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Nonprofit Marketing & Communications - e-Philanthropy
- 1. BASICS: Nonprofit Marketing & Communications - e-Philanthropy Friday, November 6, 2015 Phil DiMartino Associate Director, New Media Fundraising for Annual Giving | Boston University
- 2. What We’ll Cover • Marketing & Communications Overview • Integrated Campaign Example – BU Giving Day • Diving In – Web Presence, Online Giving, and Mobile – Email – Leveraging Social Media – The Role of Video • Summary/Wrap
- 3. Overview • Print – Signage, Banners, Posters, etc. – Direct Mail – Brochures, One-Sheets, Hand-Outs • Email • Events • Web Presence – Giving Forms, Websites • Social Media • Video • Internal Communications
- 4. • Who is your audience? – Donors & prospective donors – Public & private funders – Media – Public policy interests – General public Overview
- 5. • Effective messages are: – Concise – Simple – Concrete – Unexpected – Memorable – Emotional Overview
- 6. • Building Out a Marketing Plan – Benchmarking and Concept Development – Building a Timeline – Internal Buy-In – Brand Development – Creation of Marketing Materials – Posting/Sending Schedule – Execution of Campaign – Tracking, Reporting, Adjustments Overview
- 7. IntegratedMarketingforFundraisingExample 1. Concentrated Effort 2. Coordinated Messaging 3. All Channels Activated* 4. Track & Adjust *Audience-specific
- 8. Use Case: BU Giving Day 2015 5,009 Donors $1,046,970.30 Raised
- 9. Principle #1 – Concentrated Effort
- 11. Giving Day 2015 - Postcard The image cannot be displayed. Your computer may not have enough memory to open the image, or the image may have been corrupted. Restart your computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, you may have to delete the image and then insert it again.
- 12. Giving Day 2015 –Video
- 14. Giving Day 2015 – SocialToolkit
- 15. Giving Day 2015 – SocialToolkit
- 18. Giving Day 2015 – Emails
- 20. Principle #3 – All Channels Activated* Mail Email Social Phone In- Person Alumni Parents Students Faculty/Staff Audience-specific channel planning:
- 21. 2,945 5,009 3,126 5,673 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 FY14 FY15 Donors Gifts Principle #4 –Track & Adjust
- 22. $0.00 $100,000.00 $200,000.00 $300,000.00 $400,000.00 $500,000.00 $600,000.00 $700,000.00 $800,000.00 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 New Reactivated LYBUNT FY15 Second Gift FY14 Donors FY15 Donors FY14 Dollars FY15 Dollars Giving Day – DonorTypes
- 23. $0.00 $100,000.00 $200,000.00 $300,000.00 $400,000.00 $500,000.00 $600,000.00 $700,000.00 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 Alumni Student Parent Faculty/Staff Friend FY14 Donors FY15 Donors FY14 Dollars FY15 Dollars Giving Day – Constituencies
- 24. Principle #4 –Track & Adjust Key Metric For 2016 19% of all 2014 Giving Day donors were retained on Giving Day 2015
- 26. Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile bit.ly/MarComPreso04
- 27. Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile bit.ly/MarComPreso01
- 28. Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile bit.ly/MarComPreso01
- 29. Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile Source: Care2 Research bit.ly/MarComPreso02
- 30. Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ bit.ly/MarComPreso03
- 31. • Your Web Presence Should Be: – Mobile Responsive – Easy to Navigate – Visually Appealing – Full of current/relevant content Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile
- 32. • Metrics You Should Be Considering: – Unique Visitors – Bounce Rate (Global Avg. = 40.5%) – Referrals – Average time on page Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile
- 33. • Your Online Giving Forms: – Easy to find/use (fields, pages, time) – Conversion rates – Designations (dropdown, write-in, split) – Recurring gifts – Preselected amounts Diving In – Online Giving & Mobile
- 34. • What Should You Be Thinking About? – Frequency – Timing – Content – Subject Lines – Sender – Calls to Action – Segmentation Diving In – Email
- 35. Diving In – Email (examples) 6 Reasons To Make Your Gift Today
- 36. Diving In – Email (examples) This Time Last Year…
- 37. Diving In – Email (examples) Will You Be The BU Boss?
- 38. • Where Did You Go? – Addresses – Employment – Social Mining Diving In – Email (examples)
- 39. • Social Media – What channels are your constituents on? – What channels are you on? – What channels should you be on? – What content should you produce for social? – How can you make your audience see it? Diving In – Social Media
- 40. • Facebook – 1.55 Billion Monthly Users – 72% of online Adults visit Facebook at least 1x/month – 1.01 Billion Daily Users – 91% of 15-34 year olds use Facebook Diving In – Social Media
- 41. Diving In – Social Media
- 42. Diving In – Social Media
- 43. Diving In – Social Media Organic vs. Paid Reach on Facebook 3 Years Ago If You Build It, They Will See It Today If You Pay Me, They Will See It Man, I’m Smart
- 44. Facebook Reachpocalypse (2014) Diving In – Social Media
- 45. Facebook Reachpocalypse 4,000: FB 50,000: Twitter Diving In – Social Media
- 46. How To Combat The Reachpocalypse Pay The Zuck Diving In – Social Media
- 47. How To Combat The Reachpocalypse Diving In – Social Media
- 48. What Are You Looking For? • Donors and Dollars • Posts and Ads • Cultivation • Building a Culture of Philanthropy • Preparing Constituents for Asks • Engagement • Comments, Likes, Shares • Good Feeling Diving In – Social Media
- 49. What Kind Of Content Works? • Visually Appealing • Student-Focused • Impact-Based or Newsworthy • Interactive • Nostalgic Reach: 35,000 Reach: 64,000 1,100 Comments! Reach: 14,000 Diving In – Social Media
- 50. Diving In – Social Media bit.ly/MarComPreso09
- 51. • Activating Ambassadors • Gamifcation • Incentivization Getting Your Content Out in Other Ways Diving In – Social Media
- 52. • Twitter • Working with Ambassadors • Time-Bound • Instagram • Stewardship • Cultivation • YouTube • LinkedIn • Professional Resources • Snapchat • Behind The Scenes • Young Constituents Where Else Should You Be Besides Facebook? Diving In – Social Media
- 53. Young users are using snapchat more than other platforms Snapchat knows young users are a potential goldmine Why You Can’t Ignore Snapchat Snapchat is working with brands as a news platform Diving In – Social Media
- 54. Video is a multi-channel tool Diving In – Video Email Facebook Twitter Instagram
- 55. Video as a Tool To Refresh Tired Messages Diving In – Video
- 56. Diving In – Video Video as a Way to Say Thank You
- 57. • Defining Audience, Building Campaign • Keys to a campaign – Concentrated Effort – Coordinated Messaging – All Channels Activated* – Track & Adjust • Web Impression is First Impression • Send Better Emails! • Your People Are On Social – Are You? • Tell Stories and Leverage Video • Track Everything, Adjust, Do It Again Wrap Up
- 58. • Questions? • Thank you! Wrap Up Phil DiMartino Boston University phildi@bu.edu 617-358-6466 @PhilDiMartino on Twitter
- 59. Links!
Editor's Notes
- Introduction Go around room – where are people from, types of institutions Explanation of presentation
- Alright so today we’re going to be talking through Marketing & Communications strategies for non-profits, with a focus on digital. We’ll start by running through a high-level overview of the types of things that are included in an a marketing strategy. Then I’m going to walk through an example of an integrated marketing campaign that we did at BU a few years in a row as a means of explaining how to plan for and make all of the different elements of a marketing campaign work together. Then we’re going to spend some time walking through some specifics about web presences, email, social, and video, and then we’ll wrap it up.
- Print – this includes everything that is going up physically like signs, banners, posters and anything else that you’re physically printing and putting somewhere. This also includes direct mail, which for us in higher ed at least, is still a critical source of revenue and contact method Email – we’ll dive in more specifically to email in a bit, but this should be an obvious part of your marketing & communications strategy Events – depending on what you’re raising money for, tying in physical events can be a huge help Social Media – we’ll dive in a bit more on this later as well, but this is another no cost to low cost way to get your messages out. And as we’ll talk about in a bit a little bit of spending can go a long way toward reraching your audience on social. I have video here as its own bullet point partially because for me it’s a primary focus – I shoot and edit video for us at BU, so it’s a major part of my role. But in addition to the fact that you can use video across all of your channels, it really is its own channel - YouTube has over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet — and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views. And finally, throughout all of this you need to be thinking about how you’re communicating your plan internally. This is easier at some institutions than others. At a huge place like BU, this is critical to make sure anything gets done.
- For BU this answer is a lot simpler than it probably is for a lot of people not in higher ed. Our audience is alumni, students, parents, factulty & staff, fans of our athletics programs, people interested in our research, etc. When you’re creating marketing materials you need to consider all of the potential people that will be seeing and responding to your campaigns.
- I actually borrowed this slide and the previous slide from another presenter who has done a version of this conversation before. This all might seem simple, but there are some key things to keep in mind when you’re developing your marketing & communications strategy.
- I think sometimes people can hear things like integrated marketing plan and get overwhelmed, but the key is to really keep all of this simple. Come up with an idea, see how other places have done it well, and develop a high-level plan for why your organization should do it. Build out a project plan or timeline for how this is going to happen – try to consider all of the things that are going to go wrong, consider the time things are going to take, consider everything, but don’t overthink it. Get some potential dates down on paper and come up with a target timeline for your campaign. Bring your plan with goals and the basic who what when where why to get buy in from supervisors and across departments. Develop the brand – core concepts, messaging, taglines, imagery – what are you trying to say with this campaign? Create your marketing materials – hopefully you have resources to help with this, or you have some skills to do this yourself. Develop a calendar of when everything is going to happen, when, and on what channels. Do it! Then, probably most importantly, do some serious data analysis on the performance across channels to figure out how you can do it better next time.
- Demonstrate four key principles that we can apply to annual giving / fundraising (intro 4) So how does this play out in our real worlds of fundraising? BU use case
- 2nd Giving Day in April of this year – 24 hour online fundraising event – alumni, students, faculty/staff, friends, and parents Huge day for us and we put all of these principles and best practices to work to achieve these results
- 1st Principle – Concentrated Effort A lot of the things we do we think about in terms of years – calendar years, fiscal years, etc. When things are spread out over the course of the year, it’s easy for your message to flatline – a constant dull buzz that’s easy to ignore Like tax season, we wanted to create momentum and excitement -leading up to one day We’re all familiar with building deadlines – CYE, FYE, etc. This concept = making new deadlines that work for you Participation key for BU – early April = students, weather, time to plan Realistic runway – VIP phase -> public announcement -> building buzz -> day-of Map calendar to our channels (VIP phone, public mail and email, buzz social, day of all + in person) Understand when to communicate, and how, gives framework Not all perfect! Public launch email just days after tuition increase. Plan, adjust Once have calendar of when, how do you determine the what?
- With integrated marketing, you’re planning for multichannel. Not one approach fits all Build core messaging framework that can scale up or down – write an article or a tweet Us – postcard Core message, public facing – but have to think about all your audiences External vs. internal (know sausage making, add levels of detail), alumni vs. students vs. parents – how tweaked Core messaging framework, with overlays for audiences / emphasize different parts Know when, what, next comes refinement of the how
- We talked about channels in overall timing, but here’s where you get into the detail and refine We didn’t do a chart like this, but we did think about constituencies and how to best reach them [Walk through parents, vs. students vs. RG – p2p element] Integrated marketing is about scaling your message across the right channels at the right time for your audience Considerations – past performance, resource availability ($ or time to execute or people) Have the plan, you move into execution. How do you know if it worked?
- We talked about channels in overall timing, but here’s where you get into the detail and refine We didn’t do a chart like this, but we did think about constituencies and how to best reach them [Walk through parents, vs. students vs. RG – p2p element] Integrated marketing is about scaling your message across the right channels at the right time for your audience Considerations – past performance, resource availability ($ or time to execute or people) Have the plan, you move into execution. How do you know if it worked? Notes: Overall, FY15 had 2,064 (41%) more individual donors, 2,547 more gifts (45%) but just over $71K less revenue (-6%). However, it is important to note that the largest gift for FY15 was $100K while FY14 had 45% of revenue from two $250K gifts (for the matching challenge).
- Notes: FY15 Giving Day had 47% donors who were new or reactivated (+57% new, +27% reactivated). As for LYBUNTS, FY15 increased by 41% over FY14 for LYBUNT donors who renewed on Giving Day, with 34% of LYBUNTS being retained alumni. However, FY15 LYBUNT revenue was decreased by 60%. Finally, FY15 second gifts was down by 186 individual donors over FY14, with a 42% increase in second gift revenue.
- Notes: FY15 Giving Day had a significant increase in all populations, with each individual being counted only once in the following segmentation flow: Alumni, Student, Parent, Faculty/Staff, then Friend. Friends (non-BU affiliated persons) who gave had a large donor increase but also a significant revenue decrease, meaning more revenue came from BU-affiliated individuals.
- We learn a ton from tracking, which leads us to adjust going into our third year - 19% of all Giving Day donors were retained from FY14 – others gave throughout the year, but only 19% of the 3,100 donors that gave on Giving Day 2014 came back to give on Giving Day 2015. Why? Well, mainly because we didn’t use this as a second ask strategy, and secondly because our focus was so heavy on new/reactivated.
- Just one month later, launched loyalty society for donors who give in 2+ consecutive years Timing, clear/consistent message, all channels, paid close attention to performance Welcomed 54 parent donors into society, added 85 more with appeal – more than doubling membership (parents with no other affiliation – not alumni). Planning society took a long time, more traditional fundraising marketing campaign where launch with mail, follow up with email/social/phone Integrated approach gave us more attention at that time and paid off
- Let’s get into some specifics, starting with Online Giving and Mobile. Your web presence is potentially the most important part of your Marketing & Communications strategy in 2015. Everything you do across all of your channels is eventually going to lead people back to your site, either to make a donation, learn more about your cause, or get in touch with you. This chart tracks internet usage on mobile vs. desktops and laptops vs. other connected devices – as of this June, mobile accounted for 51% of internet usage amount U.S. adults, up from 12% in 2008. The majority of web traffic is now coming from mobile devices as opposed to computers.
- Let’s get into some specifics, starting with Online Giving and Mobile. Your web presence is potentially the most important part of your Marketing & Communications strategy in 2015. Everything you do across all of your channels is eventually going to lead people back to your site, either to make a donation, learn more about your cause, or get in touch with you. I think it’s probably fairly obvious that you need a website, so I want to focus a bit specifically on how users are accessing your website. This study from Pew Research shows us that 64% of U.S. Adults have a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011. 10% of U.S. Adults have a smartphone and no other way to access the internet from their house. That means that 10% of the population is essentially accessing the internet exclusively from a mobile device. So your website needs to be ready to be viewed as such.
- This part of of the same study shows how different age groups are using their smartphones. The second block there shows internet use for smartphone users, and it breaks down like this – 97% of 18-29 year olds use their phone to access the internet, 90% of 30-49 year olds use it for internet access, and even in the 50+ crowd, 80% of smartphone users are using their phone to go online.
- The best bet is for your web presence to be built using responsive design. This means that your site automatically adjusts to fit thte size of the screen that its being viewed on. Some numbers here from one study looking into this – Conversion rates were 34% higher on responsive sites.
- On top of conversion rate, usability, keeping your fans and users sane, having a mobile-optimized website makes a huge difference in how your website ranks in Google. Google gives higher scores to sites that are mobile ready, meaning they’re more likely to show up for users that are looking for you. If you don’t know if your site is mobile friendly, google actually provides a tool where you can type in your URL and it will analyze it to see whether or not it’s optimized for mobile.
- We just touched on responsive design Additionally, your website should be intutitive. Is it easy for a user to figure out how to find what they’re looking for? Show your organizations website and giving form to someone that doesn’t see it every day, and get their feedback on it. Does your website look nice? Are there photos of people on it? Is there consistent branding across the board? And finally does your site have current and relevant content for your users to engage with?
- -If your site isn’t set up with Google Analytics, get your site set up with Google Analytics. Not tracking the stats to your website means you have no idea how well it’s going. Just like anything else – print, social, email – you need to know how your website is performing. -Uniques -Bounce Rate – this is defined as the total number of visits viewing only one page divided by the total entries to a page. Essentially this measures the percentage of people who come to your site, only visit one page, and then leave your site. The average for all websites is just over 40%, higher depending on the industry and type of page, so if yours is significantly higher than that, try to figure out why – are people not expecting to find what they see when they land on your site? (Ours is 48% in 2015 so far) -Referrals – how are people getting to your site? Average time on page – how long are people staying on a specific page?
- -Our conversion rate in FY14 was 37%
- -How much email should you be sending? There’s not a simple answer like 10 times a month, but there is plenty of data around this. There’s a lot of data from companies like MailChimp that shows that the more frequently you send emails, the more your click through rate is going to go down. You want to stay top of mind, but you don’t want to flood people’s inboxes. Once a week to A few times per week is a good rule for where to start. In general for frequency, I think you need to be actively tracking how your emails are performing. The average non-profit has about a 25% open rate and a 2.9% click through rate. If you send more and your numbers go down, cut back. If you increase your volume and your numbers stay high, feel free to continue. -Timing is also largely dependent on your audience. In general, weekdays are significantly better than weekends, but at BU we’ve actually had some success sending Sunday emails, probably because so few people are sending them out. In terms of time of day, the peak time is generally around 10 AM Eastern. Once again, this is all dependent on your own audience, so try different send days and times and track your results. -Content of your emails is just as important as any of these other elements. Most of the studies I’ve seen say that the #1 reason people unsubscribe is that they get too many emails – but right behind that is that your emails are irrelevant to the people getting them. Make sure you’re delivering things your audience actually wants to see -Subject lines are hugely important to your open rates – MailChimp has a ton of great data on this, and you should read their studies, but as a general rule, don’t write subject lines that sound like ads. Write subject lines that clearly and simply explain what’s in your email. -Sender -Calls to action – make it clear what you want your users to do – one call to action only – it can be linked multiple times, but give them one CTA! -Segmentation – once again, please read mailchimp’s research, but the rule is simple – segmented campaigns perform better than non-segmented campaigns.
- How is your non-profit positioned on social media? Probably the first step for social media in annual giving is deciding how you want to present your content to your audience. There are a few different approaches to this. The one that we take at BU, and the one that I would personally recommend is by integrating with your alumni association presence if possible. They most likely already have a robust audience, and you can piggyback on the work they’ve done with engaging alums. Work in philanthropy-based content about the impact of giving, and get the audience accustomed to hearing about the difference donations make to your institution. In this approach, you don’t have to build an audience, and your content can be worked in naturally. The other approach is creating a presence specifically for your annual giving operation. Some institutions have definitely had success with this, and it is an option if you can’t integrate with your alumni association. There’s more up-front legwork involved, and it’s difficult to keep up a consistent flow of content solely about the annual fund. Since consistency is so important in social media, I’d go with the first option.
- Three years, the formula on facebook was simple – all you had to do was build a brand page and get a lot of your people to opt-in and like it. Then, you’d create content, post it to your page, and your fans would see it. Since then, Zuckerberg’s master plan has become clear. Facebook spent 7 years getting the entire world to sign up for facebook, then spent the next 5 getting every brand in the world to use the platform as an easy, free, direct way to communicate directly with their fans. Once everyone opted in, and social marketing became the norm for every single brand in the world, Facebook changed the rules. Now, in order to get your fans to see your content, it’s not as simple as posting – you also have to pay.
- Here’s a chart from a great site called convince and convert showing the direct contrast between the average organic page reach for a facebook brand page, and the facebook stock price. As you can see, as the average organic, or unpaid reach declined, the facebook stock price went up. As brands have to pay to play, facebook is worth more.
- Here’s an example of the facebook reachpocalypse in action. In the last world cup, Uruguyan striker Luis Suarez bit Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini during a match. The world, and the internet, went crazy. Of course, this included plenty of brands trying to get a piece of the real-time marketing pie. One of these brands was snickers, who took to facebook and twitter to share a clever little post, without any advertising dollars behind it – “Snickers: More Satisfying than Italian”. Rhys Hillman of BBDO, the advertising agency that represents Snickers, tweeted about their results on each channel, and revealed that while their facebook post netted an engagement of just 4,000, their tweet got them engagement on 50,000 people from a base a fraction of the size. He declared organic reach on facebook to be dead.
- The good news is that there are ways to combat the reachpocalypse and still get your annual giving content out in front of the world. The easiest way to do this, of course, is to pay the zuck. Test out using facebooks advertising feature. Your audience is on Facebook, and it most likely skews much older and more lucrative than you think it does. Facebook is not a tool just for recent grads – it’s also for the parents of recent grads to keep tabs on their kids and make sure they’re safe in a blizzard. The point is, lots of people are on facebook, and for a small amount of money you can reach them. Start with campaigns for $25, and treat it just like regular content. Facebook asks what your goals are, and you can set up a campaign to drive clicks back to a website, like a donation form. We set up campaigns directed to forms with unique appeal codes so we can track the results clearly.
- When you run a facebook campaign, you don’t have to leave the people it reaches up to chance or some algorithm. You can upload a list of email addresses as an audience on facebook, and it will be matched up with those profiles on facebook. Your ad will only be served to these people. Take a list you’re using for an email campaign, and re-purpose the content to build out an ad and serve it to the same audience.
- When you’re considering your content for social media, paid or not, you’ll need to consider all of your goals. First and foremost, fundraising professionals wants donors and dollars. Social can help you get there. While hard, explicit asks generally don’t work well on social, at least for us, they can be effective in certain circumstances. When there’s a deadline involved – like in the case of a giving day, or a specific cause – like in the case of crowdfunding, posts including direct asks can work. Additionally, ads can be extremely effective for direct asks on social. You get it in front of a specific audience, and if the conversation gets out of control, you can always simply stop running an ad. Cultivation is another important part of a non-profit team’s goal on social. For us, it’s all about building a culture of philanthropy. We want to get as much content as possible in front of our constituents about the impact of giving – we share donor stories, videos about students on scholarship, the effect that donations have on programs. All of this is designed to show people all of the good from donations, and to prepare constituents for asks – when they get the phone call or email asking for money, we want them to be thinking about all of the reasons to give they’ve been hearing about. General engagement is hugely important as well. A lot of this is about putting a pleasant face on the giving operation. You want the perception of your school to be positive with your alumni. Have them engage with you about the positive impact of giving and create good feelings about it.
- Quickly I just want to share some examples of content that we’ve had success with on our channels. Not all of these are tied to giving, but you can find tie-ins in more places than you might expect. Visual – campus beauty shots Student focused – donor roster Impact or newsworthy – oscars Interactive – favorite professor Nostalgic - TBT
- An important component of spreading the word beyond paying for ads and just creating good content is your alumni. Part of your social strategy should include your volunteers. Having your message come from alumni to other alumni can be way more effective than from your institutional pages. People want to hear from their friends, so you need to give your alumni the tools and the content to share your message out to the world. A platform that we recently signed up for is called socialtoaster. You can see an example of what we have set up with them – it’s all about gamifying the experience for your constituents, and giving them incentives to perform certain actions. You can provide prizes, manage lists, and track progress.
- We talked a lot about facebook, but what other channels should your annual giving team be on? Twitter is a given – this is great for working with ambassadors, creating conversations, and discussing time-bound campaigns. Instagram is a fantastic way to share images about the impact of giving, and to build a more personal relationship with your followers. Instagram isn’t quite as flooded with brands yet, so if you do a good job with your content you can still break through. We talked about video – house your videos on youtube, and they’ll be versatile to share out everywhere else LinkedIn – this is a good way to provide value to your alums through professional resources Snapchat – Don’t underestimate snapchat as a potential tool. It’s a great way to make people feel like insiders and give a behind the scenes look at your campus, specifically with students.
- -You might not think of snapchat as a relevant tool in your marketing arsenal, but even if you’re not using it today, you can’t completely ignore it. -For one thing, college students are using it much more than they are the channels that you’re focusing more of your energies on. -Secondly, snapchat is already focsuing specifically on college students. Back in october, they launched a pilot feature called our campus story in which people who were location-tagged on campus could share their snaps with a public story. This is only going to happen more, and you want to have a chance to be part of the conversation. -Finally, just this week, snapchat took a huge step toward becoming a content distribution channel when they launched discover – they’re working with brands like CNN, ESPN, and the food network to deliver news in a different way. -Snapchat wants brands on board, and they’re working to find ways to make snapchat relevant for you. Try it out with a class gift program if you don’t want to deploy it on a large scale just yet.
- Producing video can be like your swiss army knife in your fundraising efforts, and you should think about the different goals you have when you re-purpose video across different channels. One video can be used to do different things in all of your different marketing channels. One video can be used to drive engagement through comments on facebook, drive dollars/donors through email, drive website clicks through facebook, build up a content library and a consistent message through instagram, etc. In terms of producing video, there are different costs and different levels of productions. At BU, we’ve made a concentrated effort to bring video production in-house. I have video production experience, and with relatively small up-front investments we’ve been able to buy a modest kit of production gear and editing software – this allows us to produce the content we want at a level we’re comfortable with. But you can use your cell phone and even more inexpensive software to get this done with less staff time and less experience – imovie, pinnacle, etc. - and of course you can hire production companies to take it to the next level.
- Every year we send out a donor roster at BU. This year, we produced a short video to go in our emails announcing the donor roster. Our campaign site saw the most unique visitors in one day that it’s ever gotten. On top of that, although we didn’t include an explicit ask, the video generated over $12,000 in revenue from about 50 unique donors. All told, it cost us under $500 to produce the video. The point here is that video can be used as a way to transform things your constituents are used to seeing and tuning out into something new and exciting. Donor rosters, stewardship pieces, everyday asks - anything