As nonprofit organizations approach the year-end giving season they can maximize their efforts with text messaging. Adding this highly effective channel to your marketing mix can boost your message and increase your donations.
Why Year-End Giving Matters
You’ve seen the stats—most nonprofit fundraising comes at the end of the year. The fourth quarter is always the biggest for donations, and December can account for 30% of your income. Even the last few days of the year are big.
Every nonprofit organization makes a push for year-end donations. So how are you going to stand out?
Why Text Messaging Can Help
You can boost year-end giving with text messaging. Short message service (SMS) texts are an ideal way to connect.
Why? Text messaging is crazy effective:
- Open rate: 98% (versus 25% for email).
- Response rate: 48% (versus 2-4% for email).
- Average donation: $135 (versus $45 for email).
People are always on their phones, so reach them where they’re at.
You can add the super simple text-to-give method to your donation options (it looks like “text DONATE to 24365”) and/or start an ongoing text messaging campaign.
How to Boost Year-End Giving With Text Messaging
So let’s pair year-end giving with text messaging—the ideal match. It’s a crucial strategy for nonprofits and an ideal method for reaching people where they’re at. It’s a way to maximize impact for your nonprofit organization.
Simple Year-End Texting Checklist
OK, so how do you do it? We’re going to go into great detail, but let’s start with a simple checklist:
- Strategy: Don’t dive in without a roadmap. Plan out where you’re going, set goals, define success, etc.
- Build your list: For text messaging to be effective, you need a list. So start building it.
- Write texts: Now it’s time to actually write those text messages. Don’t fear—we’ve got lots of help.
- Follow up: Be prepared to reply, say thank you for donations, and set yourself up for ongoing communication.
That’s it. Text message fundraising doesn’t have to be rocket science.
Now let’s go into more detail on year-end fundraising and text message marketing.
1. Strategy
Before you dive in, you need a strategy. Plan things out, make goals, define success, create a calendar. We can help with a seven-step year-end giving strategy:
- Review last year’s results.
- Set a goal and build a plan.
- Start early and warm up your list.
- Segment your outreach.
- Use video and multimedia.
- Measure outcomes.
- Share the results.
Remember to weave text messaging into your broader marketing campaign. Text messaging versus any other channel is not an either/or decision, it’s both/and.
Age-old marketing wisdom says it takes seven touches before a customer makes a purchasing decision. So you need a multi-channel marketing approach to create multiple touchpoints with a potential donor. You can’t just send a few text messages. You need texts and emails and social media posts and direct mail and video and more.
Tip: While we’re focused on year-end giving, don’t stop at the end of the year. Starting and stopping text message marketing will tank your delivery rate.
2. Build Your List
Once you have a strategy in place, you need to build your list if you don’t already have one.
- Web sign up: You can add sign-up forms to your website that work with mobile and desktop devices.
- Email: Invite your email subscribers to convert to text.
- Social: Let your social media followers know you offer text updates.
Tip: Your text message subscriber list is likely going to be smaller than your email newsletter list, your social media network, or your direct mail list. That’s OK. Text messaging is so much more effective, a list one-tenth the size can have even more impact.
Building your list is an ongoing process. But the sooner you start, the better.
3. Write Texts
Now it’s time to write those text messages. Where do you start? Don’t worry, we’ve got lots of help.
Templates: First, we’ve got more than 100 pre-written text message templates. They’re literally built into our text message platform to help you craft messages immediately.
Examples: Second, we’ve got tons of examples and case studies. Sometimes you just need to see what it looks like or how another nonprofit organization is doing it. Maybe you just need ideas of what to say. We’ve got 42 examples of different text messages you can send. There’s no shortage of ideas!
Writing tips: Finally, we’re happy to share writing tips. Our two biggest pieces of advice are to tell stories and to write short. That might sound like conflicting advice, but you can tell brief stories. Text messaging is all about embracing brevity. Mobile devices have inherently small screens and are all about that fast, quick, efficient vibe. So make sure your messages are short and to the point.
4. Follow Up
Once you send your texts, you’re not done. Texting is a conversational medium. People like to reply, and that’s an incredible opportunity to build relationships with your supporters.
The Rally platform allows both application to person (A2P) texting—commonly known as mass texting or bulk texting—and peer-to-peer (P2P) texting. This is important because it means you can send mass messages and individual replies on the same platform.
Tip: Rally also makes replies easy with a simple inbox and filtering powered by artificial intelligence (AI) so you know what messages need responses.
Thank you: As you’re focused on year-end fundraising, don’t forget to say thanks. A prompt thank you is just good manners, but it’s also an opportunity to further build that relationship with your supporters over the coming months:
- Give an immediate thank you for their donation.
- Follow up with details on what their donation accomplished—and say thanks again.
- Invite them to be involved in further efforts—and thank them for their support again (you can’t overdo gratitude).
Keep texting: Don’t stop texting once the year-end giving season is over. As we talked about above in the strategy section, you need to keep texting. If you want this channel to be effective, it needs to be a year-round effort. If that sounds overwhelming, no worries: We’ve got seven tips to make year-round texting manageable.
Bonus: More Help
OK, we were exploring a four-step strategy, but sometimes you need more help. So here are some bonus suggestions to help your donor drive succeed.
Be human: People are flooded with messages these days, and anything that stinks of marketing sleaze or especially spam will be deleted and blocked super fast. You can avoid that by being human. Focus on forging a relationship with a coherent message, consistent communication, and human connection.
Events: Tying your text message strategy to events is a great way to start an ongoing relationship. Texting can amplify the efforts of your next fundraising event.
- Tip: Don’t have a fundraising event coming up? No problem: Tap into other events on the calendar. Giving Tuesday is an ideal way to promote your cause (and we’ve got seven ideas to make the most of Giving Tuesday).
Excuses: Finally, as with any new marketing strategy, there are a lot of excuses and barriers to overcome. Sometimes it’s your leadership that needs help seeing the vision. Too few resources is a common problem for nonprofits and you need a way to maximize your time and make it work. We’ve seen all the excuses.
- Tip: Sometimes the biggest excuse is fear. You queue up your message and you’re ready to hit send—and panic stops you. What if it doesn’t work? What if something goes wrong? What if you mess it up? The ‘what ifs’ can kill you. Trust your strategy, overcome the fear, and hit send. You'll be glad you did.
Year-End Giving: You Got It, We Can Help
There’s your strategy for boosting year-end giving with text messaging. Now’s the time to get started. We can help.
- Tools: We offer integrations with your preferred fundraising platform, CRM, donation form, and more. We offer mass texting, two-way texting, and multimedia messaging service (MMS)—which lets you send photos, GIFs, emojis, and even videos. Our functionality and workflows can boost donor engagement, encourage peer fundraising, increase recurring donations, and in general make your mobile fundraising more effective.
- Support: We care about customer experience. We’ve got multiple options for help including FAQs, templates, and webinars. Plus, we’re happy to get on a phone call and talk through any issues. Read our case studies to see how nonprofits rave about our support and user-friendly system.
- Not sure: If you’re still not sure about SMS text messaging, we’re happy to show you a demo, walk through strategy, and take a voice call to talk pricing options.
Get started: Book a demo to learn more about Rally and start your year-end text message campaign now.
