Now that you've sat down and taken an inventory of what's at your disposal, you have to look at your budget and what you can actually make happen. Annual giving is expensive. It takes a lot of resources to build a significant donor base. I was talking with a fellow director of annual giving a couple of years ago and he shared his annual budget with me. He had less than his annual budget for direct mail an email than I had for one project in my budget. I was fortunate to have a healthy budget to work with, and our results reflected that investment. And that's what it is, an investment. An investment in the future of your organization because annual giving builds a donor base and feeds the pipeline to major gifts. So, what can you afford? If you have a limited budget, focus your resources on the workhorses. Your first priority should be a website and a mobile-friendly giving site. After that, use direct mail and email because you'll have the greatest reach and the best ROI. If you can afford phone or have volunteers that can help you, and you have a large audience for acquisition, fit that in. Face-to-face solicitation by staff or volunteers will help you build a strong leadership annual giving program. This is your pipeline to major gifts, so invest here if you can. What can you do for little to no cost to help build your multi-channel strategy? This is where your social presence and other partners will be really useful. Use social media to your advantage. But remember, if you use social media, you need to have a communications plan in place. If you're on Facebook, you need to post information often to remain current and interesting with your audience. For Twitter, you need to message even more frequently. A stagnant social presence won't help your cause. Incorporate giving messages into your regular communications with your donors if you can. Tell impact stories in your e-newsletters and always include give buttons and social links in your electronic communications. Partner with your communication team or your alumni association whenever you can. A reminder about a big giving campaign on the home page, in an e-newsletter, and on your social media sites will help reinforce the message you sent in the mail or by email. Use social media to thank your donors, too, and tell impact stories. Social media is about engaging your audience, so sharing short stories and impact are perfect here. When building your strategy, you also need to look at your audience, both donors and prospects, and do some analysis. How has your audience given in the past, direct mail, email, face-to-face visits? If your audience typically gives online, start your solicitations with an email, then move to direct mail as a follow up. Or if mail is prevalent, send your direct mail out first and follow up two weeks later with an email solicitation. Also, thank donors or give updates on your campaign through your Twitter feeds or Facebook, and ask people to post to their friends after making gifts to share their support as well. So, when do your donors typically give? As I've mentioned before, if your donors typically give in November and December, this is when you should solicit them. Maybe start with an email in late October, a direct mail in November, a follow up email in December and social media posts throughout this time frame sharing impact stories, thanking donors for support, and keeping your organization top of mind with donors. This year, my team added a new component to our multi-channel approach. We did a strategic banner ad campaign that ran October through December, which is our busiest giving season. During the same time frame, we were running our regular direct mail, email, and phone channels as well. We experienced a seven percent lift with the target group by adding this new layer in, and we chose the timing because it's when a great deal of our gifts come in. Do your renewals give differently than your acquisition audience? If your renewals give by direct mail mostly, but acquisition is mostly through phone, then you should mail your current donors and concentrate your phone efforts on acquisition and lapsed-donor audiences. Then you call your non renewed donors as an end of year cleanup effort. All of these factors will help direct your strategy. There are many great ideas for a multi-channel strategy. The point I'm trying to make here is if you have data from current in prior years, analyze it and make educated decisions based on the data. So, we've talked about your inventory of channels and figuring out what you can incorporate based on budget and partnerships. We've also reviewed some thoughts on analyzing the data to make an educated decision on timing of messaging. Now, let's move into the messaging itself. How do you infuse key messaging throughout your channels and capitalize on the multiple channels to boost your results? You need to create consistent messaging across your channels. To do this, repeat and reinforce your message throughout your campaigns. You need to change up your delivery, the packaging, the graphics, and the stories. It's not about telling the same story over and over in every vehicle, but your key message. For example, student support, scholarship, maybe it's research, building a new shelter, whatever that message is needs to permeate all of your messages. Your brand should also be consistent across vehicles so your audience knows when they're interacting with you. You'll broaden your reach and you'll deepen the awareness of your audience to your cause. I'll give you a quick example. Our colleges and schools all fill out a messaging form at the beginning of each year that includes their fundraising priorities for the year, accolades, and events of interest. That one document is used to build direct mail and email solicitations as well as the scripts for the phone program. The stories and conversations change throughout the year, but the fundraising priorities for the year remain constant in all of the channels and are reinforced with every contact we have with the donor. Integrate your messaging throughout your solicitations. But remember, everything doesn't have to be an ask. Let's look at a hypothetical situation for a minute. Your organization is planning a new capital project and you'll be starting to fundraise for it in about six months. Between now and then, utilize your channels to start telling the story. Feed a story out through your newsletter, send an email out to your audience with the exciting news that this is coming. Post some soundbites on social media to build momentum. Talk about it at social events. Once you're close to launching the fundraising campaign, when those first solicitations hit, your donors are more likely to become engaged because they know what you're talking about. They've seen a story, read a post, seen a picture, or watched a video, and they're now interested in learning more about supporting it. A multi-channel approach doesn't mean asking through every channel. It means you coordinate your efforts across channels to maximize results. The beauty of a multi-channel approach is it allows you to interact with your audience, your donors, and prospects on various platforms. You make it easier for your audience to see you and interact with you on their terms in their way. Because of this, because you're being more donor-centric and accepting that not everyone digests information the same way, and everyone doesn't give the same way, your results will increase. It's hard to say what kind of uptick you'll see because it all depends on how much you can do, but your results will improve. Remember earlier when I shared we had a seven percent lift with our test audience by incorporating banner ads? We didn't have any idea what our results would be by adding in this extra channel. But we decided to test the project and we were pleased the results supported what we knew. Multiple channels work.
