Nonprofit OmniChannel Marketing [Nonprofit Marketing with Michael Goodrum, Part 2]

Introduction to Nonprofit Marketing

Intro – John B:

[0:00] You’ve landed on episode two of our comprehensive series all about how to market a nonprofit organization. If you’re new here, hit subscribe now so you get alerted when the other nonprofit marketing episodes are released, or hit the link in the show notes for the full playlist. In this episode, we’ll explore nonprofit marketing from a holistic perspective, omni-channel, if you will. And my guest, Mr. Michael Goodrum, Director of Client Services at Community Boost, a San Diego-based agency well-known and well-regarded in nonprofit marketing circles.

If you Google digital marketing services for nonprofits, they’ll be at the top of the list. Community Boost has worked with the likes of Habitat for Humanity, Cantra Research Institute, The Humane Society, Goodwill, and many other internationally known 501c3s. These guys know what they’re doing. Michael has been with Community Boost since the beginning and was actually the agency’s first full-time employee.

This omni-channel overview will explore topics such as split testing, emotional and logical appeals, social media, of course. Landing page and donation page, CRO. That’s conversion rate optimization for the newbies. PPC versus or in conjunction with SEO. How to stretch a budget for a small nonprofit.

Intro – John B:

[1:09] Tools, fundraising, email marketing. Bruh, it’s all in there. And there’s no better resource than my homie, Mikey G from Community Boost. Sound good? If so, do us a solid. Hit the like button now so this not so profitable YouTube thing we’re doing can gain a little steam. and if we missed anything, please tell us in the comments section. We’ll look to address that in another episode. And now, settle in for Mr. Michael Goodrum from Community Boost.

Meet Michael Goodrum from Community Boost

John Bertino:

[1:42] And we’re back with another episode of the Niche Marketing Podcast. As always, I’m your host, Jon Bertino. Today, we’re at Olas Media Studios in sunny San Diego, Mission Valley to be exact. And I’m here with Michael Goodrum from Community Boost. Michael, welcome to the show. Delighted to have you.

Michael Goodrum:

[1:59] Jon, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

John Bertino:

[2:01] 100%. Yeah, 100%. And before we get into it, I always like to get a little background on my guests, both personally and or professionally. So let’s start with the former. Where are you from? You’re from San Diego originally, wife, kids, stuff like that.

Michael Goodrum:

[2:17] I am born and raised here, San Diego native, no wife, no kids yet. I have that in the future, hopefully for myself. But yeah, I’m a big musician. So I play saxophone. I do like electronic music and DJing as well. We were talking earlier about fitness and running. And even before here, I probably have a little nonprofit bit of a glow from just being out on a run, running through beautiful Balboa Park here in San Diego. So could go on and on about myself, but that’s kind of the top things to know.

John Bertino:

[2:45] You’re already making me jealous and all the listeners. I mean, San Diego is just that kind of place. It’s just so beautiful here all the time.

Michael Goodrum:

[2:52] Lovely.

John Bertino:

[2:52] Yeah. And as I mentioned, you’re with Community Boost. Community Boost is just an absolutely stellar agency specializing in the nonprofit space or industry or niche, but tell us a little bit more about Community Boost.

Michael Goodrum:

[3:04] Yeah, definitely. We are a digital marketing agency that works exclusively with nonprofits. So, we actually were founded originally out of an internship from another agency called eBoost Consulting way back in the day, where our CEO Cameron was an intern there helping run this little program called Community Boost.

E-Boost fell on some hard times. We’re looking at things that they needed to cut. Of course, the program that was pro bono working with nonprofits but took people’s time was one of the first things on the chopping block. And Cameron stood up, our CEO, in a meeting and said, I don’t think this should be the way that it goes. I will take it on.

And so, from that, Community Boost was born. I’ve been with Community Boost for about eight years now, so really the first full-time employee. And I’ve seen the agency grow from incredibly humble beginnings to where we are now, which is working with still some grassroots, local-focused organizations, but all the way to nonprofits like Charity Water, Save the Children, Cancer Research Institute, and really everything in between.

John Bertino:

[4:04] Sure. And in terms of marketing channels or the ways you serve clients, is it full service? Do you specialize in some areas? Give us the lay of the land there if you could.

Michael Goodrum:

[4:12] Yeah, so we are full service. We started really in the advertising space. So I would say that that is still our absolute core. We have added website creation and management. We have added email marketing. We have added creative services as well over the years. But our core and almost like what we know best is still the advertising side of things.

John Bertino:

[4:34] Okay, got it. That’s a great place to start because of how important advertising is when it comes to nonprofit marketing.

Michael Goodrum:

[4:41] Absolutely.

John Bertino:

[4:41] Yeah. We’ll talk more about this today, too, not to cut you off. But I do think that a lot of nonprofits have a decent website, have a decent story. But what they’re missing is traction. And traction in the form of actually generating awareness, getting their name out there, and then capitalizing on the awareness that they build, which is where advertising really comes in and can hit the ball home.

John Bertino:

[5:00] 100%. And before we get into the meat of the content, I always like to ask my guests, we’re here in, as I said, sunny San Diego, it’s your favorite place to get a beer here in San Diego. There’s definitely a lot of them.

Michael Goodrum:

[5:11] There’s a lot. I mean, we, some other cities try to put up a fight. Like they’re the ones that started the brewery revolution. Let’s be, let’s be honest, John.

John Bertino:

[5:18] Those are fighting.

Michael Goodrum:

[5:19] Words I mean bring it on like let’s do this thing let’s do it uh so, truthfully Ballast Point can’t be beat I know that it’s a I know it’s now nationwide but Ballast Point if you go to the breweries here they have a almost like a secret menu called Roots to Boots which is beer that they’re working on locally just at that Ballast Point and because of their size they’re able to pay some of the best brew masters to come and so you’ll get some really creative things there but then you also can’t go wrong with a lot of the smaller mom and pop breweries here too all.

John Bertino:

[5:48] The beer is really good here and of course.

Michael Goodrum:

[5:49] Ballast Point Sculpin.

John Bertino:

[5:50] I mean that’s a that’s maybe.

Michael Goodrum:

[5:52] You and I can get a beer after this you know see what happens yeah, I’m.

John Bertino:

[5:55] Already breaking the rules banging on the table so I’m gonna try my best not to.

Michael Goodrum:

[5:58] Can we get a little drunk little there you go we.

John Bertino:

[6:01] Might as well just get it all over.

Michael Goodrum:

[6:02] It’s the heartbeat of the nonprofit donor sector all right.

John Bertino:

[6:06] And bonus round best tacos in San Diego in 15 seconds or less.

Michael Goodrum:

[6:10] Oscars in Pacific Beach preferably the northern one you grab one of those and you bring it down to Tourmaline and you watch the sunset.

John Bertino:

[6:18] Nice. Didn’t even hesitate. Didn’t miss a beat. Okay. Very good. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get into the heart of it if we shall. All right. So, we’re here to talk about omni-channel marketing. I mean, this is one that can be the first, if not one of the first episodes in our nonprofit marketing series. And so, we wanted to have you specifically in because of the multifaceted nature of Community Boost and the multifaceted nature of your offerings.

Offerings and so we know that you’re the perfect guy to talk just about you know kind of both from a high level as well as at a I guess a low level if that’s a thing sure uh on uh the different approaches to nonprofit marketing strategy so let’s start from start from the top I guess before you even get into channel selection what are some things about marketing nonprofit that are unique tricky different just more or less unique to the space yeah.

Understanding Unique Aspects of Nonprofit Marketing

John Bertino:

[7:05] or less unique to the space yeah.

Michael Goodrum:

[7:07] Absolutely I think I think first and foremost, nonprofit marketing, and I want to make sure for everyone who’s listening today, too, that we’re really honing in on fundraising when we say nonprofit marketing, because there are so many different kinds of nonprofits out there, which before I joined Community Boost was unaware of. There are theaters, museums. There are ones that are really environmental focused that do fundraising, but they also are largely government funded and they focus more on petitions.

And so, there are just, there are so many different, even just within the 501 C three space, which is the most classically thought of their hospitals, et cetera. So, um, to answer your question, because I know we are here to talk about fundraising today, specifically, um, the main difference between this and other forms of marketing is that there needs to be care for whatever the impact and the problem being solved is from the person making the gift. Inherently for them to take that action, which I know sounds really obvious, but with every other kind of marketing, I think e-commerce with how many ads we get served today can be really top of mind for some people. E-commerce, you see whatever the product is, you think about the value it’s.

Crafting Emotional and Logical Appeals

Michael Goodrum:

[8:15] going to bring directly to your life in solving some problem you have.

John Bertino:

[8:18] Yeah.

Michael Goodrum:

[8:19] Practical, perhaps like response to practical or like this incredibly fresh shirt that I’m wearing, saw an ad for this and was like, this will make John like me more. So, I bought this shirt. so solves a problem right but with nonprofit marketing it’s so inherently important to think about how you’re going to be solving someone’s problem by ensuring that they care about something first you have to you have to almost create care in other people for them to feel the level of compassion or emotion needed to give or.

John Bertino:

[8:52] Remind them how much they care.

Michael Goodrum:

[8:53] Or remind them how much they care. Sure.

John Bertino:

[8:55] Absolutely. That’s a fantastic point right out of the jump, right? Because, you know, deep down, all of us care about certain causes.

Michael Goodrum:

[9:04] Sure.

John Bertino:

[9:04] But we’re often too busy.

Importance of Omni-Channel Approach

Michael Goodrum:

[9:06] Sure.

John Bertino:

[9:06] Right? Or just focus on other things. And to craft the messaging in such a way that you break through that or, again, remind them that this is important to them is not only going to be critical, but easier said than done, right? And so perhaps share some tips about how one might go about doing that.

Michael Goodrum:

[9:25] Crafting messages.

John Bertino:

[9:26] Crafting messages and evoking an emotional reaction out of the donor.

Michael Goodrum:

[9:32] Yeah, absolutely. I think one, both how to and then also a tip that we can give for some of the listeners here is, there are so many different kinds of appeals that exist in the world of marketing. So, we can, we’re definitely going to talk about nonprofit, but just in the general marketing world as a whole, right? We’re all different people. You and I are, everyone watching this is, and what’s going to trigger us to take an action is going to be different than potentially someone else. And so, when it comes to nonprofit marketing, I think we oftentimes imagine those ads that are maybe a little bit gut-wrenching and pulling on the heartstrings and we call those emotional appeals.

Michael Goodrum:

[10:07] Those have a place and those can be really powerful. But what we’ve also seen is during key moments of fundraising, like yearend, our agency or even myself, when I was a campaign manager every single day in the weeds, we would be hitting kind of walls with the fundraising messaging we were going with. We were doing maybe exactly what I was saying. I think about this campaign we were running for Souls for Souls, where it was purely focusing on these shoes that these kids didn’t have and cracked images of these shoes that these homeless kids in America were wearing. And we kind of hit this trough of giving where it was slowing down.

And we’re like, we got to try something different, try different imagery. I mean, it created a little bit of a bump but wasn’t really working. It’s like, let’s try completely different messaging. And we leaned into the impact that having a pair of shoes has on children, the likelihood of them going to school increasing drastically when they have a new pair of shoes. And we took it to more of a logical appeal, statistics-based logical appeal.

John Bertino:

[11:07] Interesting.

Michael Goodrum:

[11:07] So I would say, I know that was a very long answer to your question.

John Bertino:

[11:12] We’re here for long answers.

Michael Goodrum:

[11:13] Yeah, absolutely.

John Bertino:

[11:13] We could always shorten this into the five, 10.

Michael Goodrum:

[11:16] Perfect.

John Bertino:

[11:16] You know, whatever.

Michael Goodrum:

[11:17] Definitely. But that is the real answer. Like I think that emotional appeals are really worth trying out when you can find what it is that resonates emotionally with your persona that you’re targeting. But then if that isn’t working in a certain campaign season, you don’t have to stick to it. That’s not the only way to make an appeal as a nonprofit or to tell the story. There’s also statistics, there’s logic, there’s all these other ways that you can do.

John Bertino:

[11:41] Fantastic. All right. So we got right into the messaging component of things.

Leveraging Social Media for Nonprofit Marketing

John Bertino:

[11:46] Let’s zoom out a little bit and just talk about an omni-channel approach in general. rule. So, if you’re a nonprofit that’s very focused on fundraising, what are some of the, let’s say, usual suspects when it comes to marketing channels where you’re going to perhaps be leaning into more than others? And don’t forget, what might be obvious to you might not be so obvious to others that are either just getting going or new to their role or whatever it is.

Michael Goodrum:

[12:11] Absolutely. Yeah. And I certainly don’t want to dwell on anything that might be obvious to me. I also want to acknowledge that I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid of what we do at a Community Boost, you know, of course, although we have seen it work time and time and time and time again. So, um, worth drinking. And, uh, yeah, I would say that in general, we want to market where people’s attention is at.

Right. So, where are donor eyes at there? They’re at the same place that most people are. And I mean, John, you were saying earlier that, uh, we, many people care enough to want to give. And so, it’s, it’s finding out like where attention is generally at anyways. So, in terms of where, uh, you know, an omni-channel approach and really where to start. So, there are multiple categories that are very important.

First and foremost is social. So we, we still, to this day see tremendous success on meta, um, which we used to of course, call Facebook and Instagram but advertising on those platforms both the power of the targeting, still to this day very strong when it comes to like creating look-alike audiences which you can generate from uploading donor lists and then targeting people who meta helps find via that way doing interest targeting which if you’ve done work building out a persona you can plug those things in to make sure your ads are being shown to the right person and honestly there are even some campaigns where we’ve seen just letting meta make its own choices like just doing pretty broad odd match targeting in an account that’s been running for a while do very well.

John Bertino:

[13:38] And let me interject right there.

Michael Goodrum:

[13:40] Please, absolutely.

John Bertino:

[13:40] So you said first things first social. So, and then you started talking about the paid side, but I’m going to assume you also mean the organic side being.

Michael Goodrum:

[13:47] The organic side is really important as well.

John Bertino:

[13:49] Definitely. And I’m going to dwell on the first things first part.

Michael Goodrum:

[13:53] Okay.

John Bertino:

[13:53] Because I think that’s, I think that’s key, right? Hey, what’s the best omni-channel approach to marketing nonprofit? First things first social. And I’m going to guess, but please do correct me or refine my assumptions, that, it’s because of the ability to have visual appeal. We already talked about the need to tell a story. We already talked about the need to create connection.

We already talked about how you need to remind these folks that this matters to them and get them to stop in their busy day to actually consider either. A lot of nonprofits are really least engaging, if not donating. And social is such a powerful platform for exactly that. So, if you could give us a little, peel back a few more layers of that onion, if you could.

Michael Goodrum:

[14:37] I feel like you and I are connected mentally right now because that is exactly why.

John Bertino:

[14:41] I only bring on guests that agree with everything I have to say.

Michael Goodrum:

[14:43] Absolutely. I only come to shows with hosts that are going to agree with everything I say.

John Bertino:

[14:47] This is going to work out great.

Michael Goodrum:

[14:48] Michael. This is perfect. You are completely correct. So, if there was one thing that a nonprofit had the time and energy to focus on, hopefully they would also be able to invest some dollars into paid advertising on the social side of things. But it is for that exact reason. It’s both the imagery that you get to have.

It’s the amount of space that people actually get to read when it comes to the copy that you want to write and then specifically with pretty much every social platform there is one thing happening on your feed at a time whether you’re on desktop or you’re on mobile you think about TikTok you think about meta you have the full attention on the screen on one piece of content even.

John Bertino:

[15:27] If it’s just for a millisecond.

Michael Goodrum:

[15:28] Even if it’s just for a minute you’ve got the full screen it’s just you versus banner ads versus even YouTube right like you do have the main video If it’s not full screen, though, you’ve got all the videos on the side. You get comments. There are other things going on. Yeah. There’s nothing else really like it when it comes to fundraising. Yeah.

John Bertino:

[15:42] And just in general, when it comes to social media marketing across any niche, the key is to break through the noise with some type of emotive or emotional appeal. And so nonprofit marketing lends itself to that. OK, so we’re up and running. We’re doing some organic social. We’re starting to run some ads. What else?

Michael Goodrum:

[15:59] Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And hope we do circle back at some point to talking about kind of the distinction between the two of those. For sure.

Significance of Search in Marketing Strategy

Michael Goodrum:

[16:05] On the road of painting the whole picture of the omni-channel approach, search is still very important. There are, as you said, there are people out there that do care. And if you are not out there from either an SEO or a paid search, or I mean, if you’re a nonprofit listening to this, I hope you’ve heard of the Google Ad Grant, which is $10,000 in free advertising every single month that Google grants 501c3 nonprofits.

There are a few exceptions. Most of the people listening to this will not fit those exceptions and have the ability to get this grant. So, search, very important. And the frequency with which people are going to search for things like buy a new pen, buy a new watch, it’s going to be less than donate to an organization saving the rainforest. There are just fewer people innately turning to Google saying, I don’t know who to donate to, but I want to find a nonprofit today that I’ve never heard of.

John Bertino:

[16:58] But it still happens.

Michael Goodrum:

[16:59] But it still happens. And so if you’re not there, you don’t have any nets you’re not going to catch anything yeah um so and it’s free it’s literally as long.

John Bertino:

[17:07] As you get approved right.

Michael Goodrum:

[17:08] As long as you get approved and there are tools, I mean I know we’ll talk about tools later but there are tools to improve your SEO even slightly over time as you’re building content which most nonprofits are okay.

John Bertino:

[17:18] So organic social paid social.

Michael Goodrum:

[17:21] Organic search.

John Bertino:

[17:22] Paid search what else you.

Making Strategic Decisions with Limited Budgets

Michael Goodrum:

[17:24] There’s so much on yeah but ah aha there’s always so much sure absolutely so.

John Bertino:

[17:29] So a lot of these nonprofits, especially if they’re small, they’re on a very finite budget. So, you know, I hate this expression. I’m going to use it. Gun to your head. You have to make a decision. Where should I put my dollars or my time or effort energy? Paid search or organic search? And I’m giving you no additional information. I’m asking you a completely unfair question. What do you do?

Michael Goodrum:

[17:50] Sure. I mean, we don’t have guns to our head, but we do have clients with limited budgets. And I bet sometimes they wish they could put a gun to the head and, you know, make sure. Sure. So paid search, organic search. I would always start with a Google ad grant.

John Bertino:

[18:02] Yeah. Always.

Michael Goodrum:

[18:03] Because you’re playing with Google’s dollars. You still get to be in the auctions. It’s a different kind of auction than you are in if you’re paying real paid search dollars. It is a bit more of a secondary auction. However, you get to jump right up to the top of the feed for free.

And then if it’s not bringing you everything you hope that it would, you can take those lessons that you earn for free and bring them to SEO or you can bring them to paid search. So, I would always recommend using the ad grant as at least a sandbox, if not a core tool to help drive people to your website.

John Bertino:

[18:35] You’re good, Michael. Okay. Cohesive uh just in spirit of and I know we didn’t fully exhaust the subject of you know multi-channel marketing strategy or work ourselves up and running on social and search a number of different ways we’ll get into email in a second you’ve got other things running any tips on making it cohesive or integrated or how do you juggle those different balls in the air if you will and get it right yeah.

Michael Goodrum:

[19:01] Yeah, I think when it comes to fundraising there needs to be there needs to be a coherent flavor while also having kind of offshoots of whatever the coherent consistent flavor is. Because again, we all are different in terms of what’s going to really resonate most with us.

So, from a social campaign, from a social perspective, what you’re posting organically, you want elements of that live on your site. So, whether that’s linking to a blog post resource, or you’re talking about your executive director, you want to have a page that it matches that content on your website.

When it comes to search, if you’re linking people who are commonly searching for something, you find a topic that’s really popular through the Google Ad Grant, you’re bringing people through there. You want to make sure you’re matching that messaging on whatever you’re doing on social because people that are building a relationship with you certainly are going to look at all of those platforms.

But I would also say if you’re doing paid social campaigns, you do want to try deviating a little bit from your core messaging and try something thing that has a bit of a different flavor when you’re targeting a new audience because you never know it may actually resonate even more and have a greater impact on those people. Yeah.

John Bertino:

[20:11] Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Goodrum:

[20:12] Yeah.

John Bertino:

[20:13] Not getting too rigidly attached to one approach and testing different messaging because you might surprise yourself.

Michael Goodrum:

[20:18] And I will say to you, John, I think, and I really apologize to any branding agencies that are out there. I do think that nonprofits don’t necessarily need a full-blown multiple tens of thousands of dollars branding guide to stay fully aligned in terms of their messaging and their storytelling and things like that.

I just think that having collaboration and communication between the development team, the marketing team and the fundraising team, whatever they call it, there is usually enough. If you do make it to a point where you’ve got some extra room in the budget to invest in something like that, it can be helpful, especially when you’re working with an agency. It can be helpful to have those kinds of tools, but it’s not terribly needed.

John Bertino:

[20:58] No I think that’s a great point because again a lot of nonprofits are really small and every dollar they have matters and they need to figure out the most effective way to allocate those resources sure we’ve already kind of circled around the issue or discussion of personalization and segmentation but it’s of course really critical in this space because different donors they’re in different situations different mindsets what have you.

What else can we add to the discussion of segmenting messaging for different donor segments?

Segmenting Donor Messaging

Michael Goodrum:

[21:29] We can go crazy with it if you want to.

John Bertino:

[21:30] Please, let’s go crazy.

Michael Goodrum:

[22:36] Sure. Let’s get wild. So, I’m thinking about a campaign that I ran with the citizens foundation, which is a very large nonprofit that focuses on education in Pakistan. They do have a us-based kind of arm that does the fundraising here in America.

And for them, it was really important to communicate with their donors across all different channels at the different donor levels that they had.

So, we segmented between a zero to a thousand, a thousand to five, five to 50, and then 50 and above and for all of the marketing channels that we were running which of course included email which I know we’ll talk about at some point today included social fundraising and then also included remarketing on YouTube display some of these other channels too we uploaded lists that were targeted to those specific people ripped from their ripped is not the right word but taken from their CRM and made sure that the messaging was coherent and consistent to all of those users we also were able to take it a step further and make sure that the landing pages we were taking those people to from those ad campaigns all matched specifically how we were speaking to those different segments in the ads or in the emails um which was as clean of a kind of like targeting and segmentation funnel that you can create there are there’s a number of different tips and tricks and ways to achieve showing a different experience on a website as well depending on like links or certain sources that people come from so thinking through all of that can really increase conversion rates of donors what.

John Bertino:

[24:06] Else as it relates to the website you meant you foreshadowed a couple different tricks.

Michael Goodrum:

[24:12] On things.

John Bertino:

[24:13] You can do with web let’s pull a few more out of you.

Michael Goodrum:

[24:15] Yeah certainly so there are tools out there that let you a B test web pages that also will allow you to show a different version of a web page based on a UTM parameter that a user is coming through. Yeah. So, we actually use, we use a landing page builder called Unbounce that allows you to do that. We also, Google actually just sunsetted. It’s really unfortunate.

They sunsetted Google Optimize, which was a really, really cool free tool. Still don’t fully understand the method behind that madness there. And then one of my personal favorite fundraising platforms called FundraiseUp allows you to create incredibly effective, AI-driven, really beautiful, but also incredibly easy to set up modals for collecting donations. That you can easily plug into whatever version of a landing page you are using to target certain segments of donors.

John Bertino:

[25:10] Can you expand on that a little bit in terms of different models as you refer to it?

Michael Goodrum:

[25:15] Yeah, so modals. So, for this software, instead of having to create an entire landing page, which, by the way, you need a campaign landing page. If you’re running a fundraising campaign, you should not be sending donors to the general just give now page. It ideally is specific to whatever campaign you’re running.

Um so you’ve gotten that taken care of instead of then taking users to a whole new web page that has the donation form on it they allow you to create this I call I say modal but it’s a pop-up essentially um that looks incredible on mobile that also looks great on desktop and you can customize donation ask amounts on that based on what page it’s on which donors you’re targeting and so you’re you don’t ask you don’t get right you’re much more likely to ask to get what you’re looking for from those different segments by targeting specifically the donation model that you’re using too.

John Bertino:

[26:08] Brilliant. And that’s FundraiseUp.

Michael Goodrum:

[26:11] FundraiseUp.

John Bertino:

[26:12] Yeah. Okay. And while we’re on the subject of tools, you’ve already given us Unbounce. You mentioned the Sunsetted Google product and now FundraiseUp. Any other tools that you think our audience should be aware of?

Michael Goodrum:

[26:23] I would be remiss to not also shout out Classy, which is a donation platform too. They’re San Diego based as well. Classy is incredible. I think they are the kings and queens of peer-to-peer fundraising. I haven’t seen a platform that does it better. And then their donation page builder is also incredible.

They are also coming out. They may have already done this with a modal-based situation, too. So, it’s really between the two of those, for me at least, with favorite fundraising softwares that are out there. Other tools. MailChimp has made strides in terms of what they offer for email automation.

Not just for nonprofits, of course, but… Having donors go from an initial welcome series into then a series that asks them for their first donation, if they make that first donation, then into a series that asks them to consider either a major gift or to become a recurring donor is a foundational best practice nonprofits should be doing. MailChimp now allows for that to happen, which previously, even just a couple years ago, it did not. Constant contact doesn’t use it, respectfully. We are huge fans of ActiveCampaign. if the nonprofit has the ability to do it.

John Bertino:

[27:31] Putting you on the spot a little bit, is there something specific that might, have you guide a client into ActiveCampaign versus MailChimp, a capability that one has that the other doesn’t? Or is it more a matter of just if the client already has one, then you embrace either technology?

Michael Goodrum:

[27:46] It would be. So, if the client, MailChimp is really common, as you know. So, if a client already had MailChimp, we would encourage them to stay there. If it was kind of like up in the air, where are we going to go? We would suggest active campaign.

John Bertino:

[27:58] Okay. Anything specific that you like about it?

Michael Goodrum:

[28:01] The, the ability to build sequences out that are based on like multiple decision points, including things that people are doing on your website.

So, someone opens an email from you and then they visit a certain webpage and watch a specific video, which may be one in every 900 people is going to do, or, you know, whatever it is, you trigger them in action for that user. Yeah, and so you can get like really kind of tricky and in the weeds with it which is really helpful.

John Bertino:

[28:27] Okay and here we are talking email so sure anything else as it relates to and I know there’s so much we could do we probably will do a full episode on email marketing cool but I’ll be here yeah any excuse to come back to San Diego and get a beer over at Ballast Point but anything else with email marketing that you feel high level listeners should know when it comes to marketing nonprofit.

Michael Goodrum:

[28:52] Yeah. I, I, and I’ll, I’ll probably use this to tee up a segue for us as well, but email marketing is a really powerful way to activate gifts during a season of fundraising, but really also needs to be used to build relationships with people. I think very often nonprofits find the time only for the most kind of rudimentary rigmarole, if you will, where they’re sending out the newsletter that oftentimes even includes an ask in it.

And then they’re sending out their campaign appeals during campaign seasons, whenever they’re running them. And we need to remember that we’re building value-based relationships with our donors, right? Kind of like what we talked about at the very beginning. And from that perspective, email marketing needs to be a constant way of communicating.

Michael Goodrum:

[29:38] In a multitude of ways with your donors to create excitement, to share what you’re up to as an organization, to get to know individual people who work at your organization, to get to know the people or the environments that, it’s a good word, impacting.

Because then when you do need to send those critical fundraising emails, people are, and I hate to use this word, but I’ve been in the game for too long and this is just how marketers talk, they’re trained. People become trained to open your emails or trained not to open your emails.

And if we’re sending only asks, it’s kind of like having a friend who every time he calls you, he’s just asking for you to come give him a ride or you to come watch his dog. And there’s no reciprocal value in your relationship with that person. You get trained to like, oh, Jimmy’s calling me.

Oh, I know what to expect here. Right. And we want to train our donors when they see an email from us, like, oh, this could be something really exciting. I can’t wait to open this email.

John Bertino:

[30:35] Yeah. Yeah. So, I might be breaking a rule of good podcasting here, asking you to, to a degree, repeat yourself. But I think you started to go rattle off a really compelling list of likes, what the heck should I be emailing about? So, if you could reiterate and also expand upon that.

So, the one that jumped out was, hey, get to know the people that work here. I’m sure you can always tell more stories, kind of give use cases of people or like, you know, stories about how donations helped benefit certain particular, you know, recipients. Sure. But what else?

Michael Goodrum:

[31:08] I mean, so we, the list could be almost infinite in terms of what specific emails you could send, and we can definitely do some more examples.

I think the way to really sum it up is to make sure that, six out of seven emails that you send outside of a normal fundraising season are not asking for anything your whole goal is to drive excitement to drive connection to drive um even what’s the what’s the right word for it where someone feels like pride right it’s like you support us here’s what you here’s like what you’re continuing to do thank you and just a thank you email out of the blue outside of a fundraising season because you accomplish something with the funds that your donors have given, all of those can be incredibly effective.

So, I think coming from that perspective of how we could build more trust, which oftentimes sharing more about the people that work at the organization can help build that trust. How can we build more excitement, which is sharing stories of impact, which is sharing like up-and-coming projects.

John Bertino:

[32:08] Impact. That’s the word I was looking for.

Building Donor Pride

Michael Goodrum:

[32:10] It’s a good word. It’s a big word in this space. Definitely. Yeah. And then how can we build more? how can we build more pride in the people that give to us and support us? And that’s through gratitude and acknowledgement.

And I don’t mean to shy away from giving specific examples, but it really is tailored more to the individual nonprofit, like an organization we work with. We’ve worked with Greenpeace. We work with the Rainforest Foundation. How they would do it is different than the Cancer Research Institute, like the types of content that would make sense for them to share.

John Bertino:

[32:39] All right. And I’m going to belabor the point because I think, again, Again, it kind of comes back to how much, how much resources do we have and, or, or, or, okay, got it. How do I provide value? And then you’ve got people overlooking the email marketing team, whether they’re in-house or outsourced kind of going, is this a good use of time?

Is this worth blowing somebody’s email? And those people, so it’s like, you know, cost benefit analysis. Sure. So, if you could think of a specific example from either of those clients or any others, where you were pushed to find ways to provide value other than sharing stories about the staff or other than thanking them, what else have you done?

Michael Goodrum:

[33:23] So, when it comes to, just to make sure I’m hearing your question correctly. So how do we, in essence, have our emails be return driving in addition to providing value?

John Bertino:

[33:35] Yes. Yes.

Michael Goodrum:

[33:36] So, this is automatically breaking the rule that I just shared with you. But I would say that if that is the case and you find yourself in a circumstance where to justify doing email, there needs to be some potential for donations to come in.

That leading with a whole smorgasbord for to use a fun word here of those different things meet someone at our organization here’s a story of impact by the way we want to thank you so much also here’s an upcoming thing that we’re focusing on that if you feel compelled to you could support us with that’s the only way if you’re going to have every single email that you send out include an ask at least include some form of other thing in there but I will say too that and I don’t have the percentage statistic on me and it varies per client but we talked about the Cancer Research Institute a little bit.

I’ll probably talk about them more today we’ve seen emails from them that are just talking about patient stories not asking for gifts at all have people click to the link to read the patient story and then donate on the website right so it’s almost like a marketing best practice that then does lead to the desired result without it being about the desired result. Right.

John Bertino:

[34:49] Okay. That’s brilliant. Now let’s talk about some things that aren’t so brilliant. And that is the common pitfalls that nonprofit organizations make. I’m sure you’ve seen your share of them over the years. So, what comes to mind?

Michael Goodrum:

[35:01] Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. I think first and foremost to bring it back to social is not investing anything into your organic social, which I know, If I had, if I actually had to pick one to really invest your time in, it probably would be the paid side of things. But your organic social is your storefront, especially when we’re talking about Facebook and Instagram.

And currently the donor base being a little bit older still is going to still be Facebook. If, if people are coming to your Facebook page and there’s nothing happening, you don’t have to have that many followers.

But if there’s just content that hasn’t existed for four years, some people will think your nonprofit doesn’t exist anymore. Even if you have a website, etc. Right. So there, I see that enough where at least making sure you post once per month, just as a ritual, it doesn’t even have to be that great just to have people know there’s a pulse. Very important.

John Bertino:

[35:54] And organic social is always that thing that it’s kind of almost like first on the shopping blog. Again, we get back to limited resources. That’s not just money. That’s time, effort, energy, you know, hey, what can we ignore?

Michael Goodrum:

[36:05] But have an intern do it. Right.

John Bertino:

[36:07] But as we’ve already discussed, it’s so critical for this space. So don’t cut the organic social effort or at least do something. Okay. What else?

Michael Goodrum:

[36:16] Okay. So, this one’s, my favorite. I’ve run webinars on this and use the Cancer Research Institute as the case study that kind of drives what success looks like here, but then also how to avoid the pitfalls. So, I call it trying to go zero to a hundred, which I think that a lot of nonprofits are sometimes forced to do from a resource perspective. What I mean by that is they will hit a fundraising season.

The one that’s most applicable to most nonprofits is year end. So, the November to Giving Tuesday to then December fundraising. There’s just more giving because of the season. There’s more. There’s a tax deadline. There are so many reasons to give.

And nonprofits will oftentimes not have invested anything into relationship building with anyone throughout the entire year, except for maybe their own donor base. And then try to go okay we’re gonna our goal for year end is to uh grow our donor base by 30.

Michael Goodrum:

[37:09] Has anyone heard from us outside of this one period of time where we’re going to go full force on asking them for gifts at the same time that all other nonprofits are going to be asking for gifts no but that is the game plan that a lot of organizations do some clients will come and work with us starting in October and it’s we ask the question so what have you been doing all year like what audiences have you been warming up and talking to?

They’re like, we’ve done none, but we want to have five times return on ad spend with you guys from people that don’t know us. And we’re like, we want to, I don’t know, just some other incredible feat. That’s really hard to pull off. So, um, I would say nonprofits fall into the pitfall of not building relationships, warming up audiences year-round, investing even some small amount of budget into doing it goes such a long way when you then need to capitalize on it.

Avoiding Nonprofit Pitfalls

Michael Goodrum:

[37:55] Um, so don’t make that mistake.

John Bertino:

[37:57] Yeah mum, Okay. And I was wanting to ask you next about success stories before we wrap. So again, Community Boost, eight years old.

Michael Goodrum:

[38:09] 12, 13, I’ve been there for eight.

John Bertino:

[38:11] Ah, gotcha. And so, you guys have worked, and I know again, with some major entities out there, put you on the spot. Any success stories come to mind?

Michael Goodrum:

[38:20] Yeah. I mean, some of it’s what keeps me going. I think about during COVID, there were multiple nonprofits that almost had to shut their doors forever. But some of the work that we did together help them remain open. I think about the Tenement Museum, which is a really prominent museum in New York, in Manhattan.

And we did a kind of like a full-out, total honest fundraising campaign with them that basically said, we will have to close forever if we don’t get your support. Wow. And they’ve, I’m not going to share how much, but they’ve fundraised enough to sustain themselves through that period of time. Um, and then they’re still a thriving open museum today. That was pretty cool.

Achieving Fundraising Success

John Bertino:

[39:01] That’s awesome.

Michael Goodrum:

[39:01] Yeah. The Cancer Research Institute, uh, was a client I worked directly with for a number of years, and we helped them fundraise their first million-dollar year end together online, uh, which was a huge feat and one that they didn’t think was possible, but we did it from building relationships all year long, which was really cool.

John Bertino:

[39:20] Those are two really good ones you know clearly, doing work in this space it’s very rewarding one of the reasons that we wanted to tackle it and do more work ourselves that is the agency guide and helping brands find the right agencies in the nonprofit world there’s you know stories like that just make it so inspiring, that’s fantastic Michael you are a wealth of information we really appreciate it if folks want to get in touch with you and or Community Boost, give us a few social handles or best ways to do that.

Michael Goodrum:

[39:53] Yeah, definitely. I’m always excited to connect with new people on LinkedIn. So, you can find me at Michael Goodrum. I’ve got the original Michael Goodrum. So, you can find me there. We’re at communityboost.org as well.

And then if you’re a nonprofit that’s looking for some direct support, or even just some audits of what you are currently doing, you can go to communityboost.org slash let’s talk and get in touch with our team. We love to leave conversations with knowledge dropped, even if we don’t end up working together.

John Bertino:

[40:19] That’s fantastic. Michael, thanks so much. Let’s make sure we get something on the books to go get that beer.

Michael Goodrum:

[40:24] We’d love to. Thank you so much, John.