Marketing automation software automates repetitive marketing tasks, like email campaigns and lead nurturing (cultivation), allowing businesses to efficiently manage and personalize engagement communications.
At MarketSmart, we use the term fundraising automation instead of marketing automation because most nonprofit organizational communications are meant to enhance fundraising to a large extent. But it’s the same thing. There are three different levels, or types of marketing automation. And most nonprofits and businesses are only benefitting from the lowest level.
4 Ways Marketing Automation Helps Nonprofits
1. Reduces Work Requirements – Saves Time
Automation takes certain tasks off the plate of your employees. Things they had to do by hand before can now be done with no human involvement. This frees up your team to work on other more important tasks.
2. Saves Money
Because automation reduces workload, it also reduces your need to hire as many people. You can do more, with fewer people doing the work. Time is money. Plus, many of the tasks automation can accomplish would cost money if you tried to do them manually.
3. Enables Tasks that Wouldn’t Be Possible
Some things just wouldn’t be possible at all without marketing automation. It’s the only way to do it, especially at the scales automation makes possible. Where you might be able to perform certain tasks manually for a few dozen or even a few hundred people, automation technology enables you to perform those same tasks and others without limit.
4. Fosters Better Customer Service and Attention to Donors
Donors, just like customers of businesses, want and deserve good service. But good service takes time, resources, and personnel. With marketing automation, you can deliver far more effective and timely communication and service than would be possible any other way.
3 Types of Marketing Automation
There are many other benefits of marketing automation we could discuss, but these are the four most dramatic ones.
Now, let’s look at the three types of marketing automation.
1. Basic Automation
Even a website with nothing but a contact form is using automation. When someone fills out that form, what happens? Do they receive an email confirmation or reply? Does the website forward their submission to someone at the organization?
Most basic email marketing is at the level of basic marketing automation. This includes processes such as:
- Thank you emails
- Giving receipts
- Autoresponders – such as what happens after someone requests a PDF or makes a purchase
- Confirmation emails
- Password reset emails
- Welcome emails
- Scheduled one-off emails
Basic automated emails like this can also be personalized somewhat with information such as names, donation amounts, and other relevant data.
2. Mid-Level Automation
At the next level, the primary differentiator is increased segmentation and personalization of your marketing and fundraising communications, along with longer, triggered sequences (drip campaigns).
That way, pre-programmed emails get sent to people based upon certain conditions or actions.
For example, suppose you send out several emails promoting a webinar or upcoming event, and these emails have links to find out more. You could create a drip campaign, or an automated campaign, that will send personalized emails to those who clicked on the links based on what you know about them. That way, your messages become more relevant, so they resonate.
3. High-Level Automation
At this level, you get all the benefits and abilities of the Basic and Mid-Level, plus even more personalized and responsive communications – all automated. This is the level of MarketSmart’s engagement fundraising system.
High-level automation is fairly sophisticated and complex. That’s why they deliver exceptional results. However, most in-house nonprofit organizational staff find them too challenging to implement. They would love to deploy them, but just don’t have the time or expertise. Or, they are simply short-staffed.
Nevertheless, if you could deploy High-Level Automation, you would be able to do things like track who clicked on a particular landing page and set up your system to send them a personalized email based on their online behavior.
Plus, High-Level Automation can leverage other information in your database, such as donation history and other forms of engagement and participation, such as event attendance and advocacy. It can be responsive and personalized in highly specific ways.
For example, MarketSmart uses this to send out a survey, and based on the survey responses, each person who filled it out receives different emails. And, those emails can change over time based on where the recipients click online (for example).
This way a large number of your supporters (who are not yet ready to meet with you) will feel like you truly care about them. Your messages are highly personalized and even reactive. That makes supporters feel like you (a real person) actually cares about them (a real person, too… and not just an ATM machine).
This level of automation is what enables MarketSmart to provide a 10:1 return on investment (ROI) guarantee. It works that well!
Most fundraisers and organizations know it works, too. But they just don’t have the staff, time, or expertise to deploy it. That’s why they outsource it and get it up and running (and generating results) in a matter of weeks.
Microsites
High-level automation also includes things like microsites.
Let’s say your nonprofit founder or CEO writes a book related to the mission of the organization. You could create a microsite promoting and selling that book. Anyone who already took a survey and signaled interest in the book might later receive an email offering a digital copy. Then, based on who clicks on that email or visits that page, they’ll either get the book or a reminder that it’s ready for their retrieval. And after that, the folks who downloaded the book might be engaged with even more follow-up that can be tracked using high-level marketing automation.
Notifications
High-Level Automation helps major gift fundraisers (including legacy gift staff and mid-level, too) benefit from a deeper understanding of donor needs.
Ultimately, your staff want to know when they should reach out to a supporter. After all, timing is everything. It doesn’t matter how much capacity or inclination exists if a supporter is too busy to talk because they are taking care of a very sick, elderly parent.
How High-Level Automation Assists Major Gift Fundraising
With High-Level Automation, your staff can receive email alerts and notifications, or they can determine who is ready for outreach by viewing ‘readiness’ data in their dashboard. This helps gift officers exponentially feel more productive because they experience fewer wild goose chases and false positives resulting from chasing after people who care and have wealth but simply aren’t ready for deeper engagement.
Plus, with High-Level Automation gift officers can build relationships with high-potential supporters automatically, without doing researching or writing anything at all. The system works autonomously — sending one-to-one communications that are personal, sincere, relevant, and timely. These communications are what you would develop if only you had the time to research every survey responder, craft the ultimate highly personalized email, monitor their engagement, and follow-up over time persistently.
No matter how necessary this kind of cultivation is for the raising of major gifts, fundraisers simply don’t have the time to do all that work. And donors who care about how you steward their past gifts don’t want you to spend your time doing that work when the technology already exists to do it for you at a small fraction of the cost.
High level automation helps you deliver this kind of value consistently, and you can do it with dozens or in some cases thousands of supporters, depending on what stage of cultivation the donor is in.
With high-level fundraising automation, you can automate certain components of four crucial tasks or major gift fundraising:
- Generating leads
- Qualifying donor prospects
- Cultivating and stewarding relationships
- Prioritizing outreach so you only reach out to the right people – when they’re ready
Automation empowers the gift officer to waste less time chasing bad leads and uninterested people who got tossed into their caseloads by indiscriminate wealth screening software or other research methods that don’t include assessing whether the timing is right for outreach.
About MarketSmart
Our system will tell you when a supporter is outreach-ready. They will self-identify as such, after interacting with the automation, before they ever talk to a live person.
Can you imagine how much time and frustration you would save, and how much revenue you stand to gain, by only talking to people when they want to hear from you – and who have been qualified as having the wealth capacity, desire, and motivation to make a major gift?
For nonprofits that want to dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their major giving programs, high-level automation is the surest way to achieve it, and without any significant increase in your overall costs because you don’t need to hire anyone new. (And, here’s a secret – you may actually be able to operate with fewer people and get even better results. So when your next staff member leaves, you may not need to replace them!)
Watch this 2-minute video of how MarketSmart works
Related Resources:
- WEBINAR: Fundraise Smarter, Not Harder: How to Leverage Automation for Optimal Results
- 3 types of marketing automation fundraising operations need to understand (including one you really need to deploy right away)
- Why Business Marketing Automation Platforms Don’t Work for Nonprofits
- How to Use Fundraising Automation Emails for Raising Major Gifts