Nonprofit Online Marketing Benchmarks and Best Practices

Best practices
Given the findings and the importance of online giving, McCarthy and Prince provide a few best practices for fundraisers:

• Always collect e-mail addresses whenever possible.
• Always try to collect what donors’ interests are.
• Think about segmentation online. “It’s a very old best practice in direct response,” McCarthy says. “So we’re providing good, relevant messaging to supporters.”
• Have a good call to action. “If we need them to do something, tell them,” McCarthy says. “That’s what the Christian ministry vertical teaches us coming out of the study, which is when they found a good reason to call to action, their donors were very much engaged in that fashion. We know that makes for a stronger, stickier relationship with those donors if they’re engaged in multiple points.”
• Be engaged in social media. “Nonprofits need to at least be engaged on the social-media front,” Prince says. “The thing that they need to be careful of is not trying to do too much too quickly. So it’s OK to get a Twitter account or get a Facebook page and begin listening to the conversations that are going on versus trying to be the end-all, be-all right away, and kind of learn as you go and grow. But at least be engaged, at least get out there. Get a Twitter account. Listen to the conversations. Follow some people that you think might be influencers. Have some sense of engagement before you decide you’re going to spend a ton of time and resources building out a social-media strategy. At least listen to the conversations first.”