The Best Thing You Can Do TODAY
We’re a nation afflicted with remote controlitis. With so many marketing channels from which to choose, we constantly switch from one to the next. We don’t focus as much as we used to, and we’re certainly not loyal to one media over another. First, a moment to define this disease.
You suffer from remote controlitis if:
- You mindlessly clutch the remote control, flicking from one channel to the next, posting on FB today and tweeting tomorrow, just on a whim.
- You select one channel and do it awhile (tweet, tweet, tweet); then you’re interrupted and you abandon it for another (FB like?), and then you forget about it until the next time you’re bored or have 15 free minutes. Then you turn on the computer, select the first blog post you happen to see, and start engaging.
- You’re on remote control, selecting social media strategies just because they’re the most obvious or the ones you’ve done before, and not really giving much thought as to how they integrate with the rest of your communications plan. You simply do them (somewhat randomly); then check them off your list and report to management that they’ve been done.
- You’re robotic and passive when it comes to engaging with your channel surfers. Your channels are static, you don’t respond to likes or tweets and it’s not really clear internally who’s responsible for engaging.
Those afflicted with remote controlitis do not plan. They don’t think ahead. They simply do. And here’s the kicker: A lot of our constituents suffer from the same disease!
It could drive a person crazy! So… what’s a nonprofit marketer and/or fundraiser to do? How can we embrace the new opportunities in our sector, mitigate against threats, and not drive ourselves, our staff and our constituents nuts?
When it comes to our consumers, it’s somewhat a case of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’ Plainly, we must fully concede the fact that to be effective today all marketing must occur across multiple channels. It’s not about the technology. It’s about the content and the connection. When Facebook filed for an I.P.O. on Wednesday, Charlene Yi, founder of the Altimeter Group, a technology consulting firm, noted: “Facebook’s I.P.O. marks another stage of the Internet’s evolution. It’s so valuable, because it’s not just about content, it’s about our connections.”
It’s imperative that we understand and hold close the many ways our constituents are connecting with us. This means getting our act together; we must cease thinking about marketing in departmental silos . A recent story in Target Marketing provides some guidance that is equally applicable to the nonprofit world. In a nutshell:
- Be mindful of the customer experience in a multi-channel world.
- Consider ways to track/crunch data across channels.
- Understand that social media is as much about customer service and research as it is about donor acquisition
and/or ‘sales.’ - Think about mobile; acknowledge how much your constituents use smart phones and tablets.
- Be proactive to retain current customers
1. Consumers in the Real World Communicate Across Channels
Sometimes they use multiple media simultaneously to browse and purchase. Are you promoting a consistent message that builds across channels? If people find you on your website, will they find the same ‘brand’ they find in your direct mail? Your Facebook page? Is everything driving towards the same goals of awareness, interest, involvement and investment (depending upon where your target market is at this point in time)? Are you giving potential constituents the choice to learn about/connect with you in all the mediums they occupy? Are you pointing them back/forth between your channels?
2. Do You Track and Crunch Data Across Channels?
Only when you observe constituent behavior across all the channels they peruse will you begin to discern trends as to what channel mix works best for different types of audiences. Information alone is not knowledge. Raw data is simply that: raw. So how to ‘cook’ it? First, everyone has to be in the same kitchen. This means thinking about ways to marry different databases scattered throughout an organization, especially those that store data related to the same constituents (e.g., fundraising, marketing, alumni relations, admissions, clients, volunteers… not to mention online and offline donations). For fundraisers used to thinking their fundraising database is ‘all there is’, it’s time to get hip to customer relationship management (CRM) and cloud solutions (e.g., if you have Blackbaud you may also want to take a look at Salesforce, Papilia or Convio (actually just purchased by Blackbaud), to name a few options). Rather than throw our hands up in the air because the task is daunting, or we think it’s just too expensive, it may be worth some research and/or hiring a data management consultant to help consider the choices. Identifying new best practices (and perhaps borrowing from the world of for-profit business) is challenging work; yet it’s better than drowning in a useless sea of unchewable data.
3. How Does Social Media Impact Your Target Market?
Almost daily, someone asks me whether social media is worth it since it doesn’t make a lot of money. Maybe not yet, but it certainly builds relationships. And this is really the essential precondition to all sales and fundraising. And what’s really exciting about the medium is that we can listen, learn what our constituents value and then tailor content to meet their needs. This shows them that we know them – and people love to be heard. In addition, there’s a real time quality that makes interaction feel genuine and transparent. People value this personally, and they trust it enough to give us feedback and share it with their friends. This builds our audiences in a way other media cannot. So let’s get clear on our social media objectives. If we believe that increasing our fan base will lead to increased awareness, influence and support, then this is a viable objective.
4. Do You Acknowledge Mobile?
For the most part, nonprofits are not doing this well right now. We tend to think only about text to give programs, forgetting that all the folks who own smart phones are also browsing and accessing email, blogs, FB, twitter and websites from their phone. Forrester Research Inc.’s U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast 2011-2016 (September 2011) predicts that mobile commerce will top $31 billion in five years, and marketers will be spending $8.2 billion marketing in the channel. Reggie Brady , direct and email marketing consultant, suggests this means considering significant changes to email programs: “It’s likely that 20 percent of B-to-B emails are read on mobile, and estimates are that 16 percent of consumers are reading on mobile,” she says. “Email design has to change, since many mobile environments do a lackluster job at rendering. Shorten the width of your template, put the most important content or offers on the left and raise font sizes. Remember that mobile users who want to interact with your call-to-action button need enough space around the button so that their fingers can click.”
5. Are You Doing Enough To Keep Your Customers?
We’ve always known acquisition is more expensive than retention. This is true in spades during a recession, so it’s even more important for us to focus on strengthening the bonds we have with our current supporters. If we don’t continue to provide relevant, interesting content and engaging opportunities for our fans, they’re going to break up with us. In fact, more than half of Facebook users, according to a recent study “The Social Breakup,” have liked a brand and then later decided to stop reading the company’s posts, visiting the Facebook page or looking at the website. Social media, because it’s so immediate and interactive, is well-suited to engagement and retention marketing. And when we do this simultaneously across multiple channels, we strengthen our reach and the power of our message. The more we listen, collect/store data and use the data to segment and personalize our approaches, the more we can show supporters we know them.
We’ve always known acquisition is more expensive than retention. This is true in spades during a recession, so it’s even more important for us to focus on strengthening the bonds we have with our current supporters. If we don’t continue to provide relevant, interesting content and engaging opportunities for our fans, they’re going to break up with us. In fact, more than half of Facebook users, according to a recent study “The Social Breakup,” have liked a brand and then later decided to stop reading the company’s posts, visiting the Facebook page or looking at the website. Social media, because it’s so immediate and interactive, is well-suited to engagement and retention marketing. And when we do this simultaneously across multiple channels, we strengthen our reach and the power of our message. The more we listen, collect/store data and use the data to segment and personalize our approaches, the more we can show supporters we know them.
What if the opposite of remote is approachable and the opposite of control is trust?
In our multi-channel, disruptive agile world, wouldn’t ‘approachable trust’ be a better stance for us to take to attract and retain supporters, than ‘remote control’? What do you do to: (1) communicate across channels, (2) crunch data across channels; (3) strategically build relationships through social media; (4) acknowledge mobile, and (5) retain customers using social channels?
2 Comments
Ouch. Such an apt description of our current approach! But we can take to heart the idea of a data-driven and disciplined approach to multi-channel communications. I also have been thinking about the idea that when nonprofits message on these channels, that we are largely in interruption mode. Donor Y is on fb looking through her friend's photo album of his new baby – and we're also trying to get her attention through a status post on our fb page. That means our post as to fit with the overall sensibility of the reasons why she is on fb in the first place. But I think these channels also offer good opportunities for donor engagement – if we are explicit about what we are trying to do and why. If we can engage our donors (as fans on our fb page) in a purposeful effort to increase our EdgeRank through liking, commenting and sharing – and they understand that they are helping us by doing so – then we are building a sense with them that their interaction on our fb page is about more than just fb.
This is absolutely right Julia. The kicker, of corset, is that it's work to do this effectively. When social media first reared its lovely head, many of us thought of it as a quick and easy (and cheap) way to reach out. But we thought of it as additive, rather than understanding this is now the primary way many folks engage with their friends and colleagues and, by extension, with us. So… it takes creativity, planning and ( dare I say it?) passion on our part to make it work effectively. Otherwise, we end up with something checked off our list, rather than meaningful engagement. Thanks for the great comment!