There’s a proven way for your organization to start and strengthen vital relationships with the people whose support, loyalty, and actions you want—donors, volunteers, and even staff (too often overlooked here).
This approach is easy to learn and execute. And it’s something you do on a personal level all the time: Getting to know and understand others with whom you want to build a friendship—learning what’s important to them and how their days go. These insights enable you to focus in on what’s important or interesting to both of you, and how best to keep in touch via a commonly-used channel (social, mobile, text, mail) at a receptive time.
Here are four proven methods of harvesting these priceless insights:
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Nancy Schwartz in Audience Research
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Tags:aclu, Audience Research, marketing planning, messages, nonprofit communications jobs, nonprofit marketing, WIIFM
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Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring this morning, and I’m thrilled we’re not going to get stuck in the snow. In fact, it’s melting fast in the 50-degree sun right outside my New Jersey window.
Your marketing doesn’t have to stay stuck either. Instead, turn to comic genius Bill Murray for guidance on breaking out of your same old, same old marketing approach. He’ll help you take the rest of the year by storm.
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Nancy Schwartz in Branding and Messages
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Tags:#groundhogday, Audience Research, connection, message development, messaging, nonprofit communications jobs, nonprofit marketing
Shaping messages to be relevant to the people we want to to engage and spur to action is the most reliable path to productive marketing. Relevance rules!
But there’s more you can do, once you get to relevance. Over the last few months, my passion to find, analyze and guide you to the most effective messaging possible has uncovered a few additional secret ingredients that are absolute magic. Today, let’s talk surprise…
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Nancy Schwartz in Messaging
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Tags:#relevancerules, Audience Research, branding, messaging, nonprofit marketing
I’m a huge fan of the charity clearinghouse GlobalGiving, and have donated through them several times to causes I wouldn’t have been able to connect with otherwise.
That’s GlobalGiving’s sweet spot—connecting donors like yours (and you, and me) with causes that we may not find, know of and/or be able to easily donate to. They do a fantastic job of it: Since 2002, GlobalGiving has raised $151,783,082 from 407,034 donors who have supported 10,812 projects.
So I was surprised to receive this could-be-better email from them, updating me on the work they’ve done with my donation 3 1/2 years ago to the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.
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Nancy Schwartz in Branding and Messages
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Tags:Audience Research, GlobalGiving, messaging, nonprofit communications jobs, nonprofit marketing, relevance rules
Our newest guest blogger, Rob Wu is CEO of CauseVox, a nonprofit crowdfunding and peer-to-peer fundraising platform for nonprofits.
You know it, and I know it. Connecting with your audience is harder than ever. And that means more of your org’s messages than ever before are ignored or deleted.
So how do we cut through the noise? And how do we motivate donors to donate and supporters to take action? We have to make our messages relevant.
That’s right-things, right-now marketing and I’m thrilled to introduce you to our Empathy Map tool to help you get there!
Note from Nancy: This Empathy Mapping technique is the perfect complement to developing personas—learn how to do that here. Then put your results together and you’ll have a 360-dgree profile of the folks you want to engage. That’s right-things, right-now marketing, and that makes you a 5-star messenger!
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Guest Blogger in Right-Things Right-Now Marketing
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Tags:Audience Research, empathy maps, fundraising, messages, Nonprofit Communications, nonprofit marketing, personas, relevance rules
“Big Data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it,” reports Marketoonist Tom Fishburne.
Remember when your leadership and board members were scared stiff about social media? And when, in many organizations, that was followed by intense pressure to get on social media pronto to achieve perhaps-impossible goals, WITHOUT additional resources?
Based on what I hear from many of you, we’re in the same boat with big data right now.
Nancy Schwartz in Right-Things Right-Now Marketing
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Tags:Audience Research, big data, crm, Nonprofit Communications, nonprofit marketing
The always wonderful Seth Godin published the original of this post today, and I was so struck by his (always) right on the money take that I had to share it with you, adapted nonprofit style. My changes and additions in italics.
Marketing is about change—changing people’s actions, perceptions or the conversation.
Successful change is usually specific. It’s hard to get someone to support your cause, help a devastated region or volunteer for good. But when you ask her to give $5 to provide a reader for Eldana in Addis Ababa or sign up now to staff the domestic violence hotline for a 60-minute shift next Sunday afternoon, that usually work, if you’re talking in the right way to the right person at the right time.
You don’t have a chance to make mass change, but you can make focused change, when you do it right.
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Nancy Schwartz in Audience Research
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Tags:Audience Research, marketing planning, Nonprofit Communications, nonprofit marketing, Seth Godin
Try this fundraising mash-up to close the yawning giving gap you might not even know you have!
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