If you haven’t got the hint yet, I am a fan of Marketing Technologies. And, one of the tenants of Marketing Automation Software which fuels my enthusiasm is deriving the value found in the reporting and the intelligence it provides. With marketing intelligence you can better understand the impact that development and marketing efforts are having on overall business. And, then you can refine strategies and develop repeatable processes for success. In this article, I discuss how marketing automation software can provide immediate impact in analytics and the mechanics behind it.
Marketing Automation Software for Nonprofits
“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein
The Need For Marketing Automation Analytics
More than ever, marketers are being held accountable for demonstrating how marketing investments directly translate into a transaction being made by a supporter. In the nonprofit sector, they are certainly different from the for profit business community but nonetheless the end goal is the same. You desire to “close” your supporters on something. Some examples of a closing transaction could be a new member join, an exhibitor signing up to buy booth space, or a constituent making a pledge based on a year-end appeal.
Modern Marketing Automation is led by outbound and inbound activities (emails, educating, etc.) but those activities are fueled by intelligent data analytics and reporting. Implementing the proper analytics systems can help you make critical decisions regarding which parts of your marketing efforts are working or not, and provide the reporting tools necessary to justify those decisions by connecting them directly with membership/donor moves management and ultimately revenue whether that’s dues, events, non-dues, or donations.
The Mechanics of Marketing Automation Analytics
Marketing automation helps manage your workflow so you can glean key data that will maximize your customer relationship management (CRM Software for Nonprofits), social monitoring, and business intelligence (BI) investments. Core analytics metrics which I find particularly popular include:
Digital behavioral history
Inquiry to constituent conversion rates
Most popular website pages and time spent on page
Leading referrers, search engines, and keywords
SEO Auditing of Landing Pages and Forms
Google AdWords Reporting
The Effectiveness of Marketing Program Campaigns
Conversions (recorded who actually closed)
Opens, Closes, Bounces, Opt Outs etc.
Marketing Automation Software Can Go Beyond Google Analytics Too
I know what you are thinking. And, I am glad that you are! Yes, any good Web host, or Google Analytics, will give you access to some good information about your visitors, who could be turned into subscribers, members or donors. But, with these tools which for many are difficult to access or even navigate you are limited to the following:
The number of visitors
The average numbers of pages per visit
Some visitor demographics, like location and language
How people access the site, mobile versus computer, type of browser
Certainly, that anonymous sort of information can tell you how popular, and interesting your site is. Further, rudimentary trend information can sometimes reveal a useful insight about visitors too. However, with Marketing automation software it can deliver more detail:
How long people stayed before clicking away
Where they were when they visited the site
What individual pages each person visited
What search terms did visitors use to reach the site
Marketing Automation Software for Nonprofits Can Go Beyond Email Marketing Services
Again, I hear you. Well, we have an email marketing solution for our analytics so I assume we have it all taken care of. Well, not exactly. The analytics found within Marketing Automation Software works in concert with your email (outbound campaigns) too. In other words, together the two solutions combined (or within) offer valuable analytics further beyond just what they did with your one-off emails. Rather, it can show analytics which track it down to what they are doing, did, and reacted to it on your website. Then, pull them into a program to continually feed them more!
How Analytics Helps Establish Conversion Strategy
Further, Integrated web analytics lets marketers track social media sites (Referrals From Social Media Sites) and relevant blogs that drive significant traffic to their website (Referring Sites). From there, Marketers in Nonprofits can with marketing technology align their content sharing efforts with the social channels most likely to drive higher traffic and engagement, maximizing the impact of each campaign and boosting marketing ROI.
The core data that once took hours to fuse together from various systems (Google Analytics, Email Marketing Service, CRM, Content Management Systems, Social Publishing Software) and spreadsheets is streamlined via marketing automation dashboards to provide visibility into campaign ROI relevant to your specific nonprofits needs.
Canned Analytical Reports of Marketing Automation
There are many solid options which do a stellar job in terms of analytics. We keep track of quite a few, and I am personally impressed with many options on the market today. We use a marketing automation solution in-house. While we are certainly not a nonprofit, the value is certainly as applicable.
The solution we use internally comes with a variety of canned marketing reports, like these examples:
A “funnel report” that allows the user to track how potential customers, or donors, move from first contact to being customers.
Real-time tracking reports for email campaigns, so a Development Director can see ow an email marketing campaign is working.
Landing Page reports make it easy to see what channels are doing the best job of bringing in visitors.
A/B testing is easier because the software tracks which letter or offer got a better response from site visitors, an email list or a donation page design.
Who may have abandoned various web pages
The Best Marketing Automation Software for Nonprofits
Ok, now I know the burning question for all the readers who made it this far; What Marketing Automation Software platform is the best for Nonprofits?
Our answer is the same as any other software solution we help clients find. There is no “Best Software” for everyone. However, you should strive for the “Best Fit”. And, the best depends on how you define success and the features most closely aligned to your mission.
A quick selfish plug. If you like to get started by seeing what’s out there, download our free marketing automation software list below to help get an idea of the players in the market today.
In closing, marketing automation software provides some valuable analytics which you can benefit in so many ways. And, nonprofit executives can learn a huge amount about their organization’s marketing efforts, with a modest investment of time and money. And, with increased demand for ROI accountability, as well as the need for more consistent communication across all departmental teams, this technology can definitely help establish the impact of your efforts and improves performance of your various campaigns through powerful analytics.
To talk more about the return on investment of analytics found in marketing automation software, or anything else, please Contact Us. Until next time, keep SmartThoughts in mind.
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