With the foundations laid for digital transformation, you can begin to put your digital strategy to work, using the data to inform your charity’s activities. With more than a quarter of donations made online, through apps or mobile devices, the rewards for getting this right can be significant. But you have to be clear on what you’re doing with all this information in order to make it really powerful.
How to use the data you’ve already got
Keep in the loop. Promoting special events, successes and individual donation stories is a great way to keep existing supporters engaged and connected to your work. Profiling more detailed content about your work also helps to educate (and acquire) new supporters. Win-win.
Share engaging stories
Show volunteers how they’ve made a difference and show donors how they’ve helped to change lives. This helps to build an emotional attachment with your audience and builds trust through evidence of transparency. The more you are able to stay in your supporters’ minds, the better! Remember, the digital world is a busy place, so your messaging needs to really stand out.
Share useful content
Give something back to your audience by sharing resources that help them to learn or improve their own lives. Provide guides, videos and resources to help your audience learn and grow. Marketing automation software will help you track who is engaging with this content, and then optimise your ongoing campaign accordingly, using data to inform your charity’s activities.
Follow up communication
Once someone takes action on your site, provide additional information or calls-to-action – such as encouraging them to share that they donated in order to help you reach a new audience.
Automated email campaigns
Over time, recipients will receive information that helps them to get to know and trust you. These campaigns are often tied to CRM (customer relationship management) contact records, are automated and can be triggered by an action such as a registration.
Convert new contacts
Use a new contact’s interactions to further segment and personalise their emails. You may send a ‘here’s our story’ email that shares a video about volunteering. If the recipient watches that video, this can trigger an automated email giving them further information about volunteering with an ultimate goal of converting them into a loyal volunteer.
Track social engagement
According to Lloyd Bank’s UK Business and Charity Digital Index 2018, 59% of charities are using social media for building communities and promotion. However, we know that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be a really powerful way to reach new supporters. What’s more, these channels give you the opportunity to celebrate individual support and create brand ambassadors, the people who will share your content with their own audiences, opening up whole new opportunities for engagement.
Using data to inform your charity’s activities depends on a dynamic and reliable CRM solution. Your CRM solution should allow you to build strategic marketing campaigns, report and track your fundraising performance, automate marketing activity and monitor social media conversations – all from one central place.
