Nonprofits interested in using The Responsive Framework to improve fundraising and donor relationships can start right away. There are no prerequisites for responding to your donors’ signals in a meaningful way. However, to do it at scale with hundreds of thousands of individuals, it’s best to use a nonprofit marketing automation platform.
More than software to help make you more efficient, marketing automation makes the experience of your nonprofit better for everyone. Donors feel more connected to your cause, employees feel less burnout and more effective. Most importantly, your beneficiaries are served in better ways.
See just how powerful nonprofit marketing automation can be for your responsive fundraising strategies. Read our list of the top 4 benefits most organizations see right away.
Create Personalized Engagements
According to Epsilon, 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase when they are offered a personalized experience from a company or brand. Your donors are those “customers,” and they want a personalized experience from your nonprofit. Marketing automation makes that possible.
Think about the last communication you sent to donors. How many personalized elements did you add to improve their experience? Hopefully, you included their first name or their giving amount, but there is so much more you can do.
Marketing automation allows you to track your donors behavior in order to create a unique experience each donor. First, identify significant events, conversions, milestones or engagements in your nonprofit CRM. Then, add tracking pixels on all relevant web pages. Last, set up a workflow that triggers the next best action for donors who have triggered the tracking pixels.
By automating the entire process, including offline engagements like donor calls and hand-written notes, you put the donor in charge of their experience. They don’t have to wait for your schedule to clear to get the information they want. Your system does all of that for you. The donor experience is improved tremendously, resulting in more generosity and the ability to do more good in the world.
Automation Makes Digital Marketing More Efficient
The value of digital marketing for nonprofits is how quickly it provides feedback from your donors. With an A/B test of your social media ads, for example, you can learn which messaging inspires more giving from donors in a single day. You can take those insights and apply them everywhere else.
Marketing automation can add exponential power to your digital marketing efforts without requiring additional hours for your team. Here’s what we mean:
Let’s say that you’re running an ad on Facebook to your existing donors, asking them to sign up to be part of your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign for December. Interested individuals submit their information through a landing page and wait for instructions. When it comes to activating advocates for your cause, you know that the longer you wait to engage with them, the less likely they are to take action.
Without marketing automation, your team would need to pull the names of donors every hour, research information about the people on that list to understand their level of familiarity with P2P fundraising, write a personalized email, and keep an eye on their inbox for a response.
Not only is that process time-consuming, but it also leaves you vulnerable to mistakes and missed opportunities. The other option is to automate that process so that donors get information when they’re most interested. Additionally, you can be sure that all relevant donor data is considered before any digital marketing is sent. Your system will make sure of it.
Help Marketing Across All Channels
Nonprofit marketing automation is not just a tactic for digital marketing. Nonprofits rely on direct mail to meet their fundraising goal, and it’s important to continue to leverage it. However, direct marketing that sends the same information to everyone, whether they are a monthly donor or haven’t given their first gift yet, is not the answer.
Instead, use marketing automation and donor tags to segment your donor base into groups. Each segment will get more relevant, personalized direct mail pieces. Make a workflow that sends information to donors through all channels. Send part of the story via email, send more through direct mail, tell some of it over the phone, and put the most important piece on your giving pages to inspire generosity.
The omnichannel approach is essential for creating an experience that grabs the attention of the modern donor. They need to hear relevant, meaningful messaging across all their communication channels in order to feel a connection. Marketing automation not only makes that possible, but it does so efficiently so that your team doesn’t feel the effects of burnout while raising more money for your organization.
Fundraisers Use Automation to Inspire More Giving
The benefits of marketing automation for nonprofits don’t stop at donor relationships. It also gives fundraisers the most comprehensive information about each individual donor’s journey so that they can make better generosity suggestions when the time is right.
Traditionally, communications, fundraising, and programs teams work in silos, separating important donor behavior from the fundraising effort. There wouldn’t be transparency around who each contact is and what they’ve experienced from your organization. Responsive nonprofits are breaking down those silos and creating an open line of communication.
Marketing automation workflows make this possible. Inside each contact record is a list of all touchpoints, the level of engagement in each, plus notes for each individual if they’ve talked to someone on your team. Armed with more information, your fundraisers know exactly how to inspire generosity from your donors.
Get More from Your Nonprofit Marketing Software
If you want to learn how simple it is to implement marketing automation into your team, let’s talk. We can give you all the information you need to understand how it works and why your nonprofit marketing team needs it.
