When you stop by your neighbor’s house and knock on the door, you’re generally greeted with a hello. If you walk into an office, a receptionist will welcome you. So, why aren’t campaigns doing this for supporters?
If someone signs up on your website or makes a donation to your campaign, shouldn’t they immediately be welcomed or thanked? A surprising number of campaigns still meet donors with, well, silence. But these initial interactions with a supporter are crucial to building a long-term relationship. Here are some of the ways that campaigns should be welcoming new supporters into the fold:
Send a welcome email or text.
The front door of your campaign is your website. This should act as an introduction for the constituent. When you give them the option to subscribe or sign up to receive communications from you, you’re opening the door for them.
It’s so important for you, as the campaign, to welcome them into your home. The email/text doesn’t need to be overly complicated. A simple “thank you for joining the team,” and then including your social media links for people to follow and the option to make a donation, is enough.
Send a thank-you-for-donating message.
Donors receive a handful of emails and texts begging for donations everyday. But how many times have you seen a thank-you message for a strong fundraising push or even a thank you for signing a petition?
Nowadays, fundraising processors like WinRed and ActBlue make it extremely easy for an automated thank-you message to be sent. Other companies like Tatango, the SMS software company, have automation that pulls in donors and sends them a thank-you text.
If you aren’t segmenting your donors vs non-donors, that’s a different problem. But, let me repeat, it’s incredibly easy to set up an automated message saying “thank you” for donating.
Segment your list.
When someone signs up to volunteer for your campaign, they aren’t asking to be flooded with fundraising asks. They want to take a larger commitment and physically help your campaign.
Likewise, a person who makes a donation to your campaign is more likely to make another donation compared to someone who hasn’t donated yet. When you run a lead generation campaign, what issue brought that person in?
When having your audience set up, whether email or text, you should know who you’re talking to. If you don’t bother segmenting these people out, you aren’t maximizing their strengths in helping your organization.
Make sure to respond.
While sending out marketing messages or even inviting people to events, they want to feel involved. In doing so, they share their opinions with us, whether good or bad. So when they take the time to share their thoughts with you, it’s only right for us to respond back. Acknowledging that they made a donation, or are coming to an event and saying thank you is all it takes.
So many firms and organizations fail to take this small step, which could make a constituent’s day.
You may have noticed an overarching theme here: customer satisfaction. That’s what can take you from raising a few dollars to thousands. The secret sauce in fundraising is making sure the constituent, donor, or customer is happy with the campaign and can take pride in making a contribution.
Ken Mika is the founder of Politicoin, a digital fundraising company.
