Nonprofit Omnichannel Marketing: The Powerful Strategy You Need To Know

Imagine this: 

You’re heading out the door to your workplace first thing in the morning.

As you pull away from the house, a jogger passes you, going the opposite direction. 

He’s in military battle fatigues, and his pace is steady, neither relaxed nor flat-out. So obviously doing physical training. Nothing too unusual there.

But he has a bushy mustache that he’s dyed purple. 

Odd. Didn’t think the army allowed that kind of thing. And on his head is a beret, which isn’t unusual, except it’s a flaming bright orange.

An orange beret? Purple mustache?

(Shaking head.) Never mind. You’re late. 

You step on the gas, and then notice the low-fuel light on the dash.

Drat. Now you have to stop for gas. 

As you’re filling the tank, you glance out the window. There’s the same guy, jogging again. In the direction you’ve just come from. How’d he get here so fast? Speedy . . .

Arriving at the office, you park, and head to the front door. As you walk in, you glance sideways at the school bus. It’s just stopped to collect the neighborhood kids.

And wouldn’t you know it, but . . . there goes another set of battle fatigues, running right in front the bus. 

Wait, wha-a-a-a-t . . . ? 

I think it’s the same guy, again. Only this time, the mustache is bright orange, and the beret purple with white polka-dots.

Walking into the office, you say, Any of you guys see army guys with brightly colored mustaches and berets out running today?

But the looks you get sort of say, Ummmmm . . . no?

The day goes by. You pop out of the office after lunch to clear your head, and the first thing you see, the first thing … is another mustache and beret running down the street away from you. Azure and neon pink this time.

5.15pm rolls around, and you suddenly realize that if you don’t make a hasty exit, somebody at home is going to be annoyed by your late arrival. You head out.

Sticking your cellphone in its holder on the front dash, you head down the street, and glance in the rear-view. A mauve mustache and fuchsia beret cross the street behind you.

“Siri . . . why am I seeing battle fatigues and brightly colored berets and mustaches everywhere I go today?”

THAT illustrates why nonprofit omnichannel marketing works. 

When you see something new and remarkable for the first time, it catches your attention, but doesn’t retain it. When you see it a second time, it registers a little longer. When you see it a third time, it makes you think, Huh!

When you see it a fourth and fifth time?

You can’t dismiss it any longer. It so captures the curiosity, that it seems like this New Remarkable Thing is everywhere. You can’t NOT investigate it. 

In this article, we explore why multi-channel digital marketing works, and how nonprofits can leverage it effectively.

1. Advantages of omnichannel marketing for nonprofits

A nonprofit that excels at multiple digital marketing channels seems to be everywhere to new potential and existing stakeholders.

1.1 The Stickiness factor (also known as, What’s wrong with just email?)

If you, the nonprofit marketer, have a prospect’s email address . . .

But that’s ALL you have . . .

And your latest email is just one of 30+ emails they get every day . . .  

Your message probably gets lost. Or worse, on a day when they decide to cut down on their email, they unsubscribe.

BUT if you also have their cellphone number, and they see an occasional text from you . . .

You seem that little bit more legit in their eyes. So they stay subscribed.And better yet, if you have their physical address, and send them the occasional piece of direct mail you are more legit still. The relationship is now “sticky”.

In fact, there’s good data to indicate that cross-mailing your subscribers (i.e. direct-mailing your email subscribers, and vice versa) generates much more donation revenue than keeping your channels separate and siloed. The stats are quite surprising:

Direct-mail subscribers, who also receive the occasional email . . .

Don’t give more frequently . . .

But when they do? They give 90% more. Also, donor retention is 29% higher. 

And if a third communication channel is opened with them, donation revenue is 3X what it was with direct-mail alone.

In your personal life, you are almost definitely using multiple channels to keep in touch with family and friends. So why is your nonprofit not doing the same?

It doesn’t have to be hard.(The answer to What’s wrong with just email? is: Absolutely Nothing … IF that’s the only place your target audience resides. These days . . . that’s not likely the case.)

1.2 Audiences are not created equal

At the same time, people use different channels for different reasons. 

The audiences do not overlap completely. For instance, they go to YouTube to watch videos and eavesdrop on conversations. They go to Instagram and Facebook to engage in conversations. And they go to LinkedIn to foster professional partnerships and support.

When they are on one channel, their heads are not in the same place as when they are on another.

And some people are on just about every channel going, and others are on only one or two (with no intention of ever going elsewhere.)

Which means you will successfully engage with one set of people on one platform, but quite possibly not on another.

An omnichannel marketing approach opens several doors to potential supporters:

• It magnifies your reach. 
• Each platform serves as a unique stage, tailor-made for different types of storytelling, engagement, and audience. 
• Moreover, it allows for A/B testing in real-time, giving insights into what works best where and with whom. 

2. Two simple starting strategies

2.1 Simplest: SMS and Email only

Executed well, this strategy might be the only one your nonprofit needs. 

Email is still the dominant means of marketing communication, the world over. No other medium threatens it (yet). There are many millionaires today who have made their fortunes on the back of email marketing and nothing else.

And SMS is the dominant means of engaging people in conversation and sending reminders. People who overlook (or ignore) your email are less likely to ignore you if it comes as a text message.

And just as there are marketing automation tools that make emailing easy (i.e. ConvertKit, Drip, Mailchimp, Active Campaign), there are tools that make texting easy. (Rallycorp is one such, and it caters specifically to nonprofits. It helps you quickly and easily respond to anyone who replies to your SMS marketing)

The Pandemic might be over, but the deep appetite most people have for real, honest conversation . . . is not. 

Conversations with your subscribers, even short ones . . . go a long way to making them feel heard and understood, and feel that they hear and understand you. SMS marketing does this with ease.

And with ChatGPT and AI, it doesn’t have to consume much time. Depending on the time of year, it is often sufficient to email your audience 1-2 times per week. Sometimes more than that is needed, and sometimes it’s counterproductive.

The only real rules with an Email Only strategy are:

• Be consistent – Don’t email them twice a week for 3 months, then disappear for 3 more, then reappear again.
• Be real – Readers hate to feel like they’re reading something a computer spat out (even if it’s true).
• Don’t be boring – You don’t have to write like Hemingway, but make sure you’re entertaining.

2.2 Slightly more complex: Google and Email/SMS

1. Google Grant ads

Google is happy to offer free ads on their platform to nonprofits who qualify. (Beeline is an expert at this.)

And this makes a TON of sense for nonprofits new to the marketing game.

Google Grant Ads don’t cost you any $$$ – they just cost you the time it takes to apply for the grant, and then create/manage the ads. So you can get started extremely cheaply, and learn what Google ads get traction with cold prospects (again, extremely cheaply).

By the time you’ve exhausted the grant, you’ll no longer be new to the game. What you’ve learned will educate your next batch of ads, or your outreach on other channels.

(There’s also nothing stopping you from applying for another Google Ads Grant … although restricting yourself to what comes for free will hamper your growth, long-term.)

The process is:

1. Capture new email subscribers (whom you can nurture into donors), and SMS subscribers
2. Test multiple offers (over time, through the Google Grant), to see which ads lead to the highest conversions, and which offer converts best (before putting paid Google ads behind it)
3. Trigger pixel events for Meta (to start building your new audiences and retargeting audiences) or on any other platform, for that matter
4. Study your users’ data (demographics, locations – i.e. zip codes) to learn about who and where they are
5. Roll the learning that to educate your marketing on all other channels 

2. Email/SMS

Do everything already detailed in the SMS and Email only section above (no need to repeat it here).

And after you’ve done that . . .

After those Google ads, emails and SMS messages are bringing in lots of new subscribers . . .

And you still want more subscribers . . .

Or you want to make your Direct Mailing more effective . . .

Or maybe you just want to make your existing leads “stickier”, so that they start (proverbially) seeing the “purple-mustachioed army cadet in the orange beret” everywhere they go . . .

You should explore Meta ads and Direct mail:

3. Meta (Facebook) Ads

Build these on the back of the learnings from your best-converting Google Grant ads.

Use Meta ads to test website visitor Lookalike, subscriber Lookalike audiences, and increase new subscribers each month. And at key fundraising points in the year (e.g. Christmas, Easter), run ads with donations as the goal.

Beeline just published a blog post with just these Facebook (Meta) ads in mind.

Not only this, but NextAfter just shared an experiment where nonprofits who ran Facebook ads between 10 days before and after sending a piece of direct mail to donors saw donations increase by 11.9%!

Therefore, it should be no surprise that all of these ads, emails and SMS messages should ultimately lead the reader to:

4. Direct (snail) mail

There are multiple ways to capture your new lead’s physical address. Here is just one of them:

Send new subscribers to a “Thank You” page. There, offer for them to get the digital resource they just downloaded in physical form, and to just pay Shipping and Handling (and yes, it’s OK to actually charge at cost or at a loss – the goal is not revenue, but opted-in physical addresses).

The Thank You page is not really a marketing channel, as it can just be a page on your website. But what it does is:

• Enables more accurate conversion tracking
• Gives new subscribers a next step to take (while you still have their attention)
• Captures your subscribers’ physical address for your direct mail!

(Between 0.1% – 1% will actually purchase an offer immediately, if it is provided)

Now, you can periodically direct-mail your subscribers a thank you, an update (i.e. summary of how their support has made a difference, sharing your results/accountability, and possibly future vision) or donation appeal.

And even if they didn’t donate or convert on the Thank You page . . . you can gather zip codes of everyone who subscribed from your Google Ad Grant conversion data. 

If a high percentage of conversions appear to be coming from a specific zip code, and you already have donors in that zip code . . . 

A cold direct-mail campaign to addresses in that region makes a lot of sense.

3. A Nonprofit Omnichannel Marketing Case Study

Mike Duerksen runs a fundraising agency called Build Good in Winnipeg, Manitoba, catering almost exclusively to nonprofits. 

And in March 2022, he had a problem.

So did his client, the Mennonite Central Committee of Canada (MCC). 

MCC is legendary in Canada for charity fundraising. Giving goes to the core of what it means to be Mennonite. 

In March, they were flat out raising money and support for Ukrainian victims of the Russia-Ukraine war. (And starting to see some return for their labor.) Mennonites in Canada have a weakness for the Ukraine; it’s where many of them emigrated from a century ago

But they were very conscious the war wasn’t cooling down. (As it still isn’t.) 

They didn’t want to do anything to trigger a wave of donor fatigue.

When out of the blue came word . . . that unrest in the Tigray region of Ethiopia had deteriorated sharply. A new refugee situation wasn’t just brewing, it was in full-blown crisis mode. Could the MCC please help?

Rock. Hard place.

If the MCC was going to stay faithful to who they were, they had no choice. They had to launch a new campaign hard on the heels of Ukraine. Knowing all the while that another Ukraine appeal was likely at some point.

They had one secret advantage: 

Many MCC donors have another weakness besides the Ukraine:  Crises that have fallen out of favor. (And out of the headlines.)

But even so, it was going to call for tact.

More than tact. They would have to throw out the rule book, and do some seat-of-the-pants flying.

Conventional fundraising wisdom says that long emails don’t get read, and hinder the desired result. That’s one rule they threw out – they drafted and sent several, long emails.

Mike Duerksen tells the story in considerable detail here, but fast forward a month:

With a unique campaign that combined email, direct (snail) mail, bespoke landing pages, and a specific targeted outreach to middle and major donors . . .

The MCC raised CAD$836k for the Tigray refugees, all by Easter. 

It set a record for Easter appeals, shattering their own expectations.

And helped save far more lives.

4. How to leverage it – 15 tips for nonprofits

This list isn’t exhaustive. But they will take you a long way.

#1 Excel at one channel first, and then experiment with new ones

Almost the worst thing a nonprofit (or any organization new to the game) can do is to blindly attack all the channels they know, and hope for the best.

That is a sure recipe for frustration, and probably failure. Far better to focus on just one channel to start with.

And unless you know for sure which channel to start with, you best opening bet is:

#2 SMS and email marketing: Still the dominant channels (and highly effective)

Despite the What’s wrong with just email? quip above, SMS and email are still far-and-away the most powerful communication mediums today.

Of the world’s now 8 billion people . . . 5 billion now have access to the internet. 86% of those are sending and receiving email, most of them at least daily. 

3 billion are on Facebook, which is nothing to sneer at, but it’s still a smaller percentage. There are lots of people using email every day, who still have not gone onto Facebook.

Furthermore, 5.4 billion people have at least one mobile phone subscription. There are 6.9 billion smartphones on the planet, and that number is growing 5.3% annually. And open and response rates on SMS are even higher than for email.

And the numbers get progressively smaller for the other social media platforms.

#3 Leverage the skills you already have in-house

Resist shiny-object syndrome.

It’s always tempting to obsess with the platform or hack that everyone else is currently obsessing about. (As this is being written, that appears to be Tik-Tok.) The theory is, It’s a quick win. If everyone else is excited about it, it must be working!

The promise rarely lives up to the hype.

Far better to use the tools you’ve already got in your toolbox.

You’ve got somebody in-house who’s done Facebook ads before? Great, start there, and ignore everything else (for now).

You’ve got a volunteer who’s a photogenic social butterfly and isn’t afraid of being captured on-camera? Great, get them doing YouTube videos or Instagram reels.

 And just do that, until you’ve got some traction with it, and can afford to branch out.

#4 Think both donors and beneficiaries

You want to leverage channels one which you will ideally find both.

And you may as well ignore channels which neither use at all.

Easy example: If your nonprofit is about support for seniors. Direct mail, print news media, and email are likely to be effective. 

Facebook? For donors, perhaps, but not likely for beneficiaries. Same goes for YouTube. And Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik-Tok? Likely to be a waste of effort.

#5 Leverage new AI tools pragmatically

As this is being written, usage of ChatGPT has been exploding for 15 months.

And there are thousands of custom GPTs available in its arsenal. Many are very useful for specific applications. Search under Explore GPTs on the words charity and nonprofits, and you’ll find dozens have already been crafted with nonprofits in mind.

Most (if any) are not marketing channels but rather productivity tools. And it’s possible to make clever use of them.

It’s also possible to waste lots of time and money with them.

So experiment, test, apply, adapt, and quit when you don’t see any quick productivity gains.

#6 Do NOT blindly throw money at it

It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be complicated. 

Small, simple and effective always outranks Big and Expensive. It pays to test a new channel for free (or cheap) first, and gain some confidence that spending money will actually generate a return on the investment. Money thrown down a dead-end road does not magically turn it into a Highway of Success. 

Remember the adage “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”.

#7 Define specific goals first before you leap

Identify some metrics (also known as Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs) before you start down any new marketing channel.

Otherwise you will have no idea if your initiative is given you a return.

What gets measured, gets managed. – Peter Drucker

#8 Apply the 80/20 principle, and quit early

Cameron Bartlett has been a digital marketer from the start of his career – most of it for nonprofits.

Back in 2015, he started working for BlueHighways TV. He was aghast to find that all they had was a Facebook page, and that the few posts they sent out were little more than links to their online radio show. None of it was optimized for social engagement whatsoever, and they were reaching 800 people/month with it, at best.

Cameron started looking at what content was working. Photos, memes, videos . . . 

And asking questions: What type of content engaged with people more? Was it a carousel? Who was in the photo? Was there text in it or not? He started tracking everything, and trialing different types of content.

Finally one day, a post went viral, taking them to 80,000 views that month.

He did another one like it. That took them to 200,000 views. Pretty soon he was up over half a million with that one Facebook page, and within 6 months . . . they were over 2 million.

You do more of what’s working. And then more of that, and more, and more . . .

And ditch the rest.

#9 Use it to outsource fundraising efforts to your biggest supporters

No, that’s not a typo. You read correctly.

Facebook discovered 2 years ago, almost incidentally, that there are people out there who love organizing fundraisers. And they’ll happily do it for you, if they’re already bought into your nonprofit’s purpose. They’re just waiting for someone to give them the green light.

#10 Sponsor/Partner with a channel influencer

Influencers are people who have leveraged the 80/20 principle in marketing on specific channels, together with their own natural skills.

Many of them have turned it into a healthy income stream for themselves. Big brands seek them out (and pay them) to promote their offering to the influencer’s audience. (These are called sponsorships.)

IF you have the budget available . . . 

AND you know the influencer’s audience has a significant overlap with yours . . .

You could sponsor the influencer. 

But just as likely (and much cheaper) is to sell the influencer on your mission, and then get them to sell it to their audience, for free.

#11 Partner with a corporate sponsor

This is similar to #10, only the influencer is a for-profit corporation.

Almost every company of at least medium size is keen to appear as a good corporate citizen. A big part of that is being seen to support a charity or nonprofit consistent with its corporate values. The corporation’s employees can often turn into the nonprofit’s biggest supporters.

The trick is to find a company with a similar set of expertise, subject matter knowledge, and values to your nonprofit’s. 

Then collaborate on digital content with them. Ask to re-use their blog to create your own ebook (giving them full credit and links to their products). This can save you a ton of time when it comes to creating valuable content for your audience. 

Then . . . ask to use all their usual marketing channels, and share your ebook with their audience.

Having the ear (and network) of a big company can open massive doors that will ordinarily remain closed to you.

Beeline dedicated a blog post to this. (We offer a coaching service to nonprofits seeking to leverage just this tactic.)

#12 Partner with another nonprofit

This is another variation on #10 (and #11).

The influencer, however, is another nonprofit whose audience overlaps yours.

In fact, the partnership can go both ways. You each agree to offer the other access to their channels and platforms.

It has to be done tactfully, and there are data privacy issues that may prevent this. But if the obstacles are surmountable, this is an easy way to 2X or 3X your marketing efforts.

#13 Repurpose high-performing social media posts into ads

This is an extension of #6 and #8.

If a particular post garners traction on your Facebook page, it’s because there’s an itch in your readers that something in the post scratched.

It’s almost certain that there are others out there with the same itch.

So create some ads around the same topic – ideally using the same language.

#14 Use donor feedback to inform messaging across channels

Think of this in the same way as #13 (above).

If a donor has fed something back to you (verbally or virtually), they are possibly not alone with their sentiment. So publish a new email or Facebook post or YouTube video around it. See what kind of engagement it gets. A lot? 

Aha, that’s a clue. Keep following this clue as far as it goes.

#15 Send personal outreach emails (or snail mails)

There’s no rule that says outreach has to be broadcast.

An email that is clearly addressed from one person to another (lone) person will quickly stand out and be read. Same goes for personalized, hand-crafted snail mail. 

(A hand-addressed envelope is so rare these days, it’s nearly guaranteed to be open and read.)

5. One marketing tactic that works all the time, on every channel

It’s very simple.

Tell stories.

Human minds are story-seeking machines. 

There’s actually some scientific basis for this idea. 

Joseph Campbell is probably the first person in modern history to posit the idea of “the Hero’s Journey”, and that the books and movies we gravitate to the most all follow this framework. But storytelling on its own is an art form, to the point that we even refer to it as “a craft”. 

All novelists, playwrights and filmmakers are storytellers at their core. Shakespeare, Homer, Dostoevsky and Tolstoi, Jesus, Dickens, Tolkien, the Brothers Grimm, Austen, Twain, Tolstoy . . . all master storytellers. Great stories are translatable across languages (though some meaning gets lost).

So if you can recount even just one captivating story, that people start repeating to their friends . . . you have something that can draw attention (and donations) across a multitude of channels.

And then there are Case Studies.

These are really also just stories, but we think of them differently. 

A case study is a simple account of who has crossed your path (or your nonprofit’s path), and experienced a radical before-after transformation. It’s a story you know personally, you were involved, you changed things for the better, and the characters therein will attest to the facts.

Example:

Jenna had $10 in her bank account, was being evicted from her flat, and didn’t know if she’d be able to keep her two kids. 

When she called us, she was sobbing.

We went to bat for her. 

Now she has another roof over her head, and a fridge-full of free groceries that will last her 2 weeks. The debt-collector knows she’s working with us, and she’s interviewing for two possible jobs next week.

That’s a case study and a story that will grab the heart strings (and possibly credit card details) of anyone who’s ever fallen on hard times.

Tell lots of those.

6. Top list of omnichannel marketing options

Below is a list of 50 potential marketing channels.

The list is by no means exhaustive. Nor are all channels listed going to be worthwhile, or even appropriate, for your nonprofit. They are listed simply to show you that there is an abundance of potential channels out there, with new ones being invented almost daily. 

Indeed, you will not likely need, or have the time, to leverage more than a small fraction of them.

7. Get started with nonprofit omnichannel marketing

Want to maximize your nonprofit’s impact?

An omnichannel marketing strategy is almost indispensable. By leveraging various platforms, organizations can extend their reach. They can engage with a wider audience. They can foster deeper connections with their community. 

It’s about investing widely and wisely, focusing on strategies that offer the best return on investment. 

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be expensive.

It does have to be executed, well.

Should you wonder if doing so is beyond your nonprofit’s reach at the moment . . . it’s not beyond Beeline’s reach. Happy to help you.

Give us a call!