Nonprofit Marketing Automation: A Beginner's Guide

In today’s technology-dominated world, a million distractions are vying for your audience’s attention at any given time—from social media notifications to promotional emails to digital ads plastered across website pages.

For nonprofits that want to stand out with their marketing, you don’t needthis doesn’t mean you have to churn out more content at a faster rate to get noticed. Effective marketing campaigns now require working smarter, not harder, to connect with the right people to support your mission. The most efficient and effective way to do this is to automate your marketing efforts.

Nonprofit marketing automation streamlines and personalizes each supporter’s experience with your organization, reducing your team’s workload and enhancing your donor stewardship efforts.

Let’s explore how your nonprofit can harness the power of automation to improve its marketing and amplify its overall impact.

What is nonprofit marketing automation?

Nonprofit marketing automation refers to the process of using software, tools, and platforms to automatically complete tasks such as sending text messages, posting on social media, and more. You can choose to automate your campaigns based on pre-defined triggers or criteria.

For example, you can use marketing automation to:

• Schedule and send targeted communications. Connect with each supporter using messages they’re most likely to resonate with. For example, you might automate a welcome email series to introduce new donors to your nonprofit. If you’re trying to promote your planned giving program, you might set up an automated email campaign that educates long-time donors and volunteers about this giving opportunity.
• Post consistently on social media. Use social media management tools to schedule posts in advance, ensuring they appear in your followers’ feeds at optimal times. Generate automatic reports that provide insight into your content’s performance.
• Acknowledge donations promptly. Follow up after every donation with an automated thank-you text or email. Tailor each message with the donor’s name, gift amount, and past engagement history to make them feel personally valued by your nonprofit.

With marketing automation, you can also tap into more fundraising and donor engagement opportunities, such as by promoting matching gifts to potentially eligible donors or identifying potential major donors based on their wealth and philanthropic history. These are just a few of the many ways nonprofit marketers can automate their campaigns to connect more directly with supporters.

Why should you automate marketing?

Because of the many uses of marketing automation, your nonprofit can access a variety of benefits, including:

• Conserving staff time: With automation, your team can set up predefined workflows for lead nurturing and follow-up communications. These workflows reduce the need for crafting and sending messages to each supporter individually.
• Increasing engagement: Automation tools can create dynamic segments of donors based on criteria such as their giving recency, gift amount, and interests. With these segments, you can send messages tailored to each recipient’s relationship to your nonprofit and communication preferences.
• Boosting donor retention: Personalizing your marketing messages to donors demonstrates that you appreciate them as individuals rather than as generic supporters of your nonprofit. Tatango suggests mentioning details such as past donations, previous event attendance, and milestones. For instance, you could automate birthday wishes to donors throughout the year to show them that you’re thinking of them.

By incorporating automation into your nonprofit’s marketing strategy, you can ultimately improve your communication with supporters without spending more time, energy, or funding on the process.

How do you get started with marketing automation?

The specific process of setting up an automated marketing campaign will depend on your organization’s goals, timelines, and more. However, you can follow these basic steps to start incorporating automation into your nonprofit’s marketing operations and activities:

1. Assess your current processes: Identify common marketing challenges and inefficiencies your nonprofit currently faces. For example, you might look for opportunities to streamline manual tasks, such as sending emails and posting on social media.
2. Invest in automation tools: Based on your identified needs, research automation tools for your nonprofit. For instance, you might look into text-to-give platforms that make it easy to automate personalized text messages to donors and encourage them to give directly from their phones. Or, consider an AI-powered platform that can help you automate and manage cadence-based fundraising, which emphasizes ongoing engagement through a variety of touchpoints. 
3. Prepare your team: Organize training sessions to walk your team through how to use your new marketing automation tools. Use built-in analytics features to monitor your performance and refine your approach as needed.

Remember that the overall success of your marketing automation depends on the accuracy of your data. 360MatchPro’s data hygiene guide recommends creating data entry standards, such as typing in phone numbers with parentheses around the area code rather than dashes, and conducting regular database audits for missing or outdated information.

An example of nonprofit marketing automation in action

Let’s explore a fictional example of nonprofit marketing automation in action to inspire your strategy.

Suppose an animal welfare nonprofit is trying to retain and deepen the involvement of new donors. To do so, it sets up an automated text campaign with the following messages:

• Welcome (immediately after donating): “Welcome, [Name]! 👋 Thank you for joining our mission to provide shelter and compassion to all companion animals in need. Stay tuned to learn how you can help!”
• Appeal (one week later): “Hi, [Name]! We’re raising funds to provide veterinary care for the new animals in our shelter. A gift of $30 will cover all vaccinations for a dog or cat in need.🐶Will you support us? Give today: [Donation Page Link]!”
• Thank-You Message: “Thank you for your gift, [Name]! Because of generous donors like you, we’re able to provide love and care to over 50 animals at our shelter. Stay pawesome! 🐾”

To continue crafting efficient and engaging messages, the nonprofit’s marketing team can look for an automation platform with an AI-powered message composer.

Streamline your workflow with nonprofit marketing automation

Whether your organization is looking to launch more engaging nonprofit text messaging campaigns or create automated cadences that consistently engage fundraisers, automation can help you achieve your goals without draining your staff’s time or energy.