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What is it like to be a donor to your organization? Is it gratifying? With limited resources, nonprofits need ways to break out of the clutter and keep their donors engaged. In part 1, I discussed one way nonprofits can learn how to best connect and build relationships with their donors. Now let's get into another way nonprofits can not only encourage donors to donate, but also help with awareness and brand building.

Engage donors by letting them live the experience. People make decisions emotionally. Give your donors emotional gratification by telling them what their investment is doing. How are your donors making a difference in peoples' lives? How are their donations improving the world?

Spark feelings in your donors by enlivening your content with stories and pictures from the field. Any time there is an opportunity to take pictures, take them! Ask volunteers or clients about their experiences and then share those success stories. Not only are stories a powerful way to touch your donors and encourage them to continue to donate, but stories can also encourage donors' to spread the good word about your organization. When people are talking to each other they are usually telling stories. Give them anecdotes that make it easier for them to communicate their passion and demonstrate the value of your organization. 

Here is how you can easily gather touching experiences or poignant points to share with your donors:

Chances are good that your email inbox is already overloaded with messages. But get this: It's predicted that by 2014, consumers will receive more than 9,000 email marketing messages a year. That translates to about 25 messages each day, double the average of 10 to 12 that people receive today. The numbers are courtesy of Forrester Research, which surveyed 3,730 U.S. online consumers and 286 email marketers.

Of course, the news is a mixed blessing because while on one hand, it’s good to know that email marketing is catching on as a popular marketing strategy, it also means inboxes will continue to get even more crowded than they already are. If you want your message to be seen and read, how will you break through that clutter?

In response to many customers’ requests, earlier this year we launched Constant Contact AppConnect™ (http://developer.constantcontact.com) — a destination for software providers, developers, and other “techies” who want to integrate or connect a website or an application to Constant Contact. Constant Contact AppConnect gives developers access to our web service APIs so that they can create tie-ins with our contact features or reporting data. AppConnect is a big step towards making it easier for anyone to put their stamp on Constant Contact.
     
We have already seen some great integrations built — Wordpress® extensions, shopping cart tools, vertical software integration, and much more. Even our own plug-ins for Quickbooks®, Outlook, and ACT! by Sage have been developed using the AppConnect platform. 

Nonprofit organizations are feeling the cuts from donors in ways previously not experienced. The tough economy has donors decreasing their average gift size or limiting their giving to only the organizations they feel the strongest connection to. These key findings from the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study spell out the changes nonprofits have to contend with in securing the funding they need:  

• Donations under $50 grew from 51 percent to 61 percent in 2008
• The percentage of gifts over $1000 were down by half in 2008  
• Gifts under $250 accounted for 97 percent of all gifts

With lower dollar donations becoming a larger slice of the pie, nonprofits need to focus on increasing the average gift size from low-dollar donors and maintaining the gift size of higher-dollar donors. So what’s the best way to succeed in a climate like this? It’s by improving the experience of being a donor and by staying relevant to them. Here is one way to help ensure you stay high on your donor’s priority list:

Small businesses everywhere are feeling the pinch of the economy in their downward revenue stream. What can you do to reverse that trend? Try something different. Consider introducing another revenue generator. No matter what the economy is doing, it’s always a good time to offer a new product/service if you know it’ll be well received in the marketplace.  

A common mistake businesses make in adding a new item to their lineup is deciding what customers will want to buy without including any actual customer input. To successfully increase your revenue, go straight to your potential buyers to find your answer. If you have an idea of what they will want and buy, test it with them. If you’re not sure what to offer, ask your customers what their needs, problems, and aspirations are. From their input, you will have the right knowledge to determine what you can offer that will help them and generate money for you.  

Here’s how to identify a winning new offer:

We all get some type of feedback from customers/clients, whether it’s from phone calls, interacting face-to-face, or on paper-based feedback cards/questionnaires. Being closer to your customers is one of the most valuable competitive advantages you have as a small business. You can be more in tune with the needs and wants of customers and prospects in your industry. This empowers you to move faster and be less reactive than the big guys.

But what if you could get a lot more feedback than you’re currently getting? What if you could get opinions faster? And what if you could do it with less money? You can with online surveys. Here’s how you will strengthen your advantages by providing customers/prospects with an online feedback loop.  

One of the most important things to remember when you communicate with customers is that it’s not all about you and what you find interesting. Your customers are always asking the same question: What’s in it for me?

For example, just because you hired a new employee doesn’t make it interesting. But when you explain how this new employee will benefit customers, then you make the news relevant. Did you recently attend a conference? Great. Now tell your readers how what you learned there will make you a better service provider.

Taking this a step further, knowing exactly what your customers are interested in reading allows you to personalize your content and make it even more relevant to them. How do you find out what will be most relevant to your customers? Ask them.

Getting more opens, clicks, and forwards is now just a step away. At this point in the series you know how to uncover what your subscribers care about so you can segment your list. Now you’re ready for the final step to surpassing your current email marketing results.

Increasing the impact of your emails today is all about segmenting your list so you can send tailored communications that hit subscribers’ interests. Consider these facts:    

58% of consumers say they unsubscribe or simply stop reading emails because “emails weren’t relevant to me.”
– MarketingSherpa, Consumer Media Survey, September 2008

56% of consumers consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message is “just not interesting to me.”
– Spam Complainers Survey, Q Interactive 2007

Achieving relevancy in your emails takes more than knowing your subscribers’ email addresses, names, and what type of emails (i.e. newsletter, promotions, etc.) they want from you.  In the first part of this series I discussed the first step to achieving better results – how you can quickly and easily learn what each of your subscribers actually care about.  Today I’ll dive into the second step to getting more from your email marketing.

Immediately knowing the success of a marketing campaign once it’s out the door is a huge benefit of using a service provider for your email marketing. But when you get the metrics back, do you know what they mean or how to improve them?  

You can start by looking at benchmark metrics to see how you compare with others in your industry. Chances are good, though, that you’d rather learn how you can get more people to open your email to increase their exposure to your brand, more people to click on the links within the email to take advantage of your offerings, and more people to forward your email so they can spread the good word about you.

Surpassing your current email marketing results can be achieved in three steps.