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What Is Nonprofit Omnichannel Marketing?

Marketing channels and platforms are evolving every day, and your audience's behaviors are changing. Similar to any business, nonprofits need to adapt to these changes, know where their audience exists online, and provide them with a holistic experience centered around their communication preferences.

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Omnichannel marketing is a lead-nurturing and user-engagement approach in which an organization makes its products, offers, and services available to customers or prospects on multiple channels, platforms, and devices. This approach has become the new standard in today's marketing because of the fast-growing relationship between people, brands, and technology.

Omnichannel marketing is a strategy from which many nonprofits can benefit. It allows your nonprofit to reach potential and existing donors, clients, and stakeholders where they are at the right time. For example, with omnichannel marketing, a donor can make a donation to your organization on their preferred channels and platforms. This creates an easy, seamless experience for your donor and ensures customer satisfaction and donor retention.

What Does Nonprofit Omnichannel Marketing Look Like?

Omnichannel marketing centers around delivering the right message to the right person, at the right time, on the right communication channel. Each of your organization's marketing campaigns should implement intentional, strategic, and cohesive messaging across the different communication channels your audience is using. This doesn't mean duplicating content on these channels. Rather, the messaging should build on itself and move them further along the donor journey.

The omnichannel approach not only includes which channel your audience is using, but also considers at which particular stage of the sales pipeline they are:

  • The awareness stage
  • The consideration stage
  • The supporter stage
  • The promoter stage

Is your potential donor a stranger? Are they aware of your work and interacting with your website? Are they a potential supporter and seriously considering making a donation? Or have they made a donation and want to be further involved with your mission? Your campaign's messaging should be updated according to how the prospect engages at each stage. This approach provides content that is both relevant and convenient for your potential donors, eliminating any barriers between them and your organization.

Omnichannel Methods for Donors in the Awareness Stage

  • Blog posts: Write educational and impactful posts to inform and interest a potential donor who has not yet come into contact with your organization.
  • SEO: Ensure that your website appears in searches related to your mission area.
  • Social media: Consistently post accessible and current content related to your sector and the work you do within it.
  • Infographics: Use visuals to highlight statistics related to your cause.
  • Videos: Engaging and impactful content shows your mission and outcomes. Testimonials are a great example.
  • Referrals: Make sure others working in similar mission areas have a clear understanding of who you are, what you do, and who you support. Make it easy for them to send a potential donor your way.

Omnichannel Tactics for Donors in the Consideration Stage

  • Calls to action: Visible buttons throughout your website will help navigate a visitor to the donation page or to take intended steps towards it.
  • Forms: Make it a clear and easy process for the visitor to donate and give them the option to commit to a recurring gift.
  • Contacts: Make sure the information you collect from donors or prospective donors goes into a CRM or database so that you can efficiently follow up.
  • Landing pages: Create clear, action-oriented copy and clean designs to ensure that the path to donation is easy to navigate.
  • Donation platform: Use a donation platform with a simple interface, multiple ways to donate, and a trusted, secure online process.

Omnichannel Tactics for Donors in the Supporter Stage

  • Contact relationship management (CRM) software: Understand and maximize your relationships with donors.
  • Email: Build trust, show donors how you are using their gift, and stay top-of-mind.
  • Website analytics: Understand how users navigate your website and enhance your strategy accordingly.
  • Marketing automation: Encourage your potential donors to take that final step through automated campaigns.

Omnichannel Tactics for Donors in the Promoter Stage

  • Smart calls to action: Customize the goal or offer on a page to consider where in the life cycle a contact is. That person who just donated should see a CTA encouraging them to commit to a recurring donation.
  • Social monitoring: Track mentions, tags, or responses to your organization on social media and keep control of messaging while being responsive to questions or concerns. Make donors feel like they are part of your organization.
  • Surveys: Gather feedback on your website, donation platform, and other crucial steps in guiding a person towards making a gift.

What Tools Does a Nonprofit Need for Omnichannel Marketing?

The digital world is full of potential donors looking for an inspiring story. While online and offline donors are both valuable to a nonprofit organization, online donors tend to donate more money over time than offline donors. To reach this market in any way possible, nonprofits need marketing platforms and technology implemented in their omnichannel strategy, including a customer relationship manager (CRM), workflow automation, and a donation platform. Using the right platforms and technology can ultimately help nonprofits make the most of their marketing budgets.

CRM

The right CRM can ultimately be the core of an effective omnichannel strategy. In each stage of your marketing campaign, you will need to create personalized content based on your analytics and reporting. This tool will help you understand and maximize your relationships with potential and existing donors by consolidating data regarding every interaction they've had with your organization on every channel. Your CRM keeps this data in a centered, accessible location, including their contact information, communication history, and engagement history. 

Recommended CRMs for nonprofits:

Workflow Automation

Workflow automation encourages your potential donors to take that final step and also nurtures your relationships with existing donors. Designing email drip campaigns based on your donor's engagement allows for a quick response time. Workflow automation allows you to build out segmented campaigns, then walk away and let them do the work. This process makes your nonprofit's team more efficient and enables them to focus on other projects.

Donation Platform

A donation platform is an essential tool that allows your nonprofit to securely collect and process donations. Every nonprofit should use a donation platform with a simple interface, multiple ways to donate, and a trusted, secure online process. This creates an easy, seamless purchasing experience for your donors, which is key to keeping them returning.

Recommended donation platforms:

Using Omnichannel Marketing to Increase Donations

Omnichannel marketing is an important aspect of today's technology. Omnichannel nonprofit marketing maximizes retention, acquires more donors, and increases funding. You can use these strategies to create a more unified experience for your donors where they are online while making the most out of your marketing budget. To learn more about how omnichannel marketing can help your nonprofit increase donations, attract more donors, and empower your community, contact the TechSoup Marketing Services team.

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