Staying connected to your customers is a critical factor in being successful for business. The same holds true for the “not for profit” sector too.
Recently I met with leaders and thought leaders in the local political arena through the invitation to a reception thrown by The Colorado Freedom Coalition. A topic of conversation at the reception was the challenges of staying connected to voters, policy makers and influencers in the political process. It was pointed out in the discussions how well the Democratic party did in the last election by staying connected to the voters and especially the voters on the bubble or independent voters. The result was remarkable and the democrats won the vote of indepent voters because they were better connected to the voters they needed most.
Non profit organizations face the same challenge commercial business organizations do, staying connected to your customer base through the education cycle of “buying in” (becoming a customer) and then retention of them for life.
If you are not paying attention to your supporters, someone else will. It’s that simple.
Non profit organizations must take the same steps that commercial businesses do today by actively building networks and communicating with them by:
- Effective list building – identifying who your target customers are and how to communicate with them
- Granular segmentation of your lists – being able to segment your lists into micro groups for one to one marketing based on their needs, interests and behaviors
- Deployment of CRM – Customer Relationship Management is vital in being able to organize, track and execute all communications in a single database
- Content that hits the reticular activator-your communications must stand out and grab the attention of your customers. This is a science and can make your communications be needles and not hay
- Executing effective communication channels – customers now have many vehicles for communication. Email, text, social media, blogs, etc. You must be able to communicate across all channels
- Automated follow up systems – customers only buy or buy in when they are ready, not when you are. You must deploy drip systems like Infusionsoft to work for you when you dont have cycles to follow up.
If you run a non profit, you wont be able to stay top of mind without taking on a customer for life, attention connection strategy. Success will be found by those organizations who make attention connection a priority and act upon it.
To get attention, you must pay attention.
Stay connected my friends.
