Nonprofit organizations operate and communicate with their subscribers in a different from for-profit businesses ways. However, it doesn’t mean that nonprofits don’t need to have Marketing automation technologies & CRM technologies, rather these are becoming a must solution for nonprofits to address numerous challenges nonprofits face, while also addressing the needs of your donors, partners and community members.

This article look at the challenges and solutions that change how nonprofits operate and what having CRM & Marketing automation can potentially change for a nonprofit organization.

Centralize your information
Based on the experience, many businesses and particularly nonprofits rely heavily on Excel spreadsheets to store and manage contact data. The challenge is that the data is usually captured using pen and paper by reps at events and meetings, then transferred into an excel and stored in different spreadsheets, that are then managed by different people. This often results in incomplete, inaccurate and invalid data. Moreover it makes tracking historical data nearly impossible.

A CRM & Marketing Automation solution allows nonprofits to store all that data in one, organized place, which can be easily managed by various team members over time, moreover now customers information can be captured online using web-forms, data can be validated on input and a welcome e-mail can be sent right there and now to welcome new member and validate their e-mail address.

CRM and Marketing Automation tool is an additional investment, however, the efficiencies it creates justify the price tag. Digital Aquila offers a lean implementation options for nonprofits that would not bust a budget, but will deliver a solution that works!  To sum up, a CRM for nonprofits can provide a better understanding of their supporters from data point of view, from events and activities point of view, devise patterns and understand who are the most crucial supporters and who is the most actively involved into supporting them.

Sync up Nonprofits, Donors and Supporters
According to a Bloomerang study 53% of donors reported bad donor communications as the primary reason they stopped supporting nonprofits. Without proper data management, understanding of your “subscribers” or a “customer” it is difficult to send relevant messages, at the right time.  However, with a basic CRM and Marketing Automations tools in place nonprofits could organize automated email messages that reach out to supporters at the right time with the right message, relevant to a specific donor. Communication can run in the background  and for example invite them to an event, or send a message taking about causes interesting to them so making donors and supporters involved in genuine ways.

Have Information at your fingertips
As previously mentioned, CRMs and marketing automation tools can track a range of users data, as the result what you are going to have in your data set:

• Donation history
• Contact information
• Online engagement activities
• Volunteer interests and preferences
• Communication history, opens, clicks
• Custom notes about a user

With the following information, you’ll have a 360 degree of your customers / members, such as Donors, Staff, Board members, Volunteers, Partners, Service recipients

For example, if your donor has previously made a donation for a specific cause, we can then potentially, knowing their interest we can send relevant communications. This way, your donor will feel as though your nonprofit values her interests just as much as you value her support.

Are your nonprofit organization ready for a big change?
We reckon, that no organization will ever refuse having a great CRM platform in place, however, platform alone will not enable your nonprofit to utilize and harvest all of its potential. It is always people, processes and system that enable growth.

There are a number of key factors that indicate that a nonprofit organization is in need of a cloud based CRM & Marketing Automation solution and is ready for a digital change

Below are some examples of a nonprofit organization that is in need of a cloud based CRM & Marketing Automation solution:

1) Does your organization has a full control of your sales cycle?
2) Does your organization has a full visibility of your customer, i.e. 360 view of a customer?
3) Does your organization interact with your customer via email, mobile or social? What emails are you sending manually right now? Do you have email series that can be put into an automated workflow?
4) Does your organization generates a constant stream of new, qualified leads?
5) Do you capture new donors information online, at events or via other channels?

If the answer to all or any of these questions is yes, then your organization need to have some level of marketing automation and a CRM system in place.

Are you ready for a change?
However, not all nonprofits are ready for such a drastic change to the way they operate.

Planning. To realize the benefits of marketing automation and CRM, you need to start from careful planning and selection of the right vendor/partner as well as identifying processes that require optimization.

Requirements. Your implementation partner will guide you through a discovery session and advise on the best approach and software that would meet your unique requirements. However, have the ideas and key points in place prior to reaching out to an implementation partner.

Existing data. Have your data ready and analyze key areas where improvement is required, what additional data will need to be captured and what data can be removed. The good thing is that most of the nonprofit organizations already have some sort of database of donors, community members, volunteers and all these can be used to accelerate growth of the new leads coming into the system by using social algorithm to identify potential leads that are similar to those you already have

Current processes. Your team need to have a good understanding of conversion cycle. So the knowledge can be re-created in the new system and automated to benefit your business.

Great Team. You need to have a team or a nominated individual that would evolve into new platform champion and be capable to manage it once implemented. Identify the key person who will take ownership of the platform and implementation process.

Budget. Depending on the solution and implementation partner, a new cloud solution can range in costs from a few hundred dollars a month to thousands a month. Partner fees also vary greatly. Digital Aquila offers a lean and affordable QuickStart packages to get you up to speed.

Do you think you already have your ducks in a row? Then it is time to get your new shiny CRM and Marketing automation tool implemented. 

Conclusion.
The key goals of getting CRM and Marketing Automation tool is to move your workflows, processes, communications from manual to automatic, to give you transparency of the process and provide a 360 view of your customer. As ultimately, once you have these great systems and processes in place you’ll start seeing great advances in membership and donor amounts that are driven by marketing automation and CRM systems.

Digital Aquila has a unique accelerator that was designed with nonprofits in mind and can help nonprofit organizations to transform their CRM and Marketing automation.

Marketing Automation for nonprofits lean solution to help you grow.