December 17, 2012

How to create an email drip campaign for your nonprofit

11 tips on moving subscribers to take action

Target audience: Nonprofits, fund-raisers, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, social marketers, cause advocates.

If you’re a regular reader of Socialbrite, you already know that email marketing is extremely effective for converting transactions like donations, renewals and action alerts.

Email is also awesome for nurturing a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.

What is an email drip campaign?

A Facebook fan who signs a petition might receive subsequent emails encouraging him to donate, share the petition with friends or share a story on Facebook

A drip campaign is an email marketing strategy intended to get subscribers to take specific actions over the course of the campaign. Drip campaigns consists of a series of messages delivered over a specific timeframe.

For example, a Facebook fan who signs a petition would then receive a series of emails over the next few weeks encouraging him to donate, share the petition with friends or share a story on Facebook.

The benefits of a drip campaign are that you can target the right messages to the right people at the right time. Drip campaigns also tend to get more opens and click-throughs than your run-of-the-mill monthly newsletter. Finally, after you set one up, drip campaigns essentially run themselves. Continue reading →

November 15, 2012

Savvi: A recurring revenue stream for nonprofits

Photo by Clifford J. Steele

Savvi’s new fundraising program resonates with nonprofits

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, social change advocates, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, educators, community organizations.

Guest post by Kiley Newbold
Savvi.com

There are plenty of people in the world who want to give. That’s evident by the billions of dollars given to charities each year. But talk to any nonprofit and you’ll find the challenge is in how to engage supporters, get them to donate, and then the really tricky part – get them to keep donating again and again. What if nonprofits could create a residual and continuing stream of fundraising revenue? That’s the idea and question that brought a consumer shopping mobile app into the nonprofit fundraising world.

How Savvi works with nonprofits

The aim of Savvi is to provide consumers with a simplified approach to saving and access to ongoing offers from retail merchants

Savvi.com began almost two years ago as the brain-child of a partnership between Banyan Ventures and the nation’s largest merchant discount network – boasting over 320,000 participating merchants in more than 30,000 zip codes. Darin Gilson, managing partner of Banyan Ventures, suggested that this powerful merchant network wrapped in agile, mobile technology could be an incredible solution to the crazy world of deals and discounts. And with that, Savvi was born. From the beginning, the aim of Savvi was to provide consumers with a simplified approach to saving. We wanted to create something that empowered people to save on things they actually needed. We spent hours discussing the core principles behind Savvi. In short, we became very passionate about what we were building and the impact it could have.

It’s that internal passion that helped us connect so readily with our nonprofit friends. Listening to any nonprofit advocate is one of my favorite things. Most often, it is clearly evident that they believe in their cause so deeply that it courses through their veins. And their enthusiasm is easy to catch. That’s likely why there’s no shortage of worthwhile causes around the world — in general, people care and want to make a difference. But there is so much to do, and providing support usually costs money.

Recurring revenue for nonprofits

That’s often where that enthusiasm hits its first rough patch. There is always a glimmer of hope and perhaps a small hint of frustration in the eye of those nonprofit advocates when they begin to talk about what they wish they could do – if only they had more funds. Continue reading →

November 5, 2012

Which is more important: Social media or email marketing?

Why social media & email marketing are key to your nonprofit’s success

If you work for a small nonprofit, chances are you feel the pain of limited staff, limited budgets and the limited hours in your busy schedule. On top of that, no one seems to understand these challenges. They expect miracles.

So it’s natural that at some point you’d ask, Which is more important: social media or email marketing?

Alas, you need both.

In the 2-minute video above, I briefly explain the difference between social media and email marketing and why both are critical components in your marketing arsenal. Continue reading →

October 18, 2012

8 ways to get more from your nonprofit’s email marketing strategy

Image by Rangizzz on BigStockPhoto.com

Boost your email marketing power through personalized communication

This is the second of a two-part series. Also see:
• 5 easy ways to integrate email marketing and Facebook

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, general public.

Like social media, email marketing is where you nurture constituent relationships. But e-mail is different from social media in a few critical areas:

Privacy and Intimacy: E-mail is not a public channel like Twitter or Facebook. Opting into your list is an agreement to enter a private and intimate relationship with you, by way of their inbox. There is no public audience to your conversations. It’s one-on-one and very private.

Segmentation: The core principle of e-mail marketing is segmentation, adding people to specific lists based on their interests and actions. Segmentation ultimately allows you to create highly receptive messages. You can’t do this with Twitter or Facebook. Continue reading →

August 29, 2012

How crowdsourcing can help your nonprofit

Best practices to help you leverage the power of the crowd

Guest post by Soha El Borno
Idealware

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, general public.

Crowdsourcing can help you harness the crowd to increase awareness, cultivate new volunteers, gather information and even get work done — all for a minimal investment. How can you put it to work for your nonprofit or organization?

Since the earliest days of the Internet, people have used it to solicit and organize groups of people to participate in projects in small ways. Called crowdsourcing, this process can be done in a number of ways and used for a variety of goals.

In an early example of the practice, nonprofits would post questions to a Usenet discussion board to seek answers from the community — for instance, asking how to write a particular policy, or for recommendations about recognizing and rewarding volunteers. That “open call” approach is what distinguishes crowdsourcing from outsourcing, in which you’d send a task to a specific person or organization for help.

Crowdsourcing can be done at an organizational or individual level, and nonprofits have used it for everything from marketing and fundraising to volunteerism and activism. It’s a great way to enlist help from a wider community knowledge base, and to engage people in your work.

In the last few years, the rise of social media and new technologies made it easier to reach and engage a broader audience. But how can your organization harness the power of the crowd to help achieve your mission? We asked nonprofit experts and professionals for crowdsourcing best practices and techniques that have worked for them.

Continue reading →