As a fundraiser, you know that personalization is the key to donor engagement and stewardship. Personalized video messages are a great way to add a human touch to your donor outreach and enhance donor stewardship. However, with the growing number of donors and the limited time and resources available, it can be challenging to create a streamlined personalized video strategy to engage and retain donors, alumni, volunteers, and community members.
Here, we explore how automated personalized video messaging can benefit your organization and how to get started. We will also discuss the benefits of using Gratavid and Virtuous together to improve donor communication and engagement.
The Benefits of Automated Personalized Video Messaging
One of the most significant benefits of using automation for video messaging is that you can enhance donor stewardship while saving time and money. You can create and send personalized messages to a large audience without having to spend hours producing individualized videos. This creates time to focus on other essential tasks that can help your organization grow.
The ability to break through the digital clutter by adding a human touch to your outreach is key to improving donor relations and enhancing donor stewardship. By sending personalized messages, you are showing your donors that you value and appreciate their support. Leveraging both written and video communications to promote a two-way interaction with donors can build stronger relationships over time and lead to increased giving in the long term.
Automating personalized videos requires a tool that integrates seamlessly with your CRM or database. A good integration helps ensure you reach the right donors with the right messages. Videos with customized donors’ names, giving histories, and other relevant information, make supporters feel more engaged and connected to your organization.
Did you know?
1. One minute of video is worth 1.8 million words (Sprout Video)
2. Videos are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text (Popvideo)
3. Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text (Popvideo)
How to Get Started with Using Videos to Enhance Donor Stewardship
To get started with automated personalized video messaging, you will need to choose a platform that suits your needs. Gratavid and Virtuous are two excellent options that work seamlessly together to improve donor communication and engagement.
Gratavid is a video platform that makes it easy to create personalized videos for your donors. The platform offers several customization options, including the ability to add your organization’s branding and messaging to your videos. Once you have created your video, you can send it to your donors directly through the Gratavid platform.
Virtuous is a comprehensive donor management platform that helps you track and manage all aspects of donor engagement. When you integrate Gratavid with Virtuous, you can automate sending personalized videos based on donor signals and other relevant data.
Best Practices for Creating Video Messages that Enhance Donor Stewardship
When creating a personalized video strategy for fundraising, there are several best practices you can follow that can help you get the most out of your communication efforts:
1. Make it personal–Deliver authentic messages to individual donors
Create custom video messages that are personalized and resonate with each supporter’s interests and motivations. For example, if a donor has expressed interest in funding an animal shelter, you can create a video that showcases the impact of their donations towards animal welfare. This authentic messaging will enhance donor stewardship by helping to increase donor loyalty and encourage donors to continue supporting your cause.
2. Illustrate donor impact with on-location videos
On-location videos are a powerful tool to showcase the impact of donor contributions. Whether it’s a video of a child smiling after receiving a scholarship or a group of volunteers cleaning up a local park, these videos can share stories that help supporters see the direct impact of their donations. With the right tools, you can film and send these videos to donors in a matter of minutes from any device with a camera.
3. Get your entire team involved – Anytime, anywhere
One of the unique features of Gratavid is the ability to involve your entire team in video messaging. From the CEO to the program director, each team member can send personalized videos to donors. Additionally, the platform allows you to assign tasks to team members for quick recording and sending from any device. Showing more members of your team helps put faces to your mission and ultimately will enhance donor stewardship. Donors need to know you and vice versa in order to grow those relationships.
4. Add a human touch at scale through smart CRM rules + automations
By combining the right video messaging platform with the automation tools of a responsive nonprofit CRM, you can enhance donor stewardship through prompt and targeted messaging. For example, the integration between Gratavid and Virtuous means that smart rules can be established in Gratavid based on key donor milestones logged in Virtuous. From there, Virtuous automation can trigger actions. The most common use cases are:
- Sending pre-recorded videos or reels including general, but very relevant, details about their gift (i.e., “Thank you so much for your tenth gift. Your continued support means so much to our organization.”)
- Or, dynamically assigning a Gratavid task to anyone on your team requesting a heartfelt thank you video with highly tailored messaging for timely and impactful outreach (i.e., “Jane – Thank you so much for the amazingly generous gift of $5,000 we just received. Your total giving of $15,000 this year is making a huge impact on this extremely important project.”)
The flexibility of this integration empowers you to add a human touch to donor engagement at scale, resulting in more meaningful and effective communications.
Additional Tips on How to Enhance Donor Stewardship with Video Messaging
- Be mindful of your backdrop, start with a smile and write “Thank you!”, along with the recipient’s name on paper or a whiteboard
- Keep your messages as brief, but genuine, and to the point
- Customize your messaging to the donor’s interests and giving history
- Add an additional personal touch, such as mentioning a recent interaction
- Use your organization’s branding and messaging to reinforce your mission and values
- Follow up with donors after sending the message to continue building the relationship
How to Measure the Success of Your Personalized Video Messaging Campaign
As with any fundraising campaign, it is essential to measure the success of your personalized video messaging efforts. Tracking your activities, measuring results, and learning from that data is the only way to be responsive and continue to enhance donor stewardship. You can track several metrics to determine how well your messages are resonating with your donors. For example, you could track open rates and click-through rates.
You should also be tracking your overall donor engagement and retention rates to determine the effectiveness of your messaging. You want to see if your messaging is helping to improve your organization’s long-term growth and success.
The use of automated and personalized video messaging with Gratavid + Virtuous can be a powerful tool to elevate donor stewardship. Integrating video within your donor engagement brings a human touch and authenticity at scale. This allows you to connect with donors in meaningful and memorable ways. Ultimately this helps you enhance donor stewardship and build stronger relationships with your donors. In turn, those stronger relationships drive long-term growth for your organization.
