10 Marketing Hacks Your Nonprofit Will Wish It Had Known About Sooner by Vanessa D. Barksdale - HTML preview

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10 EASY

MARKETING

AUTOMATIONS

THAT YOU'LL WISH YOU HAD KNOWN ABOUT SOONER

Modernist Communication Strategies , LLC

Table of

Contents

Page 3.

Page 4.

Page 6.

Page 10.

Example Sales Pipeline

Page 12.

(Cont) Nurturing Leads

Page 15.

Customer Service

Page 17.

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Modernist Communication Strategies , LLC

Amy Saunders

Amy Saunders is a content creator at Keap, where she helps smal business owners learn about automation. Writing

about business brings Amy’s work ful

circle: She began her career as a business reporter at The Columbus Dispatch in

Ohio before becoming a feature writer

and a content editor.

Meet the Authors

Vanessa Barksdale

Vanessa Barksdale is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Modernist Communication Strategies. Modernist Communications is a mission-driven marketing and communications agency. The mission of Modernist is to help good people sel good ideas through the power of marketing automation.

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Modernist Communication Strategies , LLC

Marketing automation is everywhere in your inbox.

It’s the “sorry I missed you” email from a salesperson who just left you a voicemail. The birthday coupon from a restaurant. The reminder from a retailer that you added a product to your shopping cart but never clicked “buy.”

Nearly 80 percent of top-performing companies have used marketing automation for more than two years, according to Gleanster Research.

But automation isn’t reserved for big corporations. Nonprofits and socially conscious entrepreneurs can too incorporate automation into every aspect of business - from capturing leads to closing sales to serving customers on a daily basis. When repetitive processes are automated, socially conscious business owners can instead devote time to the goals that really matter—like growing their organization.

Read on to discover how automation can benefit all aspects of your sales cycle, from obtaining prospects, nurturing them, and developing long lasting relationships with them.

We can't wait to see the magic happen for you.

Vanessa D. Barksdale

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

- CHAPTER 1 -

Acquiring Leads

Whether you’re looking to meet potential investors or responding to those who have already reached out to you, automated

processes al ow you to gain and retain leads both quickly and efficiently.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Acquiring Leads

1. Respond immediately to an email

contact request.

If the “contact us” email address on your website really means contact you, you’ll quickly be overwhelmed by the number of emails awaiting your reply.

And responding days later isn’t an option. Waiting even 30 minutes to make contact decreases your odds of qualifying a lead by 21 times, as compared to calling within five minutes, according to the Lead Response Management Study.

With a CRM like Keap, you can respond immediately every time —

without even having to think about it. Instead of taking requests via an email address, add a “contact us” form to your website. Automation platforms like Keap can give you the HTML code needed for your site.

When a prospect completes the form by entering their name, email address and comments, the automation software issues an email reply right away. The response is a pre-written template, but it can sound like you just fired it off.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Acquiring Leads

2. Assign a representative to an inquiry immediately.

Some people will always skip the “contact us” form and go straight for the phone. A phone chat is a great way to start building a relationship with a potential donor, investor, or client. But, too often, phone call follow-ups are filled with good intention and poor execution.

Enter the potential client’s contact information into an internal form, along with any relevant notes, before using a drop-down menu to assign a representative to follow up. The form alerts the representative to contact the new lead. Meanwhile, the software sends an automated introduction email from that the representative reached out to the potential potential client.

When the introduction email is sent five minutes after the form is completed, it appears Thank you for reaching

that the sales rep sprung into action after out! My name is Vanessa.

learning of the potential client’s cal . Your lead I'd be happy to help you

wil be impressed by your potential client with your request.

service before the sales representative even knows their name.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Modernist Communication Strategies , LLC

Acquiring Leads

3. Always win at phone tag.

Say you leave a voicemail for a prospect, and they return your call when you’re in a meeting. You make a note—in your mind, maybe on a Post-It note

—to call them back when you return to your desk. But alas, voicemail again.

If the game continues, all while you’re chasing other players, you might eventually give up—either intentionally or because you were too busy to remember the call. That means you had a lead, and you lost it.

Keep score by establishing an automated process for returning phone calls.

Using automation software, you can note in the system that you left a message for a contact. Doing so triggers an automatic email to them: “I just left you a voicemail. Sorry I missed you! If I don’t hear from you, I’ll follow up tomorrow.”

The software then reminds you to make the call tomorrow, as promised, no Post-Its required. And no lost leads, either.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Modernist Communication Strategies , LLC

Acquiring Leads

4. Follow up with new networking connections.

At a conference or other events, networking efforts can pay off as a big stack of business cards. But merely collecting business cards isn’t the goal, of course. Start communicating with your new contacts immediately—before you both forget about the conversation you had (or before the business card falls victim to a tragic laundry error).

Try downloading an app like BixConnect that will scan business cards using your smartphone’s camera and upload the contact information to your records.

If you use a CRM like Keap, Bizconnect can send that info to your database directly. Then, in Keap, you can use an automation to schedule a follow-up email – be it the next hour, or the next day. Be sure to write an e-mail template that feels personal but could apply to any new contact from the event.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

- CHAPTER 2 -

Nurturing Leads

Think of automation software as the project manager for your sales team. While software helps your team focus on the most important tasks ahead, it also keeps track of leads who aren’t yet ready to buy, ensuring progress at every stage of the sales journey.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Nurturing Leads

5. Set a framework for your sales pipeline.

The road from prospect to donor(or investor or client) includes quite a few stops. Mapping the route—and adding automation to the journey—helps your representatives guide prospects from one destination to the next, ensuring no one gets held up along the way.

Automation software organizes the existing process that representatives follow to close a deal. When the process is clearly defined, representatives can move leads from one stage to another, ensuring consistency and providing visibility into where your strengths and stock gaps are.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Example: Sales Pipeline Stages

Modernist Communication Strategies , LLC

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

1. New Opportunity

A potential lead has been identified

Outbound

and an e-mail has been sent to them.

Leads

A lead is both interested and are a good Qualified

fit for your offer.

Leads

3. Engaging

The lead has successfully scheduled a

Appointment

meeting with your organization.

Scheduled

4. Quali ed

Appointment

The lead has completed this

meeting, and is awaiting a proposal

offer.

Completed

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

1. New Opportunit

The lead has been sent a proposal or y

invoice for their consideration (Note: Quote Sent

leads should not stay here for more

than a week at most.)

The lead has accepted the terms of

Quote

the offer, and is prepared to move

forward (Note: We can keep this

stage as short as possible with

Accepted

personal calls and touchpoints).

3. Engaging

The lead has paid their deposit or

their invoice, and has officially

become a client.

Closed/Won

4. Quali ed

(Optionally)

The prospect has sent a

counterproposal for your consideration, Pending

or seeks to revist the offer.

Negotiation

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Nurturing Leads

6. Focus on your hottest leads.

Having more leads than time to contact them is a problem—a good one, of course, but one that needs a solution nonetheless. If you never seem to catch up with our to-do list, where do you even begin?

Automation software sets your priorities by ranking each lead based on his or her

engagement with your marketing efforts.

Thanks to this lead scoring, you can focus on the potential clients who are ready to buy over those who need more time. Not only does automate lead scoring eliminate wasted time in your sales process, it also informs your marketing strategy. By tagging leads based on their level of interest, you can better anticipate their needs and target them with messages tailored to their current mindset.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Nurturing Leads

7. Build trust and nurture your leads.

You wouldn’t propose marriage on a first date, right? The same logic applies to a new prospect

In the B2B world, 73 percent of leads aren’t yet ready to become potential clients, according to a report by the research firm Marketing Sherpa. Rather than asking for an investment in your very first interaction, establish trust by cultivating the relationship over time, until the prospect is ready to make the big decision.

Each month, send resources that educate the prospect about your organization and address common questions she might have. Be sure to include options for increasing or decreasing the frequency of emails. Ask them to click a link if they’d rather receive emails every other month. Set up another

“contact us” link that they can click when they want to talk to a representative.

With automation, that click triggers a task for a designated person to contact them. While lead nurturing affords the prospect more time, it also ensures that representatives focus on the leads most prepared to buy. On average, nurtured leads result in a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities, compared with leads that didn’t receive that attention, according to a study by the B2B

marketing publication Demand Gen Report.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

- CHAPTER 3 -

Customer Service

and Engagement

Automation al ows you to treat clients as you would if you had more time. Help clients immediately, respond to their feedback and even send wishes for a happy birthday.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Customer Service

8. Welcome a New Client

A sale isn’t the end of your relationship with a prospect. In fact, it should be the beginning. Make a good first impression by sending a series of welcome emails to show new potential clients that you value their business and care about supporting them.

Staying in touch is effortless with automation software. Set up your software so that a purchase triggers an email series. In the first email, sent immediately after a purchase, include a thank you and an introduction to your company—whether that takes the form of a letter or a video, and instructions how to proceed.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Customer Service

9. Make it easy for Clients to ask for help.

Nothing is more frustrating than a hard-to-find contact link and a slow-to-respond company.

Make sure your company meets—and exceeds—the client’s expectations every time by automating a process for responding to help inquiries.

With an automated process, the client receives a better, faster and more personalized answer than they would have by contacting a general phone number or email address. In the software, employee names can be added to a contact drop-down menu to ensure that tasks are routed to the appropriate people.

By assigning certain staff members to certain types of requests

—a support rep for a technical issue, a salesperson for a prospect inquiry—you immediately connect client to the person who can help the most.

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Modernist Communication Strategies, LLC

Customer Service

10. Send appointment reminders

In our over-scheduled world, clients need reminders about appointments—

and - and reminders of reminders, too. While you’re responsible for booking appointments, software can handle things from there.

With a CMS like Keap, clients can receive appointment reminders via email after you or a staff member completes a web form containing the potential client’s name, email address and appointment date and time. The form prompts a sequence of emails: an appointment confirmation, followed by reminders in the days or hours the appointment. Along the way, a client can ask to change or cancel an appointment by clicking a link within the email.

That action alerts a staff member to follow up with the client to reschedule.

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