Canadian donors and giving channels. Source: www.convio.com

Online marketing and fund-raising should be an integral part of any charitable organization’s marketing efforts.  Nowadays, Canadians are more likely to donate online versus mailing in their donations according to a recent study by hjc, Strategic Communications Inc. and Convio.  To help give you some tips on where to start and how to improve in this channel, I’ve outlined some best practices for online cause marketing.

Be transparent

• - Ensure that your organization’s vision, mission and financial structure are transparent and upfront.  Your organization’s goal should be easy to understand and meaningful to the target audience.
• - Enable donors to see exactly where their money is going and what they are supporting.

Keep it simple and give a clear call to action.

• - Be specific in what you’re asking for and why, and don’t complicate the donor’s decision with too many barriers.
• - For example, instead of “We need your help to make a difference in a child’s education” consider “Donating $30 will provide 5 children with school supplies for 1 year.”

Encourage and facilitate advocacy.

• - Encourage donors to be marketing mediums through advocacy programs.  Reach out to your top supporters and show them how to use peer-to-peer tools to increase fund-raising. And don’t forget, you already have a strong base of potential advocates to start with – your employees.
• - Create the core messaging for fund-raising campaigns and efforts, but enable your donors to personalize the message for their own online networking and recruitment efforts.
• - Use friendly competition and incentives to encourage fund-raising campaigns. Allow individuals and teams to track and see their real-time fund-raising efforts and how they compare with other teams.

Use rich and multi-media to showcase results.

• - Use Google Maps, Google Earth, GPS, video and other rich media to bring the project to life for supporters, showing them where their money is going and what it’s supporting.
• - Consider using an online visual tool to enable donors to track their contributions and understand how their individual contribution goes toward the greater goal.

Leverage social media to engage your audience.

• - Leverage social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to engage audiences and spread awareness to their networks.
• - Ensure that you have links on your organization’s website to your social media pages, and that those social media pages also link back to your main website.
• - Create clear calls to action, engage your audience with discussions and questions, constantly post new content, moderate discussions, promote events and allow advocates to spread content to their networks.  And don’t forget to let your current supporters know that your organization has a social media presence and where they can find you.
• - By regularly updating your social media pages you can help your visibility in search engines and it encourages people to keep coming back to check for updates.

Use SEO and SEM to increase awareness and visibility.

• - Design your website to optimize Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Use titles, tags, keywords, descriptions, cross-linking and URL normalization to improve your site’s performance in SEO.
• - Invest in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to reach more potential supporters when they are in the mind-set of researching charitable organizations and donating online. Investigate Google Grants to see if your charitable organization is eligible to receive free AdWords advertising.
• - Use social media to get more search engine visibility and avoid any mistakes which may incur penalties from Google.

Invest in your relationships.

• - Invest in your relationships with supporters / donors and communicate with them on a regular basis.
• - Keep email communications personal, timely, consistent and action-oriented. Don’t be afraid to experiment while tracking metrics to determine what is and isn’t working.
• - Track, measure and test emails with your database to optimize results.
• - Consider how your supporters will be accessing these emails and ensure that communications are designed with mobile devices in mind.

Integrate online and offline efforts.

• - Integrate and support online marketing efforts with offline channels to spread the message to audiences in other channels, create multiple touch points and increase messaging frequency.
• - Develop an Online Marketing Calendar that is part of the organization’s larger integrated marketing calendar to ensure that online and offline efforts complement and support one another.
• - Consider running online fund-raising events in conjunction with or in lieu of other fund-raising events.  Online events can be launched quickly, with less overhead costs while leveraging peer-to-peer networks.

Set goals, metrics, measure and test.

• - Set goals for the online marketing plan, track with appropriate metrics and continue to optimize the plan based on analysis and results.
• - Standardize metrics for comparisons, test different tactics and measure to best leverage your email database.