Inbound Marketing & Automation for Nonprofits: Why it Works

As a non-profit marketer, you likely face many, if not all, of the following challenges:

1. Driving donations
2. Educating the general public on your cause
3. Attracting volunteers
4. Increasing brand awareness
5. Pleasing your board of directors

It can be difficult to not only prioritize those challenges but also create marketing materials and strategies for each one. This is where incorporating inbound marketing and automation software can save you time and increase results.

As defined in a previous ArcStone blog post, inbound marketing is the best way to turn strangers into customers and promoters of your business.

If we were to translate this definition for nonprofits, it might read like so:

Inbound marketing is the best way to turn members of your community into donors, volunteers and advocates for your nonprofit.

So how might you implement an inbound strategy? By creating and offering great content, capturing contact information and following up with a tailored experience depending on the target audience.

To help better illustrate what this might look like, here are two distinct audiences and their potential conversion paths:

1. Bill is a 27 year old accountant looking to volunteer at a local, non-profit. He has an interest in homelessness and happens upon a blog post of yours titled ‘The Current State of Homelessness in Minneapolis’. The post opens up his eyes to many issues and he would like to learn how to help. He fills out a form to download your ebook, “10 Ways to Get Involved Today”. This download triggers an email workflow that keeps him up to date on the latest volunteer opportunities - eventually leading Bill to volunteer in the kitchen once a week.

2. Jane is an executive at a large corporation in the Twin Cities. She sets aside a portion of her paycheck each year to donate to local charities. After seeing a friend post a link on Facebook to a video your organization created about donors, she decides to check out your website and donate herself. This action triggers an internal notification at your organization to give Jane a call and thank her for her generosity. Her email is then automatically added to the donor update subscribe list and she continues to donate twice a year.

Although these are rather specific examples of inbound and automation, you can see why a tailored experience is needed for each audience. A potential volunteer’s mindset and priorities may be very different from that of a donor - the content you create should reflect those differences. 

Here is an example of a landing page we built for a nonprofit here in the Twin Cities that is looking to recruit volunteer firefighters. By downloading an information packet, they are then placed in an email workflow that sends more details about what it's like to be a firefighter.

This may sound like a lot of work, especially if you don't currently segment your lists or run targeted campaigns, but your content and strategy will be much more focused once you have a system in place. I strongly recommend using marketing automation software such as HubSpot to automate these workflows and interactions. You will save yourself time, budget and produce better results.

If you are interested in learning more about Inbound Marketing, HubSpot and ArcStone, check out this blog post or contact us today. Want monthly updates on the latest marketing news? Sign up for our newsletter, The Nerdy Nonprofit.