4 Digital Marketing Tips for Nonprofit Fundraising Learned from Benchmark Study Part 2

I began this post with Part 1 on Tuesday and I am continuing with more nonprofit fundraising Digital Marketing tips from the  2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study. The report, composed by M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) takes a look at the initiatives and results of 44 nonprofit organizations, including: Save Our Environment; American Rights at Work; Easter Seals; Oxfam America; and The Humane Society of the United States to name a few.

In the first part of this series, we covered insights on email lists and programs that the report provided and today I’m covering tips surrounding social media and mobile marketing initiatives. This information is useful for nonprofits to benchmark against their own organizations results so they can measure how their marketing plans and results compare to industry averages. The following are notable tips from the 2012 edition of the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study:

1. Get Noticed on Social Media. Social media continues to grow and dominate as four out of five (79.5%) participating nonprofits provided data relating to their social media marketing strategies and results. What’s even more outstanding is the growth in Facebook fans that the participating nonprofits have experienced – a whopping 70% increase last year over 2010. Similarly, the average number of Twitter followers was at a healthy 12,451, with the organization in the international sector reporting almost 60,000 followers.
2. Diversify Your Social Media. Other non-email communication tools include social network platforms like Facebook and Twitter and to a lesser extent mobile text programs. For every 1,000 email subscribers, participating nonprofits had an average of 103 Facebook fans, 29 Twitter followers and 12 mobile subscribers. Although these numbers may seem relatively low, the numbers are growing as more and more supporters chose different channels in which they prefer to receive information and interact.
3. We’re Still Mobile Shy. Although mobile marketing is a new and growing technology that can connect nonprofits directly with their donors and supporters, it seems that most nonprofit have not taken the leap to venture into this new marketing channel. When only 27.3% of nonprofits were able to provide information on their initiatives and results, it’s clear that this is an untapped avenue that needs some attention. When there was a 46% growth in text messaging lists in 2011, nonprofits must really consider the benefits of this cost-effective tool, specifically the methods nonprofits used to recruit new mobile subscribers en mass.
4. Mobile Optimized Emails. Only a third of those with mobile marketing programs have their emails optimized for mobile use. As there are almost 90 million Americans that access their emails through their mobile devices, it’s important to make sure emails are optimized to cater to this growing demographic. This will help increase view and open rates and ensure messages and content reach its intended audience.

With the many advancements and changes in social media, it can be easy to become overwhelmed or intimidated by the different options and channels available. However, organizations are better to focus on the areas that will produce the best results and these can be determined by a more in depth review of the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study which also provides an additional breakdown of statistics by Environmental, Rights, International, Wildlife and Animal Welfare and other subsectors.
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.