Mass Texting Service for Nonprofits
SMS puts your message directly in the hands of your supporters — no inbox competition, no algorithms in the way. Higher open rates and instant delivery make text messaging essential for fundraising, volunteer coordination, and event promotion.
How a mass texting service can help nonprofits
Running marketing strategies is fundamental for any nonprofit in order to stay relevant in the minds of supporters. While you're running a nonprofit, you need to get as much support for your cause as possible. There are a variety of ways to keep people updated about news and events that are occurring within your community; text message marketing for nonprofits is the most effective way to send a message directly to supporters.
Text messages are sent directly to the phones of your supporters. You shouldn't expect important information about your nonprofit to reach everyone through email and social media. While it's important to incorporate a variety of distribution channels for your content, let's take a look at how a text message to ask for support will yield fantastic results for your nonprofit.
How to Use SMS for Nonprofits
Nonprofit text message campaigns relay important information to supporters. The SMS for nonprofits strategy covers a variety of your nonprofit's messaging concerns:
Event Reminders
Get more people to attend your events by reminding supporters in advance through text messages.
Donation Request
When it's time to ask supporters for funds, you might have a better response by contacting people directly through a thoughtful campaign.
Call to Action
If you need people to volunteer (or commit to your nonprofit in some other capacity), sending a text message is a great way to find support.
Texting for Nonprofits: Key Terms
In order to prepare text messaging campaigns to serve your nonprofit, you need to grasp some basic concepts. We've prepared the following list of terms to help you understand more about texting for nonprofits.
SMS
This acronym stands for short messaging service. SMS allows you to send a message of up to 160 characters to any device with this service.
MMS
This acronym stands for multimedia messaging service. While MMS is similar to SMS, it also includes the caveat of sending images and videos.
Keywords
The way to find a specific audience that meets your businesses needs is to use a group of keywords that relate to your community's cause.
Campaign
When you are running a marketing strategy, the way that you track your results is by setting up individual campaigns. Each campaign should have its own unique keywords and supporter segments.
Subscribers
These are the people that would like more information from your nonprofit. The majority of your subscribers may come from your site's traffic.
Segments
Keep track of different types of supporters by creating segments based upon specific audience attributes.
Templates
Instead of creating a new message for each subscriber, having a variety of templates already prepared will save time and energy.
Autoresponders
When someone joins your nonprofit text message campaign, they should receive an automatic greeting from your nonprofit.
Common Benefits of Texting for Nonprofits
While you might think that a nonprofit SMS is just another marketing strategy, here are some of the key benefits that make texting campaigns an essential part of running a nonprofit.
Instantly Connect to Supporters
Unlike email marketing, you don't have to wait around for someone to open a text. SMS marketing delivers six to eight times greater response than email marketing.This acronym stands for short messaging service. SMS allows you to send a message of up to 160 characters to any device with this service.
Nearly Everyone on the Planet Has a Phone
It's reported that around 5 billion people in the world have devices with SMS capabilities.
People Don't Mind Messages on Their Phones
Although people might complain about spam emails, the majority of people don't mind receiving messages on their phones. About 75 percent of consumers approve of this type of marketing message
How to get started with text message marketing for nonprofits
If you think this marketing strategy sounds right for your nonprofit, then it's time to start your first SMS campaign with Textedly. Let's walk through the basic steps that are required to start reaching supporters through your first SMS campaign.
Sign Up For a Text Marketing Platform
The first step to starting a nonprofit SMS campaign is to sign up with a text marketing platform. While you might have access to SMS on your smartphone, it's too difficult to send various templates to a large group of supporters from your phone.
Upload Current List of Contacts
You're always growing your community, but it's good to start with a list of current contacts. People that already support your nonprofit should be the first to receive your messages.
Compile Text Templates
Since there are a variety of reasons to contact supporters, you need to have a template for every occasion.
Set Up a Campaign Keyword
Using a keyword that relates to your cause and the reason for the message will help you remain organized. It will also help people find your campaign.
Promote Your Keyword
Use hashtags on social media to help your keyword trend among supporters. People will be able to find your nonprofit through the keyword. In some instances, keywords actually help track everyone's conversation.
Send Nonprofit Texts
Get ready to promote your nonprofit by sending messages to everyone that care
Converting Your Nonprofit Supporters Into Subscribers
When you have everything already set up for your brand, you might be wondering how to get your supporters to turn into subscribers. Promote your nonprofit's SMS campaign by encouraging your current supporters and donors to subscribe for more information about your cause. Post links on your blog to the signup lists for new campaigns, or send links to people as social media posts. Use all of your distribution channels to get more attention for your campaign.
Nonprofit Text Messaging Examples
Why Users Love Textedly
Really Enjoy Using Textedly
I really enjoy using Textedly for our small but growing company. It allows us to communicate with all our employees with the ease of not having to make calls over and over again.
Highly Recommend for Any Business
Highly recommend for any business looking to enhance their messaging capabilities!
Top notch customer service!
I like how I can easily create messages and receive responses back when necessary. The customer service help has been top notch and so helpful. Pleased with ease of transition to group texts and integration into our company.
Sending Nonprofit SMS Messages With Textedly
Gain control over organizing your supporters by starting a unique campaign with Textedly. With custom nonprofit SMS campaigns, you'll be able to reach more supporters in less time. Textedly makes it easy to gain support for your cause through providing a quality messaging service for nonprofits. Get started with a 14-day free trial to start nonprofit text messaging today.
