The Quick Guide to Marketing Automation for Nonprofits
Are you ready to streamline your marketing like a boss?
Marketing automation is a next-level strategy that can help you scale your efforts, so you’re spending less time while getting better and more targeted results.
Marketing automation is simply the act of automating all the repetitive tasks involved with your marketing. For a start, you can use it to create and send out a sequence of emails to your subscribers or set up scheduled posting for your social media channels.
Marketing automation can help you carry out batch marketing in a way that still feels personalized and engaging. It’s time to invest in automation tools. Once you do, there’s no looking back.
How marketing automation will help your mission
Marketing automation can be your greatest ally in furthering your nonprofit mission. Use it to:
Plan and create your content in batches ahead of time and schedule them for posting at future times or dates.
Continually engage with your subscribers, so you’re always top of mind with them.
Allow you to focus on creating quality content.
Ensure your communications are consistent across all your channels.
Get in-depth insights into audience types using analytics and find out what kind of content works the best in terms of open rates and engagements.
Generate personalized messaging and interaction.
While you can go for marketing automation at any time, it’s best considered when you have some experience in marketing for your nonprofit already and you’re ready to scale up and refine your results.
Types of marketing automation
Marketing automation isn’t just limited to email marketing or social media management. Here are just a few of the marketing activities automation can help you with:
Set up forms and landing pages with automated responses and lead capture.
Segment your email lists so you can create entire email sequences for specific sub-sections such as donors, board members, volunteers, or beneficiaries.
Get detailed reports into how well your marketing is working. You can find out, for example, how many people have opened your emails and split-test emails to find out which ones are working the best.
Integrate with your favorite CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool.
Omnichannel support and communication - where you can connect with your subscribers through multiple channels - email, social media, text messaging, chatbots, and more.
Marketing Automation Dos and Don'ts
Do start small: Test your emails and rule-based email generation for small audiences before going in for complicated sequences. This will help you iron out any kinks and refine your processes.
Do segment your lists: Remember to set up your lead generation so that your subscribers are automatically getting segmented to different types such as donors, fundraisers, volunteers, or board members. This will help you avoid sending out unwanted or irrelevant content.
Don’t spam: Sending a lot of emails at once or sending too many fundraiser messages counts as spamming. Think of email marketing as a way to build relationships first. Use segmenting to send emails that are relevant and organize your posting schedule.
Don’t rely on automation for everything: Automation can help you organize your marketing activities for the best results. But automation can’t create content for you, and at the end of the day, you still need to manage what your software is doing. Also, remember that automation can never take the place of real-world engagement.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help: It’s ok not to know everything. Hiring an expert can help you through the initial phase of familiarizing yourself with everything your automation software can do and best practices.
Best marketing automation software for nonprofits
With that said, here are some of the best tools (free or with nonprofit discounts) that you should consider for your marketing automation:
CRM
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
Salesforce’s Nonprofit Cloud brings together marketing, sales, e-commerce, and customer service in one place. Chockful of features, this software is ideal for personalization, engagement, and creating powerful omnichannel experiences for your subscribers.
The Nonprofit Cloud solution offers free services for your first ten subscribers as part of its ‘Power of Us’ program. Also, check out their pricing guide for nonprofit discounts on the paid plans.
Salsa Labs
Salsa Labs is a feature-rich marketing automation tool perfect for donor engagement and management, fundraising, advocacy, and event management. You’ll love its customizable templates, the fact that it's easy to implement, and its award-winning support. Connect with the team directly for a custom quote based on our requirements.
EMAIL MARKETING
FloDesk
FloDesk is an email marketing services provider best known for helping you create on-brand and stunning-looking emails that look great on any device. Also, design great-looking newsletters, lead capture forms, and make them work for you through powerful automation workflows.
FloDesk offers a free 30-day trial and a 50% discount for nonprofits.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is an email marketing solution is ideal for creating impact at scale and meeting your donation goals. Campaign Monitor also integrates with over 100 different platforms, including CRM, fundraising, and event platforms such as SalesForce, Giv, Raiser’s Edge NXT. They offer a 15% discount for nonprofits.
MailChimp
Use MailChimp to create and schedule professional-looking email sequences to connect and engage with donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries. You can also track how many people have opened your emails and use this information to make your content better. MailChimp has a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers. A 15% discount is available on paid plans for nonprofits.
Social Media
Hootsuite
Hootsuite allows you to schedule content and manage messaging across numerous social media platforms, and generates game-changing analytics reports. They offer a free trial and a 50% nonprofit discount.
Buffer
Buffer not only allows you to schedule content and generate reports but also create content on its platform. They have plans that start free and offer a nonprofit discount on their paid plans.
Also, check out my list of more online tools to simplify your nonprofit communications to support your marketing automation.
What’s your biggest challenge right now with implementing marketing automation for your nonprofit? Share in the comments below. Let’s brainstorm solutions!