Soapbox Engage Blog

It’s no secret that nonprofit fundraising has a lot of moving parts. Typically your organization will start by setting goals for a specific campaign or fundraising event and then spend months planning out your strategy. Once you have a solid plan in place, you’re finally ready to spread the word about your campaign.

That’s where marketing comes in. After all, half the battle for successful fundraising is promoting the campaign to your support base and letting them know about new opportunities to give.

However, when you’re ready to market your next fundraising campaign, it can be difficult to know where to start. Between the print and digital worlds, there are multiple opportunities for you to reach your supporters effectively, but each of them have different advantages and best practices. For example, your approach to creating a fundraising letter will be different than designing an email newsletter, as both of them have different audiences.

So, you might be trying to decide between one or the other. But in reality, you’ll get the greatest results by taking a multichannel, integrated approach in which you take the time to understand every donor and plan your messages accordingly.

That’s why it’s a good idea to build up your knowledge about both print and digital marketing, so you can make your integrated approach successful. In this short crash course, we’ll help you out by covering the following topics:

• Digital Nonprofit Marketing Advantages
• Print Nonprofit Marketing Advantages
• The Best of Both Worlds: Taking an Integrated Approach
• Tips for Your Org’s Integrated Marketing Strategy

As you and your team move towards taking an integrated approach with your marketing, we suggest working with a professional fundraising consultant. The right agency can help your organization experiment with different marketing tactics and successfully adapt to new changes.

Let’s go!

Digital Nonprofit Marketing Advantages

Digital marketing offers exciting opportunities for your nonprofit— plus, it’s always evolving. While this does mean you have to put in the work to proactively keep up with changes to things like website best practices and the most popular social media platforms, it also means there is likely a digital tool that can help cater your message to your specific supporters.

Digital marketing tools come with these clear advantages:

1. Digital marketing tools can get your message to your supporters faster and more efficiently than print materials. Obviously it takes a lot less time to get an email newsletter out than it does to get a fundraising letter in the mail. While print marketing has its own advantages (which we’ll cover in the next section), digital tools allow you to spread your message quickly and are often cheaper to use.
2. Digital platforms allow you to meet tech-savvy donors where they’re at. According to Pew Research Center, 84% of U.S. adults aged 18-29 use at least one social media site. If you’re aiming to reach this particular audience, social media is the place to connect with them. And you can do this in a variety of ways. For example, because Instagram focuses on images, you might spend time creating content that is driven by striking visuals. TikTok, on the other hand, is a platform on which users share short videos that are often overlaid with music, so you might create a video of a staff member sharing a fun fact about your cause and choose music that aligns with your mission.
3. Digital tools help you cultivate donor relationships. Digital communication is most effective when used to build relationships with your supporters. Why? The beauty of digital communication is that it drives connection. After all, most people use social media and mobile devices to keep up with family and friends. Digital marketing can help you do the same thing— keep up with and get to know your supporters so your organization can better understand their needs and preferences.

There are a number of digital marketing tools out there that can help you leverage these advantages. These include:

• Email communications
• Social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.)
• Text messaging
• Websites and microsites
• TV and radio ads
• Digital billboards

As you’re working with your team to evaluate which digital platforms you want to use in your marketing strategy, remember to use your donor database to segment your support base and evaluate which digital tool will work the best. For example, if you notice that your middle-aged supporters tend to follow your organization on Facebook and interact frequently with your posts on that platform, you might cater a message to that group through a Facebook post or ad.

Print Nonprofit Marketing Advantages

Print marketing might feel “old fashioned” to some organizations, but really, it’s still used everywhere. Think of the last time you encountered some form of printed marketing. You might have seen a movie poster, received a flyer in the mail, or read through a brochure in a doctor’s office.

When you start to think about your own experience with print marketing materials, you’ll soon realize that print materials is still a popular marketing approach despite the rise of digital marketing.

And print marketing has its own advantages, just as digital marketing does. Let’s cover three of them:

1. Print materials can feel more personalized. In a world driven by fast, digital communication, it’s rare that anyone receives printed communication that they care about. For example, most of the time when your supporters open their mailboxes, they probably find a stack of bills or generic grocery store ads. However, print materials like a fundraising letter can offer a personal touch, making your donor feel valued and providing a unique experience as they receive a tangible piece of communication about something they care about.
2. Print marketing allows you to reach older audiences. Traditionally, print materials are especially effective with older audiences. Knowing this can help you better parse out who in your support base will benefit from digital communication and who will respond better to print communication.
3. Your print marketing materials help you bring in fundraising revenue. Print materials, and direct mail in particular, help your fundraising efforts get results. According to Meyer Partners’ article about direct mail, direct mail is nearly always profitable. That means investing in print nonprofit marketing is well worth your while, as it truly helps your organization get the resources you need to keep furthering your cause.

Obviously print marketing is much different than digital marketing, and it has its own unique advantages. There are also a number of print marketing tools you can use, including:

• Direct mail (fundraising letters, fundraising postcards, stewardship updates, etc.)
• Flyers and posters
• Billboards
• Yard signs
• Business cards
• Newspaper and magazine ads
• Brochures and pamphlets

One critical thing to know about print marketing tools is that creating effective print marketing appeals will require different skills than digital communication, so make sure you’re dedicating time to learning the specific ins and outs of print marketing or working with a fundraising consultant who can help you craft your message for print.

Also note that we recommend you combine both your digital and print marketing strategies for an even better outcome, a strategy we’ll talk about in the next section.

The Best of Both Worlds: Taking an Integrated Approach

According to Double the Donation’s roundup of fundraising statistics, charitable giving grew by 4.1% over the last year, the sixth consecutive year of growth. Combining both digital and print marketing strategies can help your organization's mission benefit from this increased generosity.

This means you’ll want to take an integrated, multichannel marketing approach, allowing you to cater your promotional materials to specific audience segments and reach as many of your supporters and prospects as possible.

After all, what resonates most with one person might not be effective with another person. If you open up your marketing approach to both digital and print communications, you’ll be able to find ways to cater your materials to all your supporters. In the long run, this will not only help you raise revenue, but also help retain donors as you show them how much you value their relationship and support.

Tips for Your Org’s Integrated Marketing Strategy

Once your organization chooses to go with an integrated marketing approach, you’ll likely have to adjust your team’s usual marketing strategy as you incorporate new methods of communication you haven’t used before. Here are some tips to help keep you on track:

• Choose and track specific key performance indicators (KPIs). Let your organization’s specific data drive your team’s actions. Set clear goals and then measure them to see how your strategy is working. For example, you might aim to create Instagram posts with the goal of increasing your following on that platform by 20% and then monitor that growth over time.
• Rethink your attribution for revenue goals. As the channels for giving increase, it becomes increasingly more difficult to determine which channel sparked a donor’s gift. It’s important to break down the silos between channels and take a holistic approach to your revenue reports.
• Make your branding consistent across all channels. Whether you’re creating marketing materials for an upcoming gala or refreshing your volunteer registration page, make sure your branding is consistent. Use the same colors, logos, and fonts across your website and printed materials. This will help your organization look professional and organized.
• Customize your message for each channel. This is arguably the most important tip for optimizing your integrated marketing strategy. Remember that each form of communication has different requirements. And not only does direct mail demand different communication methods from a tweet, Twitter and Facebook are different from each other, too. Research the communication channels you’ve chosen to work with and master their particular best practices so you can make the most out of them.
• Keep your channels connected. Design your marketing materials to drive your supporters towards more engagement with your other communication channels. For example, a fundraising letter could provide a link or QR code to your online donation form or advertise your social media presence.

Your team can certainly follow these tips and work to get your multichannel marketing strategy up and running on its own, but we recommend you partner with a marketing agency who can guide you through the process. Choosing the right partner will help your organization find the best communication channels for your messages and ensure you get results.

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When it comes to deciding on your nonprofit’s marketing strategy, it can be difficult to decide between a print or digital approach. However, an integrated, multichannel approach is the best way for you to reach the most supporters and prospects possible, pull in fundraising dollars, and cultivate lasting relationships. Good luck!

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Guest Post by Bonnie Meyer

Bonnie brings to her role at Meyer Partners more than 30 years of fundraising experience, with a special emphasis in multimedia approaches to new donor acquisition and development. Her expertise encompasses several facets of direct response fundraising, including copy writing and creative direction, market research, strategic planning, and comprehensive results analysis.