Many nonprofit organizations often have lots to deal with and many tasks on the go. Manually communicating with the public can take up a lot of time that these organizations could be using elsewhere.
Nonprofit organizations need to communicate with many different stakeholders, which can easily cause confusion among people in the organization. Each of the relationships it has with a member of the public is likely unique and multiple staff members may interact with the same contacts. Manually reaching out to each contact creates miscommunication opportunities due to messages not being tracked. It can also lead to frustration and missed opportunities for both sides of the conversation.
Public outreach for nonprofits can be made easy with an automated solution. Implementing an automated solution will allow messages to be sent automatically, which makes the outreach process much more efficient.
To make this situation a bit clearer, let’s go over an example.
ABC Foundation has realized they are spending too much time manually communicating with their stakeholders. The organization currently has a completely manual process, where employees will reach out to each contact individually. ABC Foundation is looking for a way to make their public outreach process more efficient.
In this blog, we will go over the four steps to implementing an automated public outreach solution for nonprofits.
Step 1: Build Contact Database
The whole process begins with building a contact database. This database may include information such as contacts’ names, contact details (e.g., email address and phone number), and contact preferences.
This information can be updated in real time. When sending personalized messages, the solution pulls contact data from this database to insert into the message templates, so it is essential that this database remains accurate and updated.
Step 2: Create Content
Before you begin to reach out to the public, you will need to figure out what you want your message to say. Automated messages can be sent but will require templates to be set up ahead of time.
Message templates may include greetings for new contacts, messages specialized to a given contact's interest in your work, links to landing pages advertising events or fundraisers, and donation records or significant achievements.
These messages can be customized with visual elements to make them more attention-grabbing. Also, multiple public outreach templates can be created to use for sending different types of messages to multiple groups of contacts depending on demographics, interests, level of engagement, and more.
Step 3: Personalize Messages
Once a contact receives a message, they will immediately see that it has been personalized. They can access further personalized content as you continue to specialize your messaging.
For example, if a message is sent via email, they might get a link to a landing page that is personalized for them. They may receive a PDF document that is customized to them, and so on. The message can also be downloaded for the contact's further use.
Step 4: Analyze Reports
To know how your messages are being received and be able to specialize them further to fit your public's needs, you will receive a comprehensive report that you can review after each send. This will help identify issues within your database such as incorrect email addresses or phone numbers.
The reports will show many different statistics, such as how contacts are interacting with the messages, which contacts haven't opened messages, and how many messages go unopened. Your reports will tell you just about everything you need to know about your messaging.
Looking to implement an automated public outreach solution?
If you’re looking for a solution that can take care of everything mentioned above, look no further than SimplyCast. At SimplyCast, we have already created a public outreach solution using our all-in-one suite of tools that can be used by any nonprofit that wants to make their process more efficient. SimplyCast includes everything an organization needs in a single all-in-one platform.
Interested in learning more? Click the button below to request a demo from our team to see how our public outreach solution can be used.
