Think about how YOU engage with content. Depending on where you are (walking, driving, on your phone, at your desk), what you’re trying to get from the content (top highlights, deep-dive, entertainment, curbed curiosity), the time you have (10 seconds, 2 minutes, an hour), and myriad of other factors, you will seek content in different mediums.
Your donors and alums are no different.
Meaningfully engaging more alums boils down to finding the most sustainable and scalable ways to reach them where they are.
Mastering Omnichannel Engagement
What omnichannel engagement boils down to is strategically planning use of all the channels through which you can deliver your message. But how do you go about determining what messaging should go on which channel? And who should you be engaging during any given campaign?
How do advancement shops keep up with their alums through omnichannel outreach?
We met with experts from Brandeis University and Cornell University who shared how their teams are building strategies to engage constituents from all angles, meet alums where they already are, and build more affinity for their schools.
1. Email is more successful when personalized
Cornell’s use of conversational tone in their email messaging, rather than “marketing speak” has helped keep their email engagement high. (Email was their top performing channel during their giving day!) Here’s a tip from Ashley Budd, Director of Marketing Operations at Cornell. If it sounds like you’re writing a speech, it’s time to rewrite. Instead, channel language you’d use if you were having a personal conversation with the audience you’re talking to. (Remember, we are all humans.)
What if you are dealing with high unsubscribe rates–like many institutions across the country? ThankView to the rescue! Since ThankView is a separate marketing tool than your standard email platform, it’s a great outlet to engage folks who may have unsubscribed from other university-related emails. Brandeis University uses ThankView to send strategic content in a thoughtful way, featuring a friendly face or two from campus and creating a personal touch to help email unsubscribers stay connected with the University.
The Brandeis team has also reworked their outreach strategy to top-top supporters by using ODDER to send on-demand digital endowment reports. No longer are they spending a week’s worth of staff time stuffing 800 endowment reports into envelopes and dropping them in the mail. Instead, they’re generating reports and sending them via a secure ThankView, topped with an impactful video Eric Shoen, Executive Director of Donor Relations at Brandeis, noted that of the 800 people they planned to send the report to, only 70 or so preferred to receive it via snail mail. It’s a huge win for the team (and the recipients!) with tons of time saved and more opportunities to connect with donors. Eric noted that utilizing ODDER actually helps their team spend more time working on getting personalized thank you cards (via Pledgemine!) out the door to donors. In short, Brandeis is crushing the omnichannel outreach game: Email, video, printed mail – boom.
Cornell University keeps their email engagement high by avoiding “marketing speak.” Ashley Budd, Director of Marketing Operations at Cornell, advises, “If it sounds like you’re writing a speech, rewrite it. Use language you’d use in a personal conversation.”
2. Direct mail is hardly dead
In fact, it’s still critical to your engagement strategy. And the even better news— there’s a way out of long, drawn-out direct mail processes. Enter Pledgemine, EverTrue’s on-demand, data-driven direct mail solution.
Brandeis partners with Pledgemine to help with quick-turnaround direct mail pieces. And as Lindsay Roth, Director of Direct Marketing and Participation at Brandeis, noted, it’s helpful to “fill the gaps of a traditional direct marketing vendor that is not always as nimble,flexible, and available.”
If the last several years have taught us anything, we all need to be ready to pivot our messaging at any moment. With Pledgemine, you can send small batch, personalized communications that capitalize on a moment in time. By numbly swapping out designs and templates, Pledgemine allows teams to quickly get beautiful direct mail pieces out the door and in front of donors.
How is Brandeis weaving direct mail into their omnichannel outreach strategy? By sending pledge fulfillment reminders in coordination with their phonathon program, Brandeis has a pledge fulfillment rate over 85%. Within three days of the first phone connection with a donor, a pledge reminder lands in the donor’s mailbox with an ask to fulfill– either by going online and completing their gift, or mailing back the buckslip. That reminder even features a photo of the student who they spoke with on the phone to to really make a personal connection. We give that level or personalization and timeliness a 10/10.
The Brandeis team also utilizes their partnership with Pledgemine to sendannual fund appeals. Brandeis loves to celebrate donors’ gift anniversaries. First, they call the donor asking if they’d like to renew their support. If they can’t reach them after a few attempts, they follow-up with a hard-copy letter. Then, they circle back with an email. Omnichannel, FTW.
3. Smart segmentation drives relevant messaging
As Ashley Budd at Cornell notes, “If you can’t track it…did it even happen?”
The Cornell team tracks digital engagement to determine where they’ll take their strategy next. They look at social media engagement, email engagement, who responds to texts, who downloads content from their website…and they pull together the data as part of their overall alumni engagement index. Creating a good, foundational engagement plan for all alumni to help build this data is crucial,and Ashley recommends doing that before jumping in to more targeted campaigns.
But what if you have a new program, event series, or department you need to promote? How do you go about building an audience for something that doesn’t have data points attached to it yet? Well, we recommend you start with EverTrue. Constituents with 11+ likes on Facebook are 62.4% more likely to be a donor (Source: EverTrue analysis), so pulling in social engagement data–especially when building out a solicitation!– is a good place to start.
Cornell creates segments for these traditionally hard-to-pin-down audiences by looking at constituents who fall into certain industries and engage with similar topics on social media. They make data-backed assumptions about where donors’ affinities may lie based on the things that are present in their daily lives.
4. You don't need to reinvent the wheel
Giving your content as many legs as possible will help your ROI in terms of both dollars and time spent on content creation and distribution.
In simplest terms, work smarter, not harder.
To see this in practice, consider this “Tuesdays at Brandeis” campaign. Throughout this campaign, Brandeis featured teaser videos sent via ThankView, which drove the audience to a webpage containing longform versions of the videos. The major stories dropped every Tuesday, and then on Thursdays, a targeted follow-up would be sent to those who opened and engaged with the email.They also utilized social media–both paid and organic–to share these stories.
Similar content. Packaged differently. Multiple touch points. Multiple channels. Really great results. (Check them out!)
5. Fundraising is a team sport
Securing a gift is a team effort – from the initial ask to processing the payment. Host a kickoff meeting ahead of a big campaign and bring the entire team to the table – including marketing, gift administration, and advancement services. Make sure that everyone is aligned at the forefront so that when you launch the campaign, there are no surprises.
Once you’ve brought all of the key players into the fold, utilize a project management tool to keep everyone on track and moving in the same direction. This helps provide clarity surrounding responsibilities, timelines, and is great to see what still needs to get done! (Some project management tools that the EverCrew uses include Asana, Trello, and Notion.)
And of course, put together a meeting of the minds and host a creative brainstorm session and get the ideas flowing. Ashley Budd hosts a quarterly meeting to dive into a mindset exercise with her team. With prompts like,”This time of year makes me think of ____” or “These are the types of activities I do when ____”, it not only helps frame the content for Cornell’s upcoming campaigns, but serves as a reminder of what their audience will engage with most in terms of messaging.
The bottom line? Omnichannel outreach means engaging the right people at the right time through the right medium.. By folding in direct mail, email, social, texting, and good ol’ fashioned phone calls, you will engage the widest audience possible–and the ROI will follow.
Ready to take your omnichannel engagement to the next level? Let’s chat!