The nonprofit sector is the third-largest workforce in the U.S., behind only retail and manufacturing. It represents 10 percent of the American workforce or 11.4 million jobs. This includes nonprofits like charities and arts organizations.
So how do you ensure that your nonprofit advertising stands out amongst your competitors?
Nonprofits are tasked with the most significant marketing challenge of all – having limited advertising funds. It can be challenging to raise awareness for their cause without spending substantial money and competing with private businesses with big budgets.
While there is a financial challenge for non-profit marketing, it doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed. The key is having a robust marketing strategy in place and a combination of personalization, targeting, automation, and printed advertising material.
Let’s take a look at how this can be achieved.
What is non-profit marketing?
First, let’s define what nonprofit marketing is.
“Nonprofit marketing refers to activities and strategies that spread the message of the organization, as well as solicit donations and call for volunteers.”
Best nonprofit marketing campaigns
Targeting is key
The good news is that almost 63 million Americans — 25 percent of the adult population — volunteer their time, talents, and energy to make a difference. So, there is a big audience for non-profit businesses to target.
To execute an effective nonprofit marketing strategy, it is vital to ensure you have the right tools in place. In addition, there is no point in running a number of nonprofit advertising without the tools to measure and track their effectiveness.
Most importantly, you need to understand your target audience and find ways to connect and engage with them directly. It’s essential to tap into the local area and the potential opportunities local business owners and residents present in donating or volunteering time to nonprofits.
Targeted advertising is one of the most cost-effective strategies to reach potential donors. The key is to build and segment a database of targets that receive bespoke communications. The message sent to them should be focused and direct, so it seems you are speaking directly to them. Unfortunately, people are often bombarded with lots of messages from nonprofits, and little of it is absorbed as it is impersonal.
Once a database is set up, managing ongoing marketing and advertising campaign can be done via direct automated mail campaigns.
It may sound easy, but many nonprofits struggle with this.
According to a recent study by the Content Marketing Institute, nearly 50 percent of nonprofit professionals said they were challenged with a lack of knowledge and training about marketing. In addition, only 23 percent said they have a documented content strategy.
Luckily there are options available to nonprofits to assist with their nonprofit marketing and nonprofit advertising. And ensure that your business isn’t in the 77% segment without an effective strategy.
Where to advertise nonprofits?
Take it directly to the public
Marketing needs targeted personalization in order to drive qualified leads and ultimately donations.
And for that reason, many businesses are turning to direct automated mail campaigns.
Previously running a direct mail campaign for any industry was time-consuming and hard to track. However, Postalytics has devised a system that has turned direct mail into perhaps the best nonprofit advertising method available. With our customized system, integrated direct mail campaigns literally take minutes rather than weeks to produce.
Direct Mail- the future of nonprofit advertising
Bringing direct mail into the digital age
Direct mail cuts through the clutter and gets into the hands of prospective clients. People are in a different psychological frame of mind when reading their physical mail than when they are reading emails which are often seen as an annoying interruption.
Think of the difference in the mindset you have when you are bombarded with emails filling your inbox versus receiving a well-produced printed brochure or flyer personally addressed to you.
And now, businesses can access a full range of statistics for their direct mail printed campaign. You can track the delivery and response status of each piece you send. In this way, direct mail campaigns can perfectly complement any digital or email marketing that is being run.
Printed Material
If people are going to donate to a nonprofit, they want to be assured they are dealing with a professional business. One way to achieve this is through quality printed material.
Printed brochures will make a strong first impression to prospective clients providing a tangible hard copy that they can review. It represents your brand and offers more than an online advertisement.
Creating brochures need no longer be the sole domain of graphic designers. Using one of the Postalytics brochure templates in our direct mail designer is easy. The intuitive drag-and-drop online editor tools allow you to overlay text onto our tried and tested templates.
You can easily review how to create brochures here.
Of course, it is not always necessary to produce real estate brochures for each campaign. There is a range of direct mail options that allow for personalization. This personalization enables the nonprofit to create a connection with people who like to believe the message has been targeted directly to them.
Other options are to create letters, create a postcard, or create flyers. These can be a holiday message for Thanksgiving or Christmas, a birthday note, or just a message to check in. Again, the automated system allows for a deeper relationship with your community.
Tracking
Nonprofits need to track every dollar spent carefully, so it’s essential to measure the return on investment of every advertising dollar spent. Thankfully the Direct Mail options offered by Postalytics can quickly provide clarity and insight into the impact of every campaign.
Metrics include the delivery status of every piece of mail—whether it is delivered, forwarded, or returned. And our patent-pending direct mail audience tracking provides a detailed understanding of how your audience responds and converts online. This tool is used to analyze the effectiveness of a campaign, assist with remarketing efforts, and renew focus on clients that engage with the campaign.
Your direct mail printed material can have QR codes and personalized URLs added to them that can be measured and tracked and provide remarketing options.
Remarketing
Not every person will respond to a nonprofit advertising campaign. However, this doesn’t mean your business should forget about them.
The Postalytics system offers an easy way to remarket to clients. Working with a CRM like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zapier workflows can be set to send postcards, flyers, or letters to email non-responders automatically.
Our clients can easily construct multi-channel/multi-touch campaigns by sending triggered emails when mail is delivered or responding to your targets. Personalized notes and letters can be created and included in the sales and marketing process.
This can be an effective way to stay “top of mind” and drive visitors that engaged previously back to website.
It may surprise you that the industry average response rate for digital ad retargeting is 0.5%, while the average response rate for direct mail retargeting is 4%.
This makes direct mail remarketing is 800% more effective than relying on digital.
Nonprofit marketing case study
The proof is in the pudding, so it’s always good to look at case studies to see campaigns that have been implemented effectively.
One such example is that of the nonprofit Homestart. For over 26 years, Homestart has been helping residents in the Greater Boston area who are experiencing homelessness or housing instability to regain and maintain a stable home– safe, affordable housing connected to a community of support.
The organization has assisted over 14,000 individuals living on the street or in shelters and has prevented thousands of families from losing their homes.
You can read about their successful non-profit marketing campaign and how they have used direct mail to drive donations, event registration, and branding.
“With so much communication today being digital, a physical mail piece someone can hold in their hands is a literal touchpoint that stands out” Lang Haynes, Homestart
Level up your nonprofit marketing
Ensure your nonprofit advertising stands out with a proven marketing tool. Direct mail campaigns offer targeted, trackable, and personalized marketing. But, most importantly, they deliver results.
Postalytics can set up your business for the best chance of marketing success using our direct automated mail campaigns. Our easy-to-use templates, tracking and remarketing processes, and QR code and personal URLs combine to maximize the results of your nonprofit advertising.
For more information on the system, options and pricing, sign up here.