Earlier than you may dive into main a textual content fundraising marketing campaign, you should familiarize your self with nonprofit textual content messaging finest practices. One of the vital essential parts of operating a profitable text-to-give marketing campaign is drafting efficient, persuasive messages that can resonate with supporters and encourage them to donate.
Consider it this manner: for those who had been a donor considering giving to a corporation, you’d seemingly be impressed to donate after studying an illustrative textual content that tugged at your heartstrings and advised an excellent story in regards to the affect of donating. Evaluate this to a generic “Donate now” textual content that leaves quite a bit on the desk and doesn’t do a lot to sway supporters to present.
Taking your text-to-give messages to the subsequent stage requires the proper methods and instruments. Use these tricks to make your textual content donation requests completely irresistible to your subscribers and meet (and exceed!) your fundraising targets:
To simply ship compelling messages, leverage a nonprofit-specific textual content messaging platform that may readily meet your wants. Tatango’s information to nonprofit textual content messaging recommends working with an intuitive platform that has strong segmentation capabilities, automation, and extra so you may take the guesswork out of making nice messages and hit the bottom operating.
Armed with the proper know-how, you’ll be in nice form to deliver these finest practices to life. Let’s start.
Leverage Storytelling
Storytelling can play a pivotal position in a nonprofit group’s capacity to attach with their viewers, reveal their affect, encourage motion, and obtain their fundraising targets.
Particularly, storytelling is a robust device that nonprofits ought to leverage when making donation appeals for these key causes:
- Humanizes your trigger: Via tales, nonprofits will help donors and potential donors join emotionally to their trigger. This emotional connection will be much more persuasive than mere details and figures or generic requests to present, serving to donors to see themselves within the sneakers of your beneficiaries and empathize with them. That is an efficient option to encourage them to take motion.
- Demonstrates affect: Storytelling is an efficient option to reveal the affect of a nonprofit’s work. By sharing tales of people they’ve helped or modifications they’ve led to, nonprofits can present donors and supporters how their contributions are making an actual distinction.
- Will increase retention and engagement: Tales will help nonprofits preserve their supporters actively engaged and invested of their trigger. They will help to foster a way of neighborhood and shared goal, which might result in elevated donor retention and involvement.
Now that you recognize the numerous advantages of storytelling, listed below are just a few methods you should utilize this important device in your textual content messages:
- Spotlight the true people your group has helped: This manner, donors can see precisely who their contributions are going to and the way it’s making a distinction.
- Place your donors as heroes in your ongoing journey: Don’t give your story an ending simply but! As an illustration, an animal welfare group would possibly inform the story of a rescued canine who wants life-saving surgical procedure and subsequently donations to fund his care. This manner, donors are a part of offering the answer and can really feel extra motivated to behave by the urgency of the state of affairs.
- Use vivid language: Use description to deliver your story to life and assist supporters envision it. Nevertheless, bear in mind to maintain your story on the shorter facet. You possibly can all the time embody the complete story in a weblog put up and direct supporters to go to that web page to learn extra.
Let’s think about one other instance of storytelling in motion. A church operating a textual content fundraiser may share a brief story a few homeless household who counts on their meals financial institution to remain alive. By urging churchgoers to proceed to present, they will help this household and lots of extra have common entry to meals.
By sharing tales of the people they’ve helped, nonprofits can higher have interaction their supporters, reveal the affect of their work, and encourage additional involvement of their trigger.
Use Eye-Catching Visuals
Photographs, movies, and graphics are key parts to boost your storytelling. Utilizing these kind of compelling visuals offers a tangible face and story to your nonprofit’s work. A healthcare nonprofit, as an example, may share a picture of a affected person in want of pressing medical care. This emotional visible may encourage extra donations.
Tectonic Video’s information to nonprofit video storytelling explains that video is an particularly efficient medium for connecting with donors and sharing tales in order that they’re partaking and simply digestible. As an illustration, you might need workers sit down and clarify their fundraising wants in a brief video. Or, you can invite beneficiaries to present testimonials and clarify how your nonprofit has modified their lives. With the permission of those people, share this video by your textual content messaging marketing campaign.
You might additionally repurpose this content material in your social media and web site to advertise your text-to-give fundraiser. In your caption, be certain to supply clear instructions on tips on how to opt-in to your textual content messaging marketing campaign. This manner, you may develop your subscriber listing and encourage much more donors to present.
Create a Robust Name to Motion
Your whole textual content messages ought to finish in a agency name to motion that offers your supporters a transparent subsequent step to take. For instance, you would possibly invite supporters to:
- Give to your group’s annual fundraising marketing campaign
- Join your upcoming fundraising occasion
- Apply to volunteer
- Create a peer-to-peer fundraising web page
- Join your month-to-month e mail e-newsletter
Primarily, you’ll be directing supporters to present in your mobile-friendly donation web page, so it’s essential that your name to motion to donate is restricted, personalised to the person, and makes use of lively language.
Ensure to incorporate a time aspect in your donation requests to convey urgency. For instance “Donate this week” isn’t as efficient as a message like “Donate by midnight to have your reward matched” or “Donate by Friday to save lots of our oceans.” Be concrete and make it as simple as doable for donors to take the subsequent step. To do that, embody a mobile-friendly hyperlink to your donation web page in your textual content message.
Personalize Your Messages
A donation request that’s personalised to the person is more likely to encourage motion. To personalize your texts and guarantee your donation request feels affordable to the person, you should use segmentation. Segmentation is the method of dividing your contact listing into subgroups primarily based on shared traits.
For instance, you may phase your supporters primarily based on components like:
- Donation quantity
- Donation recency
- Donation frequency
- Demographics (age, location, and so forth.)
- Pursuits
- Occasion attendance
- Prior engagement together with your group
Donation historical past is particularly essential to think about when sending donors a selected donation request. As an illustration, you wouldn’t ship the identical donation request to a significant donor that you’d ship to a smaller, lower-tier donor. Taking donation historical past under consideration ensures that your donation requests really feel affordable primarily based on the donor’s willingness and capability to present.
To phase your contacts with ease, you want the proper know-how. Having an intuitive text-to-give platform means that you can phase your lists and personalize your messages additional by greeting donors with their first names and acknowledging their particular donation contributions in your thank-you messages. This not solely makes your donor communications extra attention-grabbing but additionally helps to strengthen supporters’ connection to your trigger.
Conclusion
Reaching the complete potential of your text-to-give marketing campaign requires cautious planning, compelling storytelling, and the proper instruments for personalization. With a complete texting software program, your nonprofit can streamline its textual content messaging technique and considerably increase income. Keep in mind, the best messages are people who join with the center of your supporters and encourage them to make a distinction, so put ample time and thought into the content material of your messaging.
In regards to the Creator
Mike Snusz
Mike Snusz brings 19 years of digital fundraising expertise to his position as Director of Nonprofit Buyer Expertise at Tatango, a textual content messaging platform for nonprofits and political campaigns. Previous to Tatango, Mike spent 15 years at Blackbaud main a staff of digital consultants that helped nonprofits enhance their on-line fundraising, month-to-month giving, e mail advertising and peer-to-peer fundraising applications. Mike began his nonprofit profession managing the Experience For Roswell from 2003 to 2005 in his hometown of Buffalo, NY.