In the last 5 to 7 years we have seen marketing change from spending money to interrupt people with advertising to marketing based on educating in order to attract clients. In this article, I will cover one feature of Marketing Automation Software, website visitor tracking, which I believe may add tremendous value in your nonprofit’s efforts to “understand” what your members or donors desire even if they do not convert on your website.
How One Feature of Marketing Automation Software May Help Boost Participation
In my mind, a good marketing automation software platform should help marketing, membership, and development officers achieve alignment with each others activities. Key benefits may include increasing efficiency, intelligence, and reach; aligning marketing and business development; and enabling targeted real-time action.
In line with those pursuits, one feature of Marketing Automation referred to as website visitor tracking is for most an awesome “OMG” feature which may help facilitate your engagement and participation goals. After reviewing many solutions, here is a summary of what website visitor tracking provides you with:
Who is visiting your website
Why they may be on your site (inferred from their trackable behaviors)
Indications of what their issues and interests are
Where they may be in the join now or donation process
Identify prospective constituents that are active, but not ready to self-identify.
Empower your marketing, membership , development, and events team to nurture supporters with a deeper understanding of your potential members & donors actions online.
Here are some amazing things you may consider with website visitor data at your nonprofit.
Business Activity Alerts
In essence, website tracking gives you the ability to target messaging using web behavior—such as the pages an individual visits—as a trigger. And, if the visitor is in your database, their tracked behaviors are recorded in their activity history. You can even set alerts so that you (or a development officer) know when a specific person or company visits your site – Wow, Right!
Retroactive Activity Analysis
And, if the visitor is anonymous (i.e., not in your database), the tracked behaviors are still noted. If the visitor latter provides contact data, that previously tracked history will attach to the new contact, showing behavioral history and giving that lead immediate context. If someone behaves like a very hot donor but hasn’t provided contact information, you still have options. Many of the Marketing Automation software platforms integrates with data systems that do reverse IP look-up. That means you may be able to see which company an IP address is linked to, and research a list of staff to find the likely prospective supporter.
Cultivate Members and Donors
One of the awesome uses is the ability to apply a little creative ingenuity to track down anonymous folks who had lots of site activity. Donor officers and membership folks can become very effective at tracking down the individuals who were the likely site visitors from specific organizations, and open a dialog. With even anonymous visitors, you may get a company name, the location, and the nature of the content that was viewed on the site. For example, if you are holding a huge event at your nonprofit, and you see that someone from one of your member companies visited but did not register, it’s probable that the visitor is interested even though they did not “convert” by registering. Armed with access to a little data, the event coordinator could track down and contact the most likely interested party at the company member.
Smarter nurturing
The ability to identify a donor or member as “hot” the moment they self-identify via a form capture is straightforward. However, think about the advantage of knowing about them even if they don’t interact with your nonprofit.
Let me explain. So, without website visitor tracking a site visitor fills out a form to download your latest whitepaper on “How to Clean a Wood Floor”. Easily that lead information is captured; the prospect is added to a nurturing campaign and so the start of the long process of becoming a member or donor begins.
But what if a member had already visited your site multiple times in the last quarter and not yet converted to become a member? You would likely want that person contacted immediately, wouldn’t you? With the knowledge of their activity on your website in mind, you can put them in a nurturing campaign designed to make the best impression to potential donors that have already viewed a lot of site content. Since you know their history before they identified themselves, it’s safe to assume they already know a bit about you and you can tailor the kind of communication and content you offer them.
By the way, it’s a good bet that donors will visit your site many times before they fill in a form and provide their name and email address. With website visitor tracking, you can be sure you gain their attention before you lose their attention to another nonprofit cause or mission.
The Power of Donors and Members
It’s a fact. Your members and donors have virtually unlimited access to information via the web about you and your competitors. They have the power to find and discover value from many sources at their own pace, and direct their own paths to spend money and engage with your organization or not. They do this mostly online. This means that your website has become your nonprofits single most important marketing asset.
Therefore, the better you know your potential constituents, the better you can shape your site to serve up targeted messages and tailored offers that will invite website visitors (known and unknown) to become members of your community. In other words, you should always try to leverage your website to generate supporters (leads) in order to grow.
If you would like to learn more about marketing automation software options, please give us a call. Until then, keep SmartThoughts in mind.
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