Communication is a major part of managing a non-profit organization.;

Whether your focus is on healthcare, environmental conversation, or education, engaging with your supporters is a priority.

Many nonprofits are using SMS marketing to spread their message in this digital era. Luckily, it’s proved to be very effective.

If you are running a non-profit and you haven't given text message marketing a shot, read on to see what you are missing out on!

Why Choose Text Message Marketing?

You can easily send personalized messages to a large group of people. This will obviously be very expensive and time-consuming if you’ll still hanging on to the traditional messaging system. Text messaging applications are evolving, with more features being added every day.;

Nonprofits are taking advantage of this to maximize gains with minimal efforts using browser-based texting analytics.

Another advantage of using text message is regardless of how you phrase your content; the recipient is likely to read your text.

How Can You Use SMS Marketing in Your Organization?

There are three main ways that you can use SMS marketing in your non-profit organization:

• Broadcast messaging: Reaching a group of people with ONE click.
• Text message sign-ups: Encouraging people to opt-in a campaign by texting a fixed code ( such as type YES or 123)
• Peer to peer texting: This is one-to-one texting to build relations.

Text messages are very effective for recruiting volunteers and mobilizing campaign supporters for non-profit organizations.

Let’s discuss how, as a non-profit organization, you can achieve all this using text messaging marketing.

Communicating with Volunteers during Events

It’s crucial that you keep the volunteers in the loop when holding any event. Texting plays a big role in this.Here are a few examples

Distributing Event Information using Broadcast Texts

Campaign managers can use broadcast messaging to inform volunteers on the following:

• The time when the event will be held
• The location
• Their duties

When you are logged in an app, this is done in one click of a button.

You can also text other potential volunteers and track the results. This is by sending a message with responses such as type YES or NO.

The CRM will automatically categorize the answers.

Read more: How Bulk SMS Marketing can Drive Your Political Campaign to Success?;

Answering Questions through Collective (Peer to peer) Texting

After sending your broadcast messages, some volunteers may have queries regarding the event. Now that they have a phone number, they can text you, and you can reply to them and so on.

The CRM collects and stores contact information for all attendees for future purposes.

Through mass texting, you can ensure maximum participation of an event by sending alerts, follow-ups, and reminders to the volunteers.

You can even collect additional information for attendees through automated texting. For example, if your first text was:

We are having fundraising on 3rd Feb 2020 to help street children, text Interested if you want to attend.

People who are not interested are immediately eliminated from the thread.

Now you can send the following text to the attendees:

Hurrah! Please send us your name so that we can add you to the attendance list.

The CRM updates their name with an automatic merge tag such as {first name _ last name}

At this point, you can start sending personalized messages and ask for more details, such as their email address.

Creates Awareness

Say you want to attract many volunteers to help in planting trees. SMS marketing is the most effective way because many people are likely to read your text.

As discussed earlier, you can use a series of messages to personalize the final campaign messages to encourage attendance.

Use SMS opt-ins to Collect Volunteers

If you are holding a campaign, you can post it on social media handles and website. But instead of asking individuals to enter their email address, you request them opt-in with a text.

People find this more comfortable and are likely to go through with it. You can then ask for more personal details as you get acquainted with each other.

Mobilizing People during an Emergency

During an emergency, every second counts. Emailing people may not work as some may not be connected to their WI-FI.

Calling, on the other hand, may take so much time when they're thousands of people involved.

Thanks to text messaging, it’s easy to spread a message in a minute through broadcast messaging.

Here are a few ways messaging can help during emergencies:

Alerting People When They're In Danger

If there is a fire or tornado, you can text the affected residents to take action quickly. You can also gather information on the affected individuals.

For example, you can add: If you are affected reply with YES

With the information, you can send help to the affected parties as soon as possible.

Sending Automated Responses

Another way you can help people during a crisis is by sending an automated response telling them the action they should take to stay safe.

For example, during a natural disaster like heavy rains, you can caution people to stay indoors.

You can also ask people to help with your social media handles. Here you can use an opt-in-keyword for those who are willing to help. After they accept to opt-in, you can send an automated text informing them of the steps they can take to help.

Since all this data is stored in your CRM, the next time there is a calamity in the same area, you’ll have your list of volunteers ready.

Recruiting

You can recruit volunteers using emails or social media handles, but it’s so much easier when you use text messages.

Text messages take prospects step by step. This way, they don’t feel overwhelmed.

Instead of providing a form that volunteers can fill in,all their information, begin with a simple text and then ask more info bit by bit.

Using broadcast messaging helps you reach many people, which increases your chances of getting the right people for your team.

Fundraising

Money is a sensitive topic, and you have to be strategic on how to ask for it if you want success.

There are two ways you can use text messaging to ask for donations.

One is the peer-to-peer texting, and the other one is using opt-in codes.

Peer-To-Peer Texting for Fundraising

Instead of using emails or generic messages, you can use collective texting to ask for donations.

Inserting the first time of an individual can have a huge impact and a higher persuasion power compared to a generic text.

When you are using a messaging app, this doesn’t take hours to implement.

The best part is that you can prepare and schedule your campaigns in advance.

Use Tags to Segment Your Supporters

You can categorize your messages based on the replies you get from your supporters. For example, you can group those who opt out and try to win them over using other options.

You can then have two more segments of those who pledged high amounts, and those who pledged a small amount. This ensures your follow up emails make sense to all groups.

To create a long term relationship with your users, make a habit of thanking them for taking action.

You don’t want your thread to be full of money requests only.

Surveys

Every non-profit requires constant feedback to know whether or not they are on the right path. If you are running a survey, you can send a simple message such as:

Hello Olivia, we are carrying out a survey to improve our services. Would you love to help? Reply YES if you want in and NO if you want out.

If a person chooses YES, they are provided with the questionnaire or asked to fill in a form.

How to Choose the Best SMS Service for Non-profits

If you Google, text messaging service, you’ll get thousands of results. Below are five tips that will give you an idea of what you should be looking for:

1. Easy to Use.

Time is of the essence in a non-profit organization. You don’t have days to learn or teach your juniors how to use a text service software. Be sure to find something that requires minimal time to learn how to operate.

2. Great Customer Service

A great texting service for a non-profit organization should have a responsive and friendly customer service.

This is very critical because you don’t want a company that won’t be there when you are facing issues sending texts during a crisis.

3. Experience with Non-profit Organizations

Non-profit organizations have different needs from other companies. It’s crucial that you work with a testing message that has a history with other non-profit organizations. They are likely to have a way to solve the challenges you may face during texting.

4. Price

It’s very crucial that non-profit organizations save every cent they get. This is very reasonable given the cause they are serving.

With that said, choosing the cheapest messaging service may not be the best idea. It may not serve the intended purpose.

If you focus too much on the price you might forget other factors such as reliability of the app.

5. Features

Text messaging apps come with many features to make the texting experience of the user easy. A messaging service that understands a non-profit organization may have templates that fit your needs. If you don’t get one with experience with nonprofits, get one that’s ready to go the extra of helping with the customization process.

Get A Messaging App for Your Organization

Even though they are other outreach ways such as email marketing and social media marketing, they may not be the best outreach means for a non-profit organization.

Nonprofits need a mode of communication that can reach out to thousands of people in the shortest time possible.

If you haven’t considered switching to SMS marketing, this may be your opportunity to get started and take your organization to the next level of efficiency & effectiveness.

If you still don’t understand how this works, contact us for a Start Free Messaging Demo that will take you through the whole process.

Text message marketing has an open rate of 98%.

The biggest sales day of the year is looming right around the corner and there is no better way to reach your prospects than on their phones! A well-planned mobile marketing campaign can do wonders for your brand during the biggest sale extravaganza of the year, that now lasts for more than just a day.

Here’s a few tips to keep in mind when you set up your SMS marketing campaign for Black Friday, this year:

Personalize your text messages

Hi John, giving makes you happy. Buy your Christmas presents from [name of your company] and get 45% discount!

This is your chance to make your clients feel special, welcomed and remembered. A little can go a long way when planning SMS marketing campaigns, like adding their first name with a salutation for the messages you send.

Reading their name not only helps them feel cherished by your brand, but also reduces chances of falling below the radar as generic spam or junk. Thus, it will increase the clicks on the Call-to-Action on your button.

Timing matters

Hi John, you’ve still got lots of time to take us up on this special 50% OFF offer till 9pm today.

Time is the most crucial part of any SMS marketing strategy. Plan it too early and you risk being forgotten, plan it too late and miss out on opportunities.

Sending marketing SMS during busy afternoons or work hours risk being ignored out of annoyance.

In general, standard business hours of 10 am – 8 pm are most effective for SMS marketing campaigns. Heuristically the best time for marketing SMS blasts is during the early morning i.e. 8:00 - 12:00, when people are just getting started with their morning coffee at work and are usually checking their phones. Or later in the evenings when they’re relaxed, like 17:00 - 21:00.

Don’t discount the discount!

The perfect start to the festive season: Make sure you buy your Festival presents this weekend to get a 60% discount!

Sales promotions is the lifeblood of Black Friday. Give a good enough reason for your customers to see why you are contacting them and make their time and effort count. Most readers skim read to see the discount part of the message, which is the best driver for increasing traffic and conversions on your site.

Follow the 5 Ws of SMS marketing

It’s a no brainer that senders must keep their SMS short and sweet. But copywriters often struggle to make the most of the small real-estate. So, it’s best to follow the 5Ws of message writing for SMS promotions:

1. What - could be a deal or a discount code
2. Who - your brand or store
3. Where - on the web or in store
4. How - using the code or whatever CTA applies
5. Why - Black Friday sales

Keep it linked

Make the most of each marketing avenue with a bit of cross-promotion. Tie in your social media pages, e-mailers and SMS together to make sure there are no leaks in the sales funnel.

Tying up all the marketing channels together with a unified message will help you gather more awareness and actions from prospects for your Black Friday sale.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas are just around the corner. Customers are ready to grab the best offers and put their money, where they feel valued. It’s your job to inspire them to choose you instead of a competitor! For more interesting tips on special event and seasonal SMS marketing promotions, follow this space.

Start your black friday campaign now

Try for free

Marketing is a game of creativity with the rising competition in every industry. With the increase in the number of platforms where you can engage your potential customers, companies find it a daunting task to create and offer marketable content at the right platform during the right time so, as to gain the maximum visibility with least spend. But an area that is still growing despite what popular belief might be is SMS marketing. Airlines have been slowly adopting this impactful marketing tool and embracing its benefits for the better.

With numerous players in the market and lack of customer loyalty airlines these days have been going through a bit of a struggle. While other promotional avenues can be quite heavy on the pocket, the innovations in the SMS marketing solutions can bring about positive change to industry and help smart marketers overcome market challenges.

Here’s how SMS marketing is integrated with other marketing efforts of airlines for better:

Deal notifications can drive conversions:

These days airline deals is a buzz word and most people who choose to travel look for the most affordable offers. Moreover, these days many travelers are on the lookout for great airline deals whose entire travel plans depend on the availability of affordable means. A great way to attract customers for airlines is to offer them what they are looking for right in their mobile inbox. That way, even the ones that were not looking to travel, may change their minds and make new travel plans due to special deals being offered from the airlines. And what better way to communicate these deals than through bulk SMS marketing as it reaches fast and is received and opened by the receivers the most.

Improve customer loyalty:

These days customer loyalty is hard to come by in the airline industry, as most travel plans are based on affordability. So, it is evident people would not always pick the same airline every time they fly, very few have exclusive preferences. To deal with this problem many airlines offer benefits and bonuses for repeating customers for their loyalty. Such offers can do wonders to improve the loyalty of fliers and the quickest way to communicate them is through SMS marketing channels. Most such email updates would slide into the spam or promotional folder if sent over through mail and would seldom be opened or read by the customers. By offering more benefits fliers would receive more value for the money and would improve their loyalty to airline brands without considering costs as they would get more value for their money.

SMS marketing is cost-effective and reliable:

If you try to manage multiple channels of communication to inform and notify your clients, it can lead to process bottlenecks and be prone to errors. Needless to say, it also requires hefty investments. SMS marketing dashboards are flexible, customizable and easy to use, they come a fraction of the costs required for other marketing channels and can be easily managed by a single person. Airlines can also send special notification messages like, flight status, ticketing information and others to drive their customer satisfaction levels with little expense. SMS messages also offer great reliability when it comes to a ubiquitous communication system as they are viewable and supported on all kinds of mobile devices. Moreover, as stated above SMS still have the highest open rate of about 98% that remains unmatchable by any other email communication.

In conclusion, since SMS marketing is still relatively new and under-utilized, airline companies must act fast to have their markets cornered for better returns as SMS promises high engagement rates. Making communication easy for clients is the bottom line for every business and the easiest way to achieve that is through SMS marketing.

Ever thought about the only thing that never leaves your side is just your mobile phone! India’s mobile market is growing at a tremendous rate, recent data from TRAI suggested that India just reached its mark of having 1 billion mobile users, which is great news given that India’s economy is progressing for a brighter future. The increase in use of mobile phones is sign of dramatic change that is occurring in the society in how people communicate and do business.

What is Text or SMS Messaging?

Businesses are based on communication and thanks to the advent of better mobile technology and its use, people are aware of media like SMS (short messaging service). Every mobile phone user has access to messages and uses them, hence is also familiar with the system. A groundbreaking survey data revealed that people touch their phones almost 2617 times a day, thus, it is understandable why the open rate of SMS messages is so high up to 98 percent. Data also reveals that people open most SMS messages within 3 minutes of it being delivered.

It is now commonplace for consumers to be notified of purchases, special deals and other notification from their preferred vendors and service providers. Thus, SMS marketing with the help of bulk SMS providers has emerged to be a powerful business promotional tool that is affordable, fast and effective for businesses of varying scales. However, bulk SMS marketing like most other things in business requires some planning and thought to equip itself with valuable content and also bring value to the recipient.

Send delivery status updates to strengthen the relationship:

Each transaction with a customer is an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with them. So, utilize and make the most of these opportunities with simple acts of transparency, by sending those messages to notify the delivery status of their order or the status of their transaction. This way the customer feels like they are kept in the loop with clear communication and are a part of the process. Messages can help strengthen business relationships and boost your reputation in the industry.

Getting feedbacks from surveys:

Traditional survey methods are often over-intrusive and require filling up of long, time taking questionnaire. They are cumbersome to carry out with all the paperwork and the digital media through emails and the likes require a lot of follow-up. SMS is a good way conducting short and precise surveys with just the few questions you want the feedback for or running polls that let businesses know what their customers want.

Effective marketing:

Bulk SMS services though may seem over-intrusive and being annoying to the recipient who has his/her phone inbox populated with unrelated messages. But that is not always the case, with sophisticated segmentation and tracking systems from data-driven bulk SMS providers you can really target effective audience and bring your messages to most relevant masses, thus, opening new business opportunities for you.

Efficient reminders:

Helping your clients remember their appointments or their payment due dates is an effective way of strengthening business relationships and fostering a community of brand loyal masses. It is the best way to gently remind people in between their long busy day.

You can promote your app:

SMS marketing is a great tool for promoting other collaterals like apps, with special promotional offers that boost app installs the best way to communicate such offers is through SMS messages that allows one click installation.

It was back in 2008, when the famous business analyst Mary Meeker first made the bold statement that by 2014 mobile usage for browsing the internet will surpass the desktop usage for the same, globally, by a large amount.

Now standing 4 years later, we must agree that she was right. All kinds of mobile devices especially smart phones have surpassed the desktop and laptop usage for browsing the internet, especially the percentage of the time spent on the WWW for online shopping or research on the same.

The importance of bulk SMS marketing for businesses

The world’s internet future is strongly being shaped around the mobile sector, people are now most comfortable doing shopping from their mobile devices or browsing offers. So, evidently businesses must look towards mobile marketing to stay market relevant, cut the noise of competition and target the right audience.

An important part of mobile marketing is bulk SMS services that occupies a central role and is almost an inseparable part of mobile marketing. People are so attached to their smartphones these days that they check their phones at least thrice within an hour even during the busiest parts of their day! So, it is imperative for companies to target all avenues of the phone usage to grab the customer’s attention and reach the top of the list.

Bulk SMS services is an empowering tool for marketers that allows them to send personalized and highly segmented, targeted messages to the potential leads and be read from their own inbox! Text messages sent in bulk is the simplest way to interact with and engage with a large audience mass, by sharing useful information with them, announcing product launches, special offers or communicating special value points. With just a simple click one can deliver their well-thought marketing messages to numerous mobile devices, instantly almost anywhere in the world. The main reason why this works offering the maximum ROI is because it offers the fastest 2-way communication system through very crisp SMS messages. Thus, making this the ideal marketing avenue for businesses that aspire to have a global expanse.

Here’s why bulk SMS works for effective marketing

Capture the largest customer-base

With bulk SMS services one can capture the largest customer-base with the least effort and expense. Bulk SMS service providers in Delhi offer great value for money packages suitable to the business needs of most companies. It is easy to build your brand one reader at a time through well-thought promotions sent to their inbox.

SMS is the most ROI-driven tool of digital marketing

Do you want to send 500 messages or a 1000 or even 5 million within a single minute with just a few clicks of the mouse? You can be assured that the pricing will hardly break the bank.

Highest open rates

Bulk SMS is still the leader in open rates with almost 99% readers reading the messages that land in their inbox. Not many people sift through promotional emails that go to the junk within a few days before even being read, also social media ads and promotions may feel overly intrusive and can be controlled by users to lessen them. With bulk SMS your marketing message will be read by the targeted audience.

Start messaging your customers today

Bulk SMS helps to build a brand identity that customers know and trust, as sending well-timed messages relevant to their needs is the best form of sales-flattery any brand worth its salt can do, and that’s what bulk SMS service providers help you do!