For nonprofit teams, communicating with potential supporters about how they can get involved is obviously very important to the survival of the nonprofit organization - but sometimes, it can be difficult to know where to start. Grant Cobb, Head of Marketing and Analytics at GivingMail, dives in with three actionable tips for maximizing impact in your nonprofit communications. 

Looking for the best way to reach your target audience? When promoting your organization with a cohesive marketing strategy, you’ll want to tune into what you know about your donors already to connect with them effectively.

This may seem like a challenge to undertake as an organization. However, you already have most of the information you need to make intelligent decisions for your marketing strategy. GivingMail knows that marketing for nonprofit organizations helps your team gain access to invaluable engagement data and can help you make even more targeted appeals and outreach content.

Ready to simplify the process of tuning into your donors for a more pointed marketing strategy? Let’s unpack the following tips:

• Use your data to create donor segments.

• Offer multiple ways to get involved.

• Track your donor engagements per platform.

We’ll start with one of the essential sources for learning more about your donors, using your database to create donor segments.

Use your data to create donor segments.

Donor segmentation is the process of dividing your existing constituents into subgroups according to shared traits. 

This practice is essential for tuning into your donor base and understanding your audience to the best of your ability. You can use these groups to determine trends and insights from the best outlet for sending out targeted communications to the opportunities that excite different groups. 

Luckily, a lot of this information is available in your CRM and the donor profiles within your donor database. However, many nonprofits struggle with finding somewhere to start. After all, you hold a large amount of information on your database. Here are some categories to begin your segmentation process with basic demographics:

• Age

• Household size

• Location

• Interests

This way, you can begin to make crucial insights according to what may interest them. You’re able to determine which outreach will resonate with them and predict further actions. For example, if your donor is located in your area, you can send them information about in-person events that they can easily attend. 

Once you have basic information about your constituents, you can start to tune into how they have directly engaged your organization. Take note of the following types of questions:

• How do they give to your organization?

• How did they find out about your organization?

• Have they volunteered in the past?

• Which campaigns did they give to?

From these helpful insights, you can begin to fine-tune how you reach out to donors and simplify their donor journey based on past giving data. For example, if you determine the most popular route for your donors is through direct mail, you can implement this insight into simplifying their experience.

This way, you can choose the best marketing channels for your target audience. 
Based on your social media engagement and messaging information, you can begin to answer the following:

• What social media platforms are they using?

• Have they replied to any direct mail outreach?

• Are they opening your emails?

Again, your organization’s donor segmentation process will be different for every nonprofit, as they’re dependent on how available and in-depth the information is that you collect. Now that you’ve developed helpful subgroups, begin to adjust your marketing strategies as such to resonate with your audience in the best way possible.

Offer multiple ways to get involved.

Your donor data, as mentioned above, can provide crucial insights into how to involve your donors with your mission best. After you’ve nailed down the initial segments by general demographics and involvement, consider the ways donors give to your cause. Then, meet them where they are to maximize their impact on your mission.

To get started, look into your donor’s engagement history in your CRM. Here are a few of the most common ways individuals can engage with  your nonprofit:

• Monetary donations: These are any sort of cash or online donation. These are the donors you’ll reach out to when hosting an annual fund campaign, are raising money for a specific cause, and anything having to do with writing a check to your organization.

• In-kind donations: These donors give valuable products or services to your organization. This can be from a company, an individual, or a trust. For example, if your team is hosting an upcoming charity event, search for product donations or auction items to make the event as successful as possible. 

• Time: Separate your donors by those who have contributed time to your cause. This group will most likely be the audience you’ll turn to when you are in need of volunteers to show up for your organization in person or virtually to help facilitate a fundraising event or other gathering.

• Promotion: Make a note in your donor profiles whenever someone shares your organization’s content on their social media feeds. You’ll know who to depend on if you ever need to ask a group of supporters to promote your posts further to their networks of followers.

By tracking your donors and their engagement history, you can begin to clarify your strategy on meeting them where they are. According to GivingMail, asking for donations should be tactful based on previous engagements. You can even maximize your donations with a few pointed questions like these:

• How are you asking for donations?

• What are you requesting from each group to push your mission forward?

• Who are you asking for support, and why?

When your organization begins to tune into donors based on their willingness and preferences to give, you can easily meet their needs where they are. Let’s get into the final metric to track when making insights about your donors: your platform KPIs.

Track your donor engagements per platform.

Finally, your team can clarify its outreach strategy by paying attention to your social media KPIs. According to these social media insights, social media marketing is a preferred platform for nonprofits due to its cost-efficiency and ease of content distribution to supportersYour team can determine a few things about your donor audience per your social media platforms. Namely, you’ll have an inside look into:

• The most popular platform for reaching your audience.

• When your donors are seeing your content.

• Which outreach methods are most effective for your donors.

As a result, It’s likely that your marketing strategy can most effectively reach donors with a  multi-channel approach. To get a better read on your donors and their behaviors, you’ll want to post content on multiple channels for the best results. Let’s take a look at how each platform can help you learn more about your audience:

• Instagram: Determine who, where, and when your supporters are interacting with your content. You’re also able to see who views your 24-hour stories and if it’s the most effective way to make quick updates to your audience.

• Facebook: This social media platform can alert your organization to who is responding to your Facebook fundraising events most often. More importantly, you’re able to see who is sharing your content to their Facebook feeds and which posts resonate most with those who are sharing.

• Twitter: This short-form post social media platform can alert your organization to how quick updates are resonating with your followers. Look into the retweets and favorites on each post and determine if this is an effective route for communicating with donors.

From these KPIs, refine your social media strategy to communicate with donors in the most effective way possible. Be sure to create donor segments based on the most popular social media platforms for your supporters, and plan accordingly to reach them.

When you begin to tune into your donors with the rich and hard-earned data your organization has retained through events, outreach, and online engagements, your team benefits heavily. Use data to create accurate insights about your supporters, clarify your strategy, save time, and meet your donors where they are. Good luck!