It’s hard to find an ecommerce site or even a small online store, that don’t use marketing automation to increase digital sales. After all, who doesn’t want to lower their marketing budget significantly and have a ROI of a guaranteed of 40 NIS for every 1 NIS? NGO’s and non-profits have learned to take advantage of the benefits of automation. Some have built advanced automations for nurturing donors, and optimally manage investor relations.

However, not everyone has internalized the rules of the game, and not everyone properly utilize marketing automation systems. Many still make due with sending a monthly newsletter with regular updates, and sharing financial reports with due diligence. But there is so much more you can do. Much more. It’s time that NGO’s and non-profits realize that they have a powerful marketing tool in their hands, which can help them fundraising. Here are some tips for using the marketing automation systems correctly, so that every organization can turn into a successful objective for donations.

Maintaining donor and investor relations

Cultivating and maintaining relations with donors and investors is the bread and butter of any NGO’s and non-profit. This is where most of the day-to-day work of marketing people or recruitment coordinators is done. The relationship with investors and donors is extremely sensitive, and is based on good will and pure philanthropy, and therefore, any ill-planned approach can sabotage it. It’s a sales job in every respect, that any advanced marketing automation system can easily solve. A perfectly timed personal newsletter, an appeal with personal content and a value proposition that reminds the donor or investor how important how important they are – will advance donations significantly.

Using designated dates

It’s well known that generosity doesn’t have a set time, but there are some dates and times when you can increase donation threshold, and the number of donors. Annual events (AIDS Day, Earth Day, etc.), religious or national holiday (Christmas, Ramadan, Independence Day, etc.), historical events and so on; are all good donation catalyzers, and to save resources and time it’s highly recommended to send messages via automatic marketing channels, such as email, SMS, WhatsApp or marketing pushes in the app.

Building a donor journey

Just like a client journey, the job of a donor journey is to accompany the potential donor, for the entire decision-making process, from the moment of exposure to the organization, to the moment of donation and after. Such a journey may take time, and here is precisely where the marketing automation system comes into play. Using smart and automated triggers, the system can detect in what stage each potential donor is inside the journey. Was the newsletter opened and read? Excellent, it’s time to send a support SMS. Newsletter not read? Why not send a reminder on WhatsApp or a personal invitation to a worthy event? This way, it’s easy to follow the sales process.

Maintaining appropriate and respectful space

“Hey Ben, I see that you donated to us in the past, would you like to donate again?” This question may be legitimate, but no one likes to heart it. A sales call can be embarrassing, and feel like an intrusion of privacy for anyone. On the other hand, if you make a contact through other marketing channels, and get the ball rolling before the actual call, the chance of embarrassment lessen. A survey done by Active Trail found that 88% of Israelis open SMS messages and see the content. So why don’t just contact them via text message? 

Optimal management of data

In principle, anyone can be considered a donor, and the list of potential donors can be endless. There may also be a lot of duplicates and errors in cases where two, or more, organizations operate under the same record. Therefore, it’s highly recommended to improve the mailing list, clean it and mainly – update it so that everyone on it is relevant. Contacting irrelevant email addresses may put your organization on a spam blacklists – and nobody wants that.