 And today, we're talking all about building a strong communication strategy for your campaign, and we'll be narrowing in more specifically on building a strong social media and email plan by providing you our top suggestions are pretty much our favorite best tips. So if you have not started now is definitely the time to start strategizing and preparing a solid communication plan for give big. If you have started this webinar is going to really help give you some tips and suggestions when it comes to this part of your campaign. To start with, in its most basic form, there are three general phases to an email and social media marketing campaign for your giving them. So we're going to have the build up the day of. And then, of course, the follow up. So diving deeper into each of these for the build up this phase of your campaign is pretty much going to be everything that you do prior to the giving day so that includes a save the date or an introduction email or a social post, really any reminders and email reminders that you plan to send out in the weeks or days before the event, as well as including a give big reminder on any email blasts or social posts that you are sending out that like after your first give big save the date communication. You should really make sure you start to weave in communication regarding give big into all of the communications that you're sending. You can stick it at the bottom of an email blasts that start to go out, even if they have nothing to do with your give big campaign it's really about repetition. Really plugging the event, letting people know that you are going to be participating and give big, but really repetition is going to be a key to making something stick in people's minds so that the more you repeat that you are participating and give big, you're letting them know what day the event is this year. All that is going to help your donors, your, you know, network of individuals who are supporting you, it's going to help them remember that day so repetition is going to be key in your build up. So start taking a look at your full calendar of E blasts and all of your upcoming social posts to make sure that you don't miss any opportunities to really plug the giving day during the build up. Moving on kind of these are just a little synopsis of each of these kind of sections will get deeper into them as we go on. But moving on to the day of email and social posting is of course going to be super important on the day of the event. nonprofits are typically seeing the best returns when they have a really well considered kind of pre scheduled communication campaign both email and socials during the day. So, at a bare minimum, we always suggest that you send these emails and also do these social posts, pretty much a kickoff, probably around, you know, as soon as the event starts, or bright early in the next morning. You will know your donors best. And then of course a midday check in and a call to action to donate. And then you'll also want to have an email probably at the start of any special prize hours that you're trying to win. So start taking a look, once the prizes are released, making sure like you're weaving communication strategy and with each of these prizes that you want. You'll probably also want to do an evening check in calls action to donate. And then, most likely you will also want to do an email warning towards the very end of the event, maybe on the final hour, just reiterating that the event is coming to a close if you haven't given make sure to give. If you have given and you want to give again to do so as well. And then we have the follow up which, of course, is very important. I think just that, you know, most of your focus is going to be on build up and they have but follow up is so incredibly important and it helps to sort of plan this out prior to the event. So as you're planning your communication and outreach campaign, don't forget how important your follow up is. Your follow up is going to help you close the loop on your give big campaign and help you set the stage for whatever your next effort is. The mighty cause is going to send each of your donors an email with their tax receipt and the custom thank you message that your nonprofit has created. So definitely create that little thank you message. But we also recommend you follow up with all of your donors outside of the automations that go out, whatever that looks like for you. So start planning now plan on at least probably one email and a social post the day after the event. This will be your broad thank you to everybody thinking all your donors for helping you reach your goal. You can tell them how much you raised. You can let them know where the funds are going to be used. Something special is really cool video of your staff maybe saying thank you or even an email or video from the executive director. These are all really great personal ways to show your appreciation and keep your donors engaged so that they can feel a part of your community feel like they've been seen. And hopefully they'll continue to return to donate because of the relationship that you've created post event. So we're going to get into all of this a little bit more with some more tips for specifically email. So your email overview, we're pretty much going to talk through best practices what we see to be really successful. We'll talk a little bit about how you can segment your audiences. How you can kind of figure out what you want to say based on the group you're saying it to. We'll talk a little bit about scheduling and how to time your emails everyone you know it's always different for everyone based on you know their capacity how many people are helping you with your campaign. So take from this webinar what you can and what you will. We want to offer you the suggestions but we don't want to overwhelm so if you can't do all of this totally fine pick what you can. Moving into email best practices we have is kind of some of our key bullet points here as well as a sample email to the side which we can talk about in a minute. But basically for email best practices what we're going to see that is going to really work is keeping your email short and sweet. You want your message to be clear concise let the you know the donor or whatever supporter you're reaching out to let them know exactly what you want and what you need from them. So if your email is descriptive and your subject line is going to be really important. You want them to click it and open it so it helps to be descriptive and you know urgent. So depending on the specific type of email you're sending be kind of creative but also be very straightforward in your subject line. And then when it comes to the actual email you're going to want to personalize the email. That means crafting the email for the audience that is receiving it. So if you're sending an email to, you know, a group of volunteers asking for a donation, you'll want to personalize that email if you're sending it. Another ask to a different group of people asking for a donation as well. But maybe these are your larger gift givers, you'll want to personalize the email for that audience. So including a direct call to action so we call these CTAs. You want your CTA to be very clear and to directly link them, most likely to your donate form. If you're kind of going back and forth between organization page and donate form, I would say if your audience is your, you know, donor base and definitely give them that donate link. Most likely they already know who you are they already, you know, know exactly what you do. They don't need to be linked to your organization page and then be made to make the next step to the donate link. So you're going to want to, you know, cut that stuff, make sure that they can get right to the link that you want them to have which is making the donation. Then of course formatting and testing your messages for mobile making it mobile friendly that's going to be really key. Most people are, you know, receiving emails on the daily and they're pulling up their phones and they're scrolling through and seeing what's up. Not everyone is, you know, checking on their email on a desktop anymore. Unless you know they're in an office or something. So always keeping in mind making something mobile friendly I know a lot of people are actually designing, you know, your emails on a desktop. They're going to, you know, you know, different kind of platforms mill chimp constant contact they're going to make it easy for you to use a template that's mobile friendly. And just make sure you test it so if you do make an email, send yourself a test send a colleague a test send a friend a test test your buttons, make sure all the links work make sure you know your font is eligible. All of these little things we call them just quality assurance so you're doing a QA test, pretty much checking yourself before you send your email off into the world. Because once it's out there it's out there which can be a little nerve wracking. But the more you test beforehand the more you, you know, try to figure out exactly your messaging tailored to your audience you're going to feel better about sending that email out. And then, this is kind of a sample email so you can kind of see it. This is a save the date so this would go into the category of the build up email, letting them know hey or participating and give big this year. This is the date here's our organization page, save the date. This is a good example of when to include your organization page link because the donate button you don't want them donating right now you know you want them to donate you know as soon as early giving starts and during the date of to help you win prizes. So you don't want a donate button link in this email you want to link them to your organization page which you have beautifully filled out. So you've updated with you know the most current photos and the most current ask and what you're actually fundraising for this year if you participated last year, you've cleaned out that messaging and just made sure it's relevant to this year's campaign. And now we're going to get into email segmentation so basically segmenting your emails means splitting up your email list. The purpose of email segmentation is increasing the chance that you're going to get that group that you send the email to to open and click through and make the donation or do the thing that you've asked them to do. So you're tailoring each of the groups. This is different from a B testing which we can get to in a minute. But basically, you are determining the different groups of people that you are going to send emails to by looking for something that they have in common so maybe you have a group a segment of a large gift givers. Though those people would get a different message. You know, then one time gift givers type of the deal. And then maybe you have a segment that's like all of your staff and you have a segment that's all of your volunteers and a segment of everyone who has, you know, only given to your campaign once or has never given to your campaign, something like that. Basically, each of these groups is getting the same email but it's the messaging is tailored to that group of people so on the right side of the side you can see finessing your ask for your segment. So the ask is all about, you know, is what it's all about and nonprofit fundraising so as part of your email strategy you want to make sure you haven't asked what is appropriate for each of the segments that you've created. So for the examples that I was kind of talking about for non donors people who haven't given, maybe you ask for it, you know, a low donation just $10 can do so much for our organization let them know what $10 can do for you. Maybe you have your recurring donors you know these people are going to give to your campaign because they do it year over year. Maybe their amounts fluctuate. Maybe you're going to not ask for the bare minimum you want to encourage them to try to give around the $25 $50 range. Same ask you're asking them to donate just like you did the non donors, but you've tailored your message now to a group that might respond better to a $50 ask. And then of course if you're, you know, creating a message that's just for volunteers. You know, and want to acknowledge that they actually do a lot of work and they support you in a different way throughout the year. So you don't want to just go in and bluntly ask for money. You want to start by just, you know, acknowledging all of the effort all of the time time is money and they are giving you their time. So they are making a huge donation during the year. So just kind of, you know, finessing that ask acknowledging and, you know, thanking them for their support and then asking what they can do specifically during the campaign window to make them to help you reach your goals. So when it comes for what and when to send your emails. The slide says one of the most asked questions in email marketing is when to send emails when is the best time and really the truth is that there is no magic hour or magic day to send out your emails to your audience. It really comes down to the individual user. It comes down to your audience. It comes down to your relationships that you have with them. That being said, we do have some guidelines and suggestions on the right side of this slide that you can use as you're coming up with a strategy. So, like I was saying earlier on, depending on your capacity, maybe you can't hit all of these emails, but maybe you can pre schedule as much as you can leading up to the event so we always recommend a save the date to your donors. Here's a link that is going to go to your organization page, showing them where they can find you on the give big platform. Here's our page. Here's, you know, the link that you can share with your friends. When the giving event starts, you can let them know about our mission. We're really excited to participate. Here's, you know, our top three goals for fundraising this year. I'm letting them know why you're participating and that you're participating and when they should mark their calendars for another good one optional but you can send out a note letting your supporters know about peer to peer fundraising. This is going to be a really key way for you to extend your reach. So it's a really good idea to figure out, you know, which contact list would be really a good fit for peer to peer fundraising emails, and let them know like, hey, here are the steps. Here's what peer to peer fundraising is. You create a page, you share your link to your page with your network and you try to solicit and get donations. All of those donations are going to funnel into your organization page. So basically they're fundraising on your behalf they're helping take some of the lift off and reach a larger community that maybe you have access to so coming up with an email, letting people know that it's a great partnership and even just to reach out to you if they're interested. And then we always recommend to send an email during the early giving window early giving has started, you can now make your donation to our organization, you want to include that donate button link. And then you can also remind them that these are the actual hours of the actual event, but you are always welcome to make a gift early. And then you send an email at the start of the giving day. So this is your big celebratory, the event has kicked off. Maybe you send that one early early in the morning, land and everyone's inboxes. Let them know, again, called action donate here, give now type of deal, linking directly to your donate form. I also recommend sending an email probably towards the end of the day for a final push. Not pretty much, you know, hopefully will rally anybody who forgot to give maybe the day got busy they were at work. Now they're at home. They're relaxing they get a ping on their phone they're like oh wow I forgot how big is today I'm going to you know give my $10 to support. And we also say, check your analytics. If you previously participated during give banks and crime Valley, pull up your, you know, your report and see, you know, when did you get the most donations like can you take a look and see when you should try to tailor your messaging. Not shown on the slide but two other ideas, you know, sending a message to your audience as soon as prize hours start sending a message to your audience, you know, also reaching out to those who previously gave to your campaign but haven't given we also see really a lot of success with that so on the mighty cause platform under your reports, you can see a retention report if you have previously participated. And you can download that retention report, you know, somewhere during the give big day, and you can see who has not been retained so you're going to want to come up with an email campaign specific to those people. Pull that list, most current, you know, data, like, you know, five minutes before you send it out, plug in those emails and send out the ask, hey, you gave to our give big campaign last year. You know, if you give this year will be able to do XYZ here's a button to donate. We're going to move into the social media section. So, pretty much the overview here is offering you your best practices tips for social media. We have internal workflow tips how you can you know, make social media happen for your campaign, depending on you know your organization the size capacity level who's helping you. We also have content ideas, some things that we see are successful. And what specifically to post. So as for internal workflow tips, you are going to want to appoint a social media manager I know that's not something that every organization has the ability to do maybe you're a small team. It's a good thing for, you know, a board member to do or a volunteer to do a trusted volunteer who you, you know, can trust and train and, you know, let them help you with your campaign. Pretty much being help be in charge so to speak maybe it's a, it's a they report to you and it's a team. But that person would really be able to take some of the lift off of you so they're helping to kind of come up with posts, come up with ideas, figure out like a strategy when is your posting schedule. What are your goals. Do you want to post, you know, two or three times a week leading up to the event and then that person would be your go to key point person during the day of they can keep your, you know, Instagram or your Facebook. Updated, you know, every hour or thinking donors are creating stories for you. So see if there's somebody on your team. A board member of volunteer like I said that can help as a social media kind of manager or partner for you. If that is totally out of the, you know, picture you can't even get somebody to help you, maybe it's going to land on your plate so thinking through and pre scheduling is going to be a big, big, you know, help for you this year, which leads us to our second point schedule in Canada dance. A lot of time can be just sunk into social media, I think we all if we're all you know using social media we can see how quickly and easy it is to get distracted and lost in the mess of social media, but it's also a great and powerful tool to connect with your audience. So what you can do to be successful is really start scheduling pre scheduling your content so you don't have to pull up your, you know, phone and start crafting a message on the spot that is hard. So pre scheduling anything you can, you know, taking maybe an hour to write down different post ideas that you have and then working on that content before you need it. So really and post consistently for internal workflow, that's going to be really key. If you are able to get a social media volunteer or manager meet regularly make sure you all are on the same page, make sure you have your content, make sure you know if you come up with a content idea of, you know, getting supporters or volunteers to talk about why they like your organization. Who's going to wrangle that who's going to make the asks to the volunteers who's going to try to get the submissions. So meeting regularly coming up with a plan and then posting consistently. So you're going to start to see a lot more engagement on your social media, if you start posting consistently. That's like for you. If you're posting, you know, twice a week, three times a week, using stories for more off the cuff type of stuff. Figuring out what consistent means to you because the more you show up the more people know you're there. The more people are going to see your posts. And as they engage with your posts, the more that social media platform is going to push your post to those people. So you've probably seen if you click on something on Instagram, Instagram says, ooh, you're interested in this, and they feed it to you way more. You're seeing, you know, a lot of the same people over and over because you've engaged with them you've clicked through their posts. So show up post consistently and review your analytics. Look and see like who your audiences, when are they most active, you can use that to your strength. Maybe your audience is most active, you know, in the evenings after work so maybe you want to try to schedule your post to hit in the evenings leading up to the event because you'll get more, you know, traction with those, those times, everyone's analytics are going to be different some people's audience might be more active in the morning or maybe they're super active on the weekend. But use that data because that's why it's there for you. And just, you know, try to tailor what you're doing with what is going to be the strength on that platform. So best practices when it comes to social media, post for your audiences, if your audience is mostly a Facebook crew, then post on Facebook, if your audience is mostly, you know, Instagram, or maybe you have more followers on Instagram than you do on Facebook don't feel like you have to post on Facebook, post where the bulk of your audience is where are you going to get the most payout for the time that you put in. Be a storyteller so use the stories feature you know a lot of what's really great and popular right now is video which can sound intimidating. But what's really fun, especially, you know, for stories on Instagram or you know Facebook anything like that is that a lot of this stuff is more off the cuff people want to see like what you're up to. In a less structured format posts are very structured you know you have a plan you have a picture you have a caption and that's that that's what it is, but storytelling stories. Those are very off the cuff maybe you're showing you know some of the animals at your shelter you're doing like a meet and greet with the animals something like that just like one off type of videos that you can post they're going to disappear but you can add them to posts on your, like your Instagram page for instance. But a lot of that is going to be easier than creating and crafting the, you know, the post that sometimes you can feel discouraged because not a lot of people engage with or see it. So these are going to be a really cool way to quickly get content out and show a little behind the scenes. We'll get to that in a second as far as content behind the scenes kind of footage quick little chats are like people love it they just eat it up thoughtful hashtags don't need to go crazy with your hashtags. That was really, you know, a strategy that previously was successful. Now, Instagram sometimes things hashtags can be overwhelming so being thoughtful with your hashtags, you know, using the give big hashtag and maybe, you know, really crafting figuring out which hashtags are relevant to your posts, because for the most part hashtags are going to help people who don't know who you are find you. So typically for like a giving day, your communication is really going to be strongly focused on rallying those in your donation circle who already know about you. You can always get new donors, but everyone, I mean, knows that getting a new donor is a lot more time intensive than, you know, working with the donors and making the donors you have feel seen so don't get to hung up on hashtags. It doesn't need to, you know, absorb your, your content pretty much pre scheduled content we were talking about this as much as you can figure out what content you're going to post what you need. Secure all of those videos anything that you need to pre schedule or have submitted to your team, so that you can share at pre schedule pre schedule pre schedule. You can use Canva. It's like an app that you can sign up for and you can use their templates they do a lot of designs, like social media friendly designs that you could just drop in the text, because they pretty much create a layout for you. And so you can pre schedule all of these maybe you have on your social media to do is is to create a thank you message that you can put in stories or post to your Facebook wall every time a donor who doesn't want to remain anonymous. Donates, and you can thank them publicly like that can be something on your list for the day every donation quick thank you recognizing the donor. And you know your audience you know what they prefer not everyone, you know, once that but just an idea and for early engagement, start posting now if you are registered for give big start letting everyone know just like the emails. Let your donors know let your social media audience know let everyone know that you're participating and here's your goals and here's how they can help you reach them. Save the date, so to speak for social media. I see I've pre scheduled your content twice well it is super important so we're going to keep it pre schedule your content. And then engage on the date of so when it comes during the day that is going to be your most active posting day. If you are a social media, you know, volunteer, they can be the person that's, you know, doing the day of posting commenting resharing if you know a donor makes their own story about your organization you can reshare it that's easy content to recycle through. And if you are like, Oh, but I don't have a social media manager. This is where it's going to be important for you to pre scheduled content. So, you know, five posts during the day, maybe you want to post letting them know the day has started, and then you want to post at the end of the day, and then somewhere in between the day you want to let them know that maybe, you know, a special prize hour has started and now is the time to give click link and buy out which would be ideally your donate form, and then encourage sharing and post the engagement. So what it means come up with a plan, let people who follow you on social media, know that they should hopefully to help you, they should reshare your posts they can reshare your posts to their stories or to their, you know, audience, Facebook, Twitter, wherever the more people are reposting you the more reach you're able to get that you don't have access to so you know, similar to peer to peer fundraising. It can really help you extend your reach. And then when they post, you can repost their posts. It just helps make a lot of content easier because you can see other people engaging with you. And that goes a long way for content ideas video is huge. We're all saying just a ton of video on social media. Most social media platforms are really, you know, competing with one another and so they're all pushing video reels, you know, tick tock videos stuff like that. People just love video photos also super important. If you're going to, you know, make a post on Facebook, figure out if there's a way to include a photo maybe it's a staff photo maybe it's, you know, some behind the scenes picture. So people are going to look at photos, more than they're going to look at a paragraph of text. So figure out how you can weave them photos. Graphics, if you have a graphic that you've created in Canva. Maybe you want to show, you know, how your organization uses money like where does it go, what percentage of, you know, population do you serve like give them stats like, let them know exactly what you do, how you, you know, support the community what your goals are types stuff like that you can share some pretty cool graphics and graphics are reshareable like people it's easy for them to say hey we'll check out this organization here's what they do, and then they can easily reshare a graphic with their community testimonials are really cool. You know, maybe five close people with your network, maybe you ask your board for testimonials like why are they on your board, let them share from their perspective, why your organization is so wonderful. You can, you know, ask them to submit like a, you know, 30 second video sharing some highlights about your organization and you can reshare that on your social media. Challenges themes, you can come up. This is kind of next level but you can come up with a plan, maybe your fundraising for, you know, more toys for your shelter animals. So you can come up with a challenge or a theme. Maybe, you know, you want everyone at home to pose up with a picture with their animal and their favorite toy. And then, you know, people can start to see it's very touching people can see that it's relatable, and that can help drive donations. So coming up kind of with like how clever way that you can connect with the community so that we can understand the importance of your mission, but also making it personal. So afterwards, like I said, behind the scenes, super, super important people love it. It's just the coolest. I mean we all love seeing what happens behind the scenes we love seeing that background footage. What do you do at your organization. You know, if you're whatever you do sometimes it can feel really monotonous sometimes you're going through the motion sometimes you're like oh this is just part of my day it's not worth sharing like that's probably a worth sharing moment. I just want to see what you do because they're not there they don't get to see it maybe don't volunteer with you they don't, they aren't able to it's just a cool inside look at what it takes to run your organization. So figuring out just little things that you can share and these behind the scenes types of things are really great for those off the cuff stories when you need to just quickly pull out your phone maybe you're, you know, cleaning up your building where you have, you know, all of your stuff, like inboxes or whatever it be. Show them what you do like make it personal. That also helps with you know building a community and a relationship and connecting with these donors or potential donors, because they want to see the real people behind the organization for what to post to socials, and when to post the socials pretty much a general guideline when it comes to post and our socials is to post when your audience is most actively talked about looking at your analytics figure out when your audience is most active. So, kind of for a pre event suggested posting guidelines a save the date very similar to your email strategy a save the date and early giving start post hey early giving is open click the link a bio to make your gift. And then of course your live event posting your kickoff your milestones. Hey, we've reached halfway to our donor goal today we need you know, 25 more donors, can you help make this happen. You know, any live matches that you have. Hey, we have a live match for the next hour, any donations will be doubled and then prize announcements. And then of course your final hour reminding everyone hey the giving event is about to close. We're super excited we're so close to our goal here's what we need. And a lot of these can be pre scheduled so your, you know, final hour can even be pre scheduled and you leave a button or like a fill in the blank for how much you need left and donations to reach your goal. Your live match, you probably know that you have a live match most likely unless someone surprised you and said hey here's a match for you know the next hour. In those case you know when your live matches are going to be happening during the event. So you can pre schedule pre design something on Canva. So that all you have to do is post it. If you haven't already pre scheduled for it to hit at a certain time. And then of course closing the loop, the thank yous are going to be so key. You know, as much as everybody else that thinking someone is just so important you want to be things when you, you know, make a gift that acknowledgement is just going to be so key and helping retain donors year over year. So, closing the loop both on social media and an email, you're going to pretty much be doing the same thing you'll send out you know, a general email thinking your audience thinking everybody who supported you. You know, like a social post letting them know like hey, we made our goal or we got so close to our goal and you all are so awesome. We're so excited. Here's, you know what we've raised and here's what we're going to do with it. So regardless if you made your goal you didn't make your goal you, you know, and the ziastically thinking your supporters because they did help you and they donated and they took the time and they paid attention and that's really important. Of course are different than your specific donor emails. This is like a general kind of thank you email but you also are going to want to create specific outreach for email or phone calls where you actually think individually your donors. But you can definitely get creative you can say thank you in so many different ways. You can send a photo of your team, you know, cheering thank you or a video where they're all saying thank you. Yeah, so there's lots of different ideas you can get really creative you can, you know, look around on the internet. How have people thinks you before what have you received. I got a nice little care package one time from the team that I organization that I donated to, which was really surprising and maybe feel really good so coming up with a cool way to say thank you. So that's something that volunteers can also help you with. Maybe you, you know, want to call them or something like that but as far as emails. Definitely let them know it's the easiest and quickest way directly to an inbox to let everybody know how you did on your campaign and the status of everything. And that's it for our social media and email strategy training. If you all need more information on any of the topics that we talked about many calls has a great support library, we have all sorts of different, you know, blog posts, a resource center, just a bunch of different ideas we also have ideas on how to thank your donors. So make sure you check that out link in the Give Big SEV tool kit. But yeah, thanks everybody for joining our on demand webinar and we'll see you at the next one.