Successful non-profit fundraising begins when you engage your donors in a compelling conversation. SMS marketing via text messaging empowers you to do just that.

Your donors already use text messaging every day. Which means it’s a natural way to begin a conversation about your latest fund-raising drive, your plans for new projects and other news about your organization that matters to them.

One of the best ways to increase your success when it comes to fundraising is by using text messaging to engage your donors with personalized conversations. Here’s how.

How to Get Personal with SMS Marketing

We all like it when others show that they care about our priorities, perceptions and personal interests. It’s human nature.

When you use text messaging to have a conversation, you can learn about your individual donors; what matters to them, why they might support your organization and personal events, like anniversaries and birthdays. You can then personalize your news updates and requests to match their personal areas of interest.

For example, you might text the following:

 

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

Thanks to the initial automated messages, you now know that Jane is interested in building schools. She’s also interested in how you fund them. You also know she has a personal interest in South Africa.

Jon was alerted by SMS-Magic the minute her personal message was received, so he was able to respond with a 1:1 conversation. He can now continue that conversation to learn more about her interests and deepen the relationship.

Use SMS Marketing to Continue to Develop a Relationship

Now that you know what interests them at a high level, you can tune your requests and the information you send to match each donor’s interests.

Messaging is such a natural conversation that it makes it easy to continue to ask donors questions to learn even more about them, giving you the key insights to build a relationship.

Just remember, you won’t build a relationship by only asking them for donations. It’s just as important to give back to them with programs or opportunities that match their interests. You want to be a partner for life, not that pesky organization that always asks for money.