If you're a nonprofit marketer, you face a lot of the same challenges as your for-profit buddies. For-profit marketers are trying to attract more buyers to their customer base, while you are trying to expand your donor base. You also face the same contemporary marketing challenge: how to stand out in a noisy crowd with a limited marketing budget.
By building a framework of digital channels and integrating email and social media into a marketing program, you can create community around your brand and reach out to untapped resources -- in a cost-effective manner.
Start the conversation and keep it going
These tips will help you expand your online marketing program to build new relationships and to create deeper relationships with your current donors.
1. Build up your in-house email database, beginning today. Email is the backbone of an integrated digital marketing program. More of your donors have and use email than you might realize. Survey your donors, volunteers, and other constituents to see if they want to receive email communications from your organization and ask for their email addresses. Include an email option on all communications and documents you send out.
However, the old rule -- grab an address from anyone who writes you a check, drop it into your database, and hit it with every mailing you send -- doesn't work with email.
Even though you're nonprofit, you still must follow your country's email regulations, which might outlaw unsolicited email. In the U.S., CAN-SPAM regulations permit it, provided you mark messages as solicitations or advertisements, include a working opt-out link, and remove unsubscribers promptly.
If you push too hard on unsolicited email, you might generate so many spam complaints that internet service providers will either block your messages or filter them to junk mail.
2. Jump into the social media pool. Your constituency is already here. Are you? Twitter is free -- so are Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and all of the other social media platforms out there. They all help you create and maintain interest in your program between events and emailings.
Create social media accounts for your brand. Then, upload content continually to each of them, such as photos or videos of a recent event, articles about your organization, your mission statement, etc. Promote your social media presence everywhere -- in ads, direct mail, and email messages, as well as on your website, business cards, office stationery, and email signature.
iMedia Connection writer Kent Lewis also wrote a handy thumbnail comparison of six major social media platforms to help you better understand the biggest opportunities and challenges with each social platform.
3. Set up a regular publishing schedule. Do you reach out regularly, or do your donors hear from you only in your annual letter?
Contact your database at least once a month (not just to stay in touch but also to help clean out undeliverable email addresses regularly) with an informational email newsletter that touches upon issues related to your cause.
4. Soft-pedal the panhandling. OK, so you already send email as part of your marketing mix. Are your messages all about the "give"? Or do you use your space to tell stories about the people, animals, or environment your donors' money and volunteer hours help?
If you want to build a strong, supportive community, your messages have to tell stories as well as ask for contributions:
- Report on a success, or outline a need.
- Feature someone your organization helped.
- Ask an employee to report from the front lines.
- Spotlight a donor or volunteer.
5. Get the conversation going. Blasting out messages does not build community. Give people a place to visit, chat, ask questions, and learn. Contribute to the conversation. Lead it, if you must. Don't try to control it, however, and don't monopolize it.
If you have to get the conversation going at first, pretend you're warming up the crowd at a donor event:
- Throw out a question.
- Introduce someone you work with.
- Link to something new or unusual at your website.
- Answer questions or comment on other people's posts or tweets.
- Thank visitors for their comments.
- Report on news outside your charity or cause that affects recipients.
Where to get ideas
The Email Experience Council's annual Nonprofit Project creates a professional-quality marketing program for one email-challenged organization per year. Check out its past work and this year's project here. Additional tips for optimizing your online marketing campaigns can be found here.
Wendy Roth is the senior manager of training services for Lyris Technologies.
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