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SEVEN MORE ESSENTIALS FOR INTEGRATION

Blakely is ready to attend The Bridge Conference once again and we can’t wait to chat with fundraiser friends about one of our favourite topics: Integrated Marketing and Fundraising.

And with that, we’re back with seven MORE essentials for integration:

  1. Start with insights

This is how we approach every campaign, but it’s arguably most critical with integrated campaigns. What happened the last time you ran a campaign like this? What did you learn? What worked? What didn’t? Who responded best? What channels had the most conversions? How critical were other channels in supporting awareness? Ask yourself lots of questions like these, and it will help build the strongest strategy for your next campaign.

  1. Mix things up!

As with our last post, mixing things up is essential to success – but here we’re talking about the channel mix. Most organizations can’t afford to be on all channels, so which ones are you going to communicate your message on? Answering some of the questions above will help guide you – is Search your best channel for conversions? Make sure you’re investing heavily there. But if Facebook hasn’t been converting for you, that doesn’t mean it’s not critical in the mix. It’s likely driving awareness, but maybe you can get away with a smaller spend there. Have you tried ads on Twitter? Maybe it’s time. Give all this some thought so your integrated campaign is live on the best channels for you.

  1. Timing

How long are you going to be in market, and what’s the sequencing of your many touchpoints? When and where you’re communicating to donors/prospects matters in the course of an integrated campaign. Do you want to launch digital media in advance of a direct mail piece dropping? If you’re targeting email addresses on Facebook, are you also emailing those individuals? You need to think about the media investment and how it aligns with other touchpoints throughout the campaign journey. If you get the timing right, you can see a major lift in campaign performance.

  1. Content is Queen

What are you going to say? It’s not enough just to be “out there” (though that’s a good start), you need to have something compelling to say. Do you have an emotional beneficiary story that will connect with donors/prospects? Is there a new program/innovation/project that you want to tell people about that will inspire them to give? There’s a lot of competition out there, so you need to consider the strength of your story, and how you might tell it across touchpoints and channels.

  1. Video

As we shared in our blog on video, video content is becoming more and more critical to successful campaigns. This is how consumers (a.k.a. donors) are interacting online, so if we want to inspire people to engage with our cause, video is an incredibly effective way in. How you shoot it (high production vs. iPhone) depends on what your budget is and what your objectives are. Read the video blog for more details, but know that this is a medium we need to be exploring.

  1. New & Improved

What’s probably scary about integration to a lot of organizations is the fact that it’s changing constantly. But that’s what we find so awesome about it! Every few months, there’s a new way to utilize digital media – whether it’s video sequencing or responsive ads, there’s always something innovative to try out that could drive better performance for your integrated fundraising campaigns. Connect with fundraising peers, an agency like Blakely, or a media partner, and find out what’s innovative in integration, and then give it a try! Worst-case scenario, you’ll learn something!

  1. Testing

Don’t forget to test! If you have at least four weeks in market, you’ve got time to test and properly optimize based on your learnings. Your next campaign will be that much better if you deliberately learned something in your last campaign. If you accidentally learn something, that’s excellent, too! Test images, copy, channels, what an ad drives to, calls to action, and more! You’ll add to your integration tool kit with everything you try.

We could go on and on about integration, and we’re counting down the days to #Bridge19. If you’re going to be there and want to chat, please reach out!

See you soon!

Read our original seven essentials here.