way that organizations — and even massive, global brands — connect with their target audiences. It’s where your organization increases awareness of its mission, impact and expertise. Driven by two-way communications, it’s one of the best ways for your organization to stay connected to various segments of its target audience.
Engaging with these individuals on social media presents yet another opportunity for your organization to find out more about them — such as where they are and what they’re saying. Connecting with individuals on social media generates opportunities to connect with social media ambassadors who can help drive peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. In addition, connecting with individuals on social media generates opportunities to connect with social media ambassadors who can drive peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. Today, social media platforms are continuing to add new tools that boost fundraising efforts for nonprofits, such as Instagram’s new “donate” button for its Instagram stories feature. Working with social media ambassadors and influencers in coordination with these easy-to-use tools will undoubtedly drive positive fundraising results.
Creating Connective Impact
We’ve given you a lot of information on how inbound marketing can truly transform your donor development efforts while alleviating your nonprofit’s valuable time and resources. Now that you’ve adopted this strategy — and maybe even some of the sophisticated tools we’ve mentioned to help amplify your efforts, it’s time to consider the relationship between your organization’s development and communications teams.
Your donor development team works to build relationships. They understand your donors’ passions and desire to make a difference in our world. Communications has a vision for branding and digital communications, and how to use them to better connect with people.
When your efforts are aligned and you’re using the same success measures, your communications and donor development teams are able to achieve more together than would have been possible alone. We call this process Connective Impact, and we have seen firsthand its power to increase donor engagement and loyalty.
You can download our eBook on Connective Impact here.
