Chances are, you do quite a good job keeping up with your really big donors.
You send them nice thank-you gifts. You call to wish them good Yom Tov. Maybe you even fly across the country for their simchos.
But what about the small-to-medium ones? The consistent $360’s, the $500’s, the $1000’s, even the $1800's?
Many of us just can't seem to find the time to maintain connections with these donors.
But by neglecting these connections, we're leaving money on the table, which is a problem. However, there's a solution to this - an approach I call 'Automated-but-Personal' or AP's.
What are APs? They’re interactions that feel personal, but get rolled out in an automated way to save (tremendous amounts of) time.
Let’s talk three ways to create APs:
- Tools
- Outsource
- Batch
Here’s a closer look at each option:
1. Tools
You’d love to write one nice thank-you message or donor update and send it out via mass email to your small donors. You know, though, that nobody likes receiving an impersonal mass email.
Enter Gmass.co, a mail-merge tool that allows you to skip that wholesale feel of Constant Contact or Mailchimp by sending your donor email straight from your inbox to your list of donors. GMass also gets your email landed in the primary inbox instead of the promotions tab.
Once you get to know GMass a bit, you can add personal greetings and other customized touches for each donor. And voila - you have a personal thank-you email that can be sent out to hundreds of people in just a few seconds.
2. Outsource
Though you’re likely the player with the personal connection to the donor, you don’t need to be the one physically writing the thank-you notes. Come up with the text you want, and outsource.
Whom should you outsource to? For some, a junior staff member could be a smart solution. For others, resources like Thankster.com might be perfect. Thankster is a company that takes the text you submit online, has people or (perhaps) robots write it onto physical cards, and mails the cards for you.
If you really want to save time, and you’ve got the necessary tech set up, you could even connect Thankster.com to your CRM through Zapier and send off those thank-you notes without even thinking about it!
3. Batch
To put it simply, “batching” means organizing your donors into batches, and dealing only with one batch at a time.
Here’s how it works.
First, you take stock of the amount of people you need to reach out to.
Then, you figure out how many you can manage at once, and divide them up accordingly.
One executive director I work with calls 10 of his donors every Erev Shabbos. If you wanted to reach more people in less time, you could batch voice notes. Send your voice note to a limited number of people and tell them they’re part of a small, select group receiving it. Think of how nice a feeling such a message would give a $360 donor!
True, putting APs in motion is a time investment. You’ve got to set up your new system, or find someone to take it on. You need to schedule weekly or monthly times to get things done.
Once it’s set up, though, you’ll have a lightning-fast, easy, efficient way to pour value back into your organization.
Hatzlacha Raba!
Avraham
© Avraham Lewis & Co.