Your nonprofit depends on you to keep donors engaged, reach out to new people, and build strong relationships that lead to better fundraising outcomes.
Email marketing for nonprofits is a fast-paced whirlwind of social media, email campaigns, landing pages, event marketing, and online advertising. Staying on top of all that is challenging, and creating communication that builds strong bonds and generates donations takes time.
That’s why you need a dependable, state-of-the-art digital marketing toolkit. Here are five nonprofit marketing tools that will save you time, reduce your work stress, and accelerate your fundraising results.
Schedule your social media posts
Social media is one of the main channels for communicating with your supporters. Posting regularly helps you build a strong brand identity, make your existing donors feel great about their contributions, and bring new donors into the fold.
You can’t afford to let your social media presence drop, even for a few days — but who has the time when grant proposals are on a deadline or a big event is coming up? You need a smart social media calendar that creates and schedules your posts in batches.
Constant Contact’s social media tools let you design, schedule, and post your content to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter right from your dashboard. You can even respond to messages, mentions, and comments on Facebook and Instagram from your Constant Contact account. That function makes it easy to keep your social media interactive and your followers engaged in conversations while you’re multitasking.
Automate your emails
Fundraising — and nonprofit work in general — can be hectic and time-consuming. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, email automation can free up some time.
When you segment your list and set up drip campaigns, you can be planning the annual gala or writing a grant request while your automated emails are:
- Welcoming new subscribers
- Thanking new donors
- Reaching out to lapsed supporters
- Resending your newsletter to people who didn’t open the first one
- Wishing patrons a happy birthday or holiday
- Asking email subscribers to set up a monthly donation if they haven’t become a supporter yet
Your automated emails don’t have to sound robotic just because they’re prewritten. You can infuse them with the same warm, friendly language you’d use to greet a donor and dress them up with images that help you tell the story of your organization’s mission.
In fact, since you only have to write each email message once, you can spend more time thoughtfully crafting each message — and then let the automation send the perfect letter at the right moment to each donor for an ideal email marketing strategy.
Email marketing has an average return of $42 for every $1 spent. That makes email automation one of the best nonprofit marketing tools you can invest in.
Handle events like a pro
Whether you’re working on your annual gala, a fundraising 5K, or a picnic for your volunteers, managing the details of events is a big part of nonprofit life. Event management tools that integrate with your other digital marketing tools are a huge time-saver — and could help you improve attendance as well.
You’ll be able to create branded email invitations with a built-in RSVP block so your contacts can commit on the spot. Create related social media posts with just a few clicks, and send your guests to an on-brand landing page for more details. Your registration page can collect payments and even sell items like raffle tickets and swag.
Real-time reporting keeps you up to date on the registrations, guests, and online sales.
The system is built to handle both physical and virtual events so that you can save time on everything from volunteer meetings to the annual fundraising gala.
Build donation landing pages
What new systems would you create if you could easily build as many landing pages for your organization as you want? Consider the following ideas:
- Construct different funnels for the various donor personas you’re trying to reach — each with its own social media ad campaign and automatic welcome email series.
- Create specific campaigns tied to your progress and reach out to the donors most likely to support each campaign.
- Test different designs, color schemes, photos, and headlines to see what combination converts the best.
Constant Contact’s donation landing pages are clean and easy to build using a donation block that tracks the goal, progress, and the number of donors for each campaign.
The donation block supports recurring gifts, which are the quickest way to build a sustainable financial future for your organization. Supporters can also choose to give one-time gifts if they prefer.
It’s easy to brand your pages with your logo, colors, and style while you experiment to see which details bring you the best results. You’ll be able to track the results easily with clear online reporting for each campaign, in the same space where you follow your email campaigns.
Create donor surveys
There is no better way to show donors you care than by asking their opinion. Surveys are a great way to cement relationships and find out what your donors are thinking.
Constant Contact lets you add branded polls or surveys directly to your emails, so you can experiment by asking a few questions in your next newsletter or creating an annual survey.
Not sure what to ask? Start with prewritten questions and tweak them to suit your needs. Here are some ideas that will start great conversations with your supporters and gather information to guide your future communications.
- Would they rather receive statements by email or snail mail?
- Which social media channels do they use?
- How did they first learn of your organization?
- What prompted them to support your mission?
- What aspect or activity of the organization do they value most?
- What has your nonprofit done in the last year that delighted them?
- What have you done that irritated them?
- What programs would they like to see in the future?
- Are they happy with the amount of communication they receive from you? Would they like less? More?
- What are they most curious about? What information do they want in future newsletters or emails?
You’ll love the information you get from this two-way communication with your donors, and they’ll love being asked what they think.
Putting it all together
The best thing about these nonprofit marketing tools from Constant Contact is that they’re all in one place. Your logo and your best digital assets will be at your fingertips while you’re creating your emails, social media posts, landing pages, and surveys, so it’s easy to create a consistent brand look.
The whole system integrates easily with your website and with apps like Kindful and Donorperfect to create a seamless online presence.
Check out The Download, our official marketing advisor playbook, for more digital marketing advice for nonprofits.
