Steve Page
If you’ve decided 2018 is the year your nonprofit is going to embrace mobile fundraising campaigns, Steve Page of MobileCause has some great tips and resources for you in today’s post. ~ Kristina
Guest Post by Steve Page
If your nonprofit is looking for a flexible and sustainable way for your supporters to donate, chances are you’ve considered mobile giving. After all, hardly anyone leaves the house without their cell phone anymore, so donors can contribute to ongoing campaigns no matter if they’re running errands or seated at a fundraising event.
What you should look for when launching a mobile giving campaign is ways to secure a high return on investment; you want it to be as easy as possible for you and your donors to support the cause you both care about.
As a nonprofit marketer, you’re in charge of spreading the word about your nonprofit’s campaigns. You need your supporters to know how to donate, especially if the process is a little different than it’s been in the past.
Here are two tips to get a high return on investment from your mobile giving campaigns with smart marketing:
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Make sure your donor data is clean and up-to-date
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Keep supporters updated about campaign progress
(Hint: If you need to catch up on the latest in mobile giving, start with this ultimate guide from MobileCause before diving into these strategies.)
Ready to kick off a killer mobile giving campaign? Let’s get started!
1. Make sure your donor data is clean and up-to-date
You know how much effort it takes to create targeted appeals. Segmenting your donors, researching the best strategies to reach them, and crafting different messages for each group is time-consuming.
And if the data you’re basing your appeals strategy on isn’t the most up-to-date, then that’s time wasted! To make sure that the mobile marketing strategy you put together is worth the time you take to execute it, you need to ensure that you have the correct:
- Contact info: A phone number isn’t much good for a text-to-donate campaign if it’s a landline, out of service, or transferred to someone new.
- Name: Even if you have the right contact information for a donor, if you won’t address them by their preferred name and title, they might think you have the wrong number.
- Location: The timing of text-to-donate messages is important, especially for working professionals, so you need to know which time zone your donors live in.
You should get into the habit of sending periodic reminders to your donors to update their profiles. Forwarding along a request to update or confirm contact information right before a big campaign is also a great idea.
Clean donor data is especially important for mobile giving campaigns because many mobile giving software providers offer levels based on capacity; you want to make sure that you have an accurate list of valid phone numbers in your database so you only pay for what you need.
Takeaway: If you don’t have accurate information for some of the donor profiles in your database, take those donors off your list for this campaign. It’s not worth accounting for them in your marketing strategy.
2. Keep supporters updated about campaign progress
Donations come in waves during fundraising campaigns, peaking at the beginning and the end. Keeping up your momentum throughout the campaign is the hard part, but you’re up to the challenge!
The trick is to never let up. A single text message or social media post is likely to get buried. Repeated outreach is the key to making sure your message is heard.
Even though this strategy takes more time, your return is well worth the energy. By consistently sharing updates about how the campaign is going, especially as you pass major milestones or give away prizes, you keep your campaign in the front of your donors’ minds.
You can ensure that this extra time spent with communications is used effectively by carefully choosing your communications platform. With mobile giving campaigns, you’re already using your donors’ smartphones as your primary avenue of engagement.
Update your supporters on the same platforms they can use to donate, such as text messages and social media. That makes it easy for them to see your message, be reminded to contribute, make a donation, then share the campaign with friends.
As you share campaign updates to keep your supporters engaged, make sure to thread the same call to action and branding elements throughout all communications.
Each message should immediately remind your supporters about this campaign in particular. Consistent messaging will ensure that a donor only has to glance at your text or social media post to remind them that it’s time to contribute!
Takeaway: Don’t let your campaign lag — share continual updates with your supporters on their mobile devices to keep fundraising on your donors’ minds.
A mobile giving campaign should be a nonprofit marketer’s dream because it reaches donors where they are the most often: their phones! But it’s not as easy as pressing “start” and watching the donations flood in, especially if you’re looking for high impact while managing the marketing with few resources.
Getting a high return on investment from mobile giving campaigns requires clean data and smart but persistent communications, which ensure that your time is used wisely.
Steve Page is a blogger, marketer, and webmaster for MobileCause, the world’s leading mobile and online fundraising platform. MobileCause helps organizations reach their goals with a full suite of mobile-friendly solutions that allow donors to connect and give to your cause from any device. When he’s not working at MobileCause, Steve can usually be found helping organizations with their websites, learning the latest marketing trends or working on his golf game.
