In a digital age, there’s never been more room for nonprofits to connect with donors, communities, and mobilize funding. While social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn are a part of this environment, email is a powerful means of engagement and connection. These two tactics can be used in a synergy that drives outreach. Here’s how nonprofits can make the most of both social media and email.
Understanding the Landscape
Nonprofits typically have limited resources and a limited budget. And that makes communication not only necessary but critical to achievement. Facebook offers immediate response and mass reach, but email is more of a personal, one-to-one relationship. Recent research has revealed that emails generally deliver a better ROI than social media campaigns because of the focus they have.
But what’s challenging for most organizations is to create a single plan that builds on both channels’ strengths. Social media can generate an email list, and email will attract people to your social media pages — creating a supporter community.
1. Develop Your Email List Through Social Media.
When it comes to email marketing, a nonprofit organization can most efficiently leverage social media for email marketing by actively establishing email lists. You need to make it as easy and sexy as possible for people to sign up.
Strategies for List Building:
On-Platform Sign-Ups: Share links to your email sign-up form on a regular basis in your social media profiles. Indicate the value you’ll gain from registering — news updates, events, donations.
Use Lead Magnets: Provide useful content or resources in exchange for emails. An e-book about your cause, for instance, or advice on how to support your cause or an invite to a webinar may entice followers on social media to sign up.
Contests or Giveaways: Invite followers to your email list and place them into a contest. It can significantly enhance engagement and provide incentives for followers.
Share Success Stories, Behind the scenes videos and compelling statistics relevant to your mission in order to entice readers to read more within your emails.
2. How to Market Social Media by Email?
If you already have a large email list, use it to invite subscribers to interact with your social media channels.
Strategies for Email Promotion:
Social Links in Emails: Whenever you send emails, make sure you add clear and legible social media links to your profiles.
Expose Social Media Highlights: Highlight your social media feed and invite email recipients to read something that speaks to them. This can increase your content reach and foster a multi-channel conversation.
Calls to Action: Encourage your email recipients to follow you on social media or join in on discussions. “Come follow us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter for the latest updates” work well.
3. Create Integrated Campaigns
When you create campaigns, you can add social media and email to it and see the campaigns go a few times. The effectiveness of a coordinated campaign highlights how the two channels coordinate to achieve a shared purpose.
Examples of Integrated Campaigns:
Promotion of an Event: If you’re planning an event, promote it through email and social media. Email will tell you what you need to know and social media will remind you visually. Tweet a live video from the event and follow it up with an email update to keep the conversation rolling.
Advocacy Drives: If you are advocating for something or requesting someone to take action, start with social media to build awareness and anticipation, and follow up with individual email campaigns explaining the issues and how advocates can act.
Storytelling: Send an email highlighting a donor story or case study, and share it on social media with powerful images. Let your followers comment with their own experiences and open a conversation.
4. Analyze and Adjust
If nonprofits want to effectively synchronize social media and email, they must keep track of how they’re doing on both fronts. Utilize Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and your email marketing platform to monitor engagement data to see what’s working and what’s not.
Key Metrics to Monitor:
Open and Click Rates: For emails, measure how many people open your emails and click on links to your social media accounts or call-to-actions.
Engagement on Social Media: Track the likes, shares, and comments your posts receive, especially those promoting email sign-ups or other email content.
Conversion Rates: Consider the percentage of email users who engage on social media, and vice versa. This can give you some insight into what your audience wants.
With these data points, nonprofits can optimize their campaigns, optimise content and ultimately strengthen engagement with their constituents.
5. Build a Community
If you use email and social media together, it will turn your audience into an army of supporters. Nonprofits can build a robust, engaged following by inviting engagement across platforms.
Tips for Building Community:
Highlight Followers’ Actions: Present anecdotes from individual supporters in emails and on social media. This not only emphasizes sociality but encourages others to join in.
Engage with Comments: Read and respond to comments and messages on both platforms. The more you post, the more engaged your audience will be.
Promote User-Content: Encourage followers to share their experiences with your cause on social media and include this content in your emails. This instills a sense of identification and involvement in the nonprofit’s cause.
Conclusion:
While audiences are constantly bombarded by communications, successful nonprofits leverage the power of email and social media to get noticed. From social media-based email list growth to socially targeted email marketing, integrated campaign design, performance analysis and community building, nonprofits can effectively harness the power of these tools to help empower their constituents and effect change.
As the digital world transforms, those that are agile and able to change will be at the vanguard of innovation, successfully marketing their cause and building an ecstatic and engaged community. It’s not only about communication, but building relationships that change communities and expand the scope of their cause.
