Host: Welcome back, everyone to another episode of the Go Beyond Fundraising podcast. Today, we are talking all about SMS messaging. SMS has been a tool in fundraiser and nonprofit marketers’ toolkits for several years now, but it’s definitely gaining in popularity and in its effectiveness. We wanted to sit down and have a chat all about SMS, including best practices, examples of how it’s best used in fundraising campaigns, as well as benchmarks, and a few tips for how to get started with SMS.

Joining me today to discuss this topic are two of my colleagues at Allegiance Group + Pursuant: Stephanie Drahan and David Sachetti. Stephanie, welcome to the show.

Stephanie Drahan: Thanks. I’m Stephanie Drahan. I am Vice President of Account Management here at AGP, and in this role, I am working with our account team to service our clients, and part of that is making sure we are offering our strongest strategic recommendations and integrating our work for them and see SMS as part of that help.

Host: Thank you so happy to have you joining us again. Stephanie Drahan and David Sacchetti. David, it’s been a minute since you’ve been on the podcast. Welcome back.

David Sachetti: My name is David sachet and I’m an Associate Vice President for Client Strategy here at the agency and have 20 years of experience in the nonprofit industry working on a variety of different clients, helping them to advance their fundraising objectives and initiatives, both in the online and online space. I’m thrilled to be back.

Host: Yes, once again, I am thrilled to have both of you on today. Let’s get right into today’s topic. When we say SMS, we’re talking about text messaging in case that’s kind of a new term for folks.

Stephanie, I would love to kind of get some introductions out of the way around SMS. Why should you be using text messages? Or why should you be using text messaging as a tactic in your fundraising campaigns?

Stephanie Drahan: It’s a great question, and I hope the answer is obvious. It is an additional channel and touch point that we now have to contact our donors and supporters of nonprofit organizations. Like you said, it’s kind of grown in popularity over the last few years. I assume many listeners have experienced that.

I always like to think about SMS as kind of a bridge between offline fundraising and online fundraising. While you may not have an email address for a donor, you may have a phone number. It provides an opportunity to reach those direct mail-only donors via the cell phone that is most likely always in their hands or nearby, and it does link to an online form, so it provides the opportunity to convert them to a digital donor.

And as we know, having people who are integrated with both online and offline giving have higher long-term value to the organization.

Host: Do you still have the same cell phone number that you got when you first got a cell phone?

Stephanie Drahan: I do not but I do have the same cell phone number that I’ve had since my senior year of college, which I will not disclose how many years ago.

David Sachetti: I do still have the same number that I had when I moved to Chicago eight years ago.

Host: The reason I ask is I still have the same cell phone number that I got when I was, I think, probably a freshman in high school when I got my first cell phone. So same number I’ve kept it all these years. And the reason I asked that is because it occurred to me, as we started talking about this topic, that more so than emails or addresses or landlines, a cell phone number is, I think, one of the stickiest markers that people hold on to that you can identify with an individual. I would just love to get any thoughts there.

David Sachetti: I think that’s true. People will move around physically and will keep their phone number – their cell phone – with them as they move. There are a lot of people I know that are very passionate about the area code that they have for their phone, for whatever that might imply or not imply. I think it’s something that people tend to hold on to.

Stephanie Drahan: Yes, absolutely. People’s cell phones are sticky, and they’re stickier to our hands now than they were five years ago, and who knows what the future holds. I think the other thing too that I’m wanting to bring up in this conversation is the decline of landlines and the decline of folks, whether it’s landline or cell phone, answering calls from numbers not saved in their phone.

And another way that I would like to talk about SMS and how it can support our clients is there’s been a decline in telemarketing over the years, and SMS can help fill that gap. We’ve talked about how it can be leveraged for lapsed sustainer recapture or sustainer upgrades. Those were telemarketing campaigns that were very successful with my clients 10 years ago and just became prohibitively expensive. So, this provides a way to continue that work in a similar, yet different channel.

Host: Absolutely, and the beauty of text messaging is it’s much less intrusive on someone’s time than a voicemail. People don’t pick up strange numbers anymore. I pretty much don’t answer a number if it’s not somebody that’s in my contacts because it’s almost always going to be a scammer or a telemarketer or somebody who’s trying to take advantage of me in some way.

Even with a voicemail, sometimes the transcription that my phone does is not always perfect. In this day and age, text messaging seems to be a very immediate way to get in touch with people, but it’s also kind of the least intrusive because it can be so easy to opt out of something that you don’t want to get, or simply block a number if it’s really, really getting on your nerves. It’s something that you can look at when it’s good for you and not pick up the phone when it’s the other person’s best time to call you.

I love that you shared how SMS can be a bridge between online and offline channels. We know, according to some benchmarking organizations like M+R that look at different digital channel benchmarks, that email has been on the decline in terms of how many people are opening them. People talk a lot about inbox clutter. Given that, can you share some additional kind of benefits of SMS messaging? And David, feel free to jump in here as well.

Stephanie Drahan: Yes. Like I said, it’s an additional touch point, and at worst case impression with our supporter base, another way to contact them. I think one of the things to think about with SMS, as with all our integrated channels, is they’re working in concert with one another. And so, while text messaging is growing and direct revenue to direct texts is increasing, it’s important to look at it as part of your full channel matrix.

If you have received an email and then you receive a text, you might go online and Google the organization and give through that Google search ad. Or you might be reminded of that mail piece you received and that you need to put your check in the mail. So, it is part of this whole landscape that we are trying to work with our clients on to increase their revenue and donor base overall.

David Sachetti: Yeah, I would jump in here and add to what Stephanie is saying. You brought up a really great point about just how the different channels that we have historically operated in for fundraising have really morphed and evolved. And I know we’re here to talk about texting, and we will talk about texting, but direct mail, even as well now is considered a disrupter for some people, because you know that you go get your mail, you look at it, it’s tangible. You’re absolutely right that email inboxes are the new mailboxes of 20 years ago.

So texting is a great way to meet people where they’re at which, as Stephanie shared, your phone is usually less than you know, two feet away from you at all times. It’s a great way to reach people, not just from a fundraising perspective, but also a stewardship and engagement perspective, and we’ll talk about more examples of that a little bit later.

Host: I’d love it if we could get right into some of those examples right now of those different ways that SMS can drive results across different strategies for nonprofits. David, I’d love to get your thoughts there.

David Sachetti: Absolutely. I think that texting is valuable, not only to support overarching multi-channel or omnichannel campaigns, but it can be leveraged in a way that allows you to engage with someone in a relatively personal way. It mimics a one to one engagement, where it’s really one to many, but it feels like a one to one experience for the donor or the constituent. So many different areas within development and fundraising program at a nonprofit can take advantage of the use of texting.

So as Stephanie mentioned, direct fundraising, asking people in a text to donate and give to a particular campaign where they may have also received email or direct mail piece to supporting efforts around P2P (peer to peer) and events. Getting people to register for walks or remind people of upcoming galas and then texting them throughout to encourage them to tap into their networks, to raise money for the organization, and to send stewardship messages so thanking them for their support and their wishing them happy holidays. Things like that are great touch points that are really cost effective to do with texting, as opposed to some other channels.

Host: I love that. Thank you for laying out all those different examples and kind of for painting a picture for listeners about all the great ways that you can use SMS in your fundraising. We’ve been talking about SMS very generally. But are all types of SMS messaging the same? Or are there different models for SMS that a nonprofit can use?

Stephanie Drahan: Great question. There are two primary ways that organizations text their audiences. We work with our clients on both. So, peer to peer is maybe best for one to one conversation if you’re managing volunteers or if you have the capacity to respond to folks. And then the other texting program that you can create for your organization is what we would call blast or broadcast. Those are the text messages that are absolutely one to many and less likely to generate replies or conversation. Those are the texts that you might see come through on your phone from a five digit short code, and then with peer to peer it often comes from a 10 digit long code looks like a full phone number.

Generally, we can ensure that it looks like a phone number that is local to your organization or to your supporters, which helps gain authenticity. We are happy to talk to our clients, and prospective clients, about what may work best for their supporters, and kind of how they can move. I think generally, what we’re seeing is organizations starting with a peer to peer approach, then potentially migrating over to blast or broadcast once their text message program has developed a little bit more, which is absolutely something we can talk about further.

Host: Could you give a few examples of situations where, I think you shared a few, but could you give a few examples of situations where one type of SMS might be more effective than the other?

Stephanie Drahan: What it comes down to is both can be very effective, especially for fundraising. How we think about it here and talk about it is peer to peer is a great place to start because you may have some phone numbers on file from various registration events, etc., but you haven’t necessarily had those people opt in to receiving text messages. If you are launching a blast or broadcast program, it is essential. You must receive that explicit opt in to deploy the text messages to those supporters. When I’m talking about why people start in the peer to peer world, that is one of the reasons.

We work with our clients and some third-party vendors to identify if you have all these phone numbers in your database. We can help identify which ones are cell phones versus landlines. You can also do a phone append and provide the data we have in the database and get a potential cell phone match. And we are able with peer to peer to deploy to those folks without their explicit consent at this time. Laws may change.

We can then cultivate them and receive their consent to receiving and staying on that text message file. And as you do that and continue to grow it, you may want to move it over to broadcast. There are some cases where peer to peer is definitely more effective than broadcast. Broadcast is great for large organizations, large files. That is really pushing out, like I’m talking about it as blast, where you are blasting a message to thousands, tens of thousands of people at a time

Where we really leverage peer to peer for some of our clients is really in much smaller audiences. David was speaking about event registration for peer to peer walks or fundraisers. That is a segment of an organization’s file. You might be tackling last year’s captains first or something like that. For some of my clients, we work with them on capturing their lapsed sustainers. As people’s credit cards expire or whatever, we are reaching out to those people within 30 days of their sustainer gift canceling and asking them to come back. That is often a much smaller cohort of folks, and so peer to peer is ripe for that, or we’ll use that. We’ll use peer to peer in line with our renewal series. We’ll send that perhaps with the first renewal, they’ll also receive a text message letting them know that you know their membership is soon to expire, and so those can be smaller lists, depending on your organization.

And one of the benefits of peer to peer, in addition to not having to have that explicit consent up front, is it is a much more cost effective way to text your list and for smaller organizations to utilize this growing channel.

David Sachetti: You know, Stephanie’s comments are so right on, and it made me think about one of the important strategies or best practices that you should really employ if you’re going to explore launching into this channel in this realm. Always to make sure that the first deployment or the first text that you send is not fundraising based, so you’re giving people an opportunity to experience getting a text from your organization that should be kind of stewardship focus. Then people will self-select if they want to opt out. If they really don’t want to receive texts from you, they will reply and opt out. And then you’re, in fact, shaking the trees, if you will, before you go out and engage people via text or a fundraising app.

That’s a really good strategy to consider if you’re going to deploy text for fundraising purposes to ensure you know that you’re starting out with one or two stewardship messages before you then follow up with some fundraising.

Stephanie Drahan: I couldn’t agree with David more. Whether that’s on broadcast or peer to peer, that is absolutely the right strategy. It’s similar to direct mail or email. We always want to be cultivating, stewarding, providing our donors and supporters additional information, and not just asking them for money.

I thought David was going to say something else, so I’m taking the opportunity to jump in with that. It is never too soon to start collecting cell phone numbers and that explicit opt in. We’ve talked about that it’s a little bit of a gray area right now with peer to peer that can change at any time. And in order to get your registration set up for both peer to peer and blast, it’s going to be required that as you collect new phone numbers those folks are consenting to receiving text messages. If organizations are thinking we’re interested in developing a text message program, we do recommend starting to collect that information, whether that’s on reply devices or advocacy actions or donation form submissions and testing where it does not decrease response rate and things like that. We should be collecting those phone numbers now to launch a text message program in the future.

David Sachetti: Thanks, Stephanie, that’s a really, great point. I think some of the other things that come to mind for me from like a best practice perspective for texting, whether it’s broadcast or peer to peer, is number one to include an image of some kind. Whether it’s a photo that is connected to whatever the topic is that you’re referencing in the text, or at the very least, your organization’s logo.

I think it’s important that a text comes from a person, and not the organization, to make it feel more one to one and feel warmer and more interactive. And then, obviously including an opt out always. Give them a chance to self-select if they want to receive texting or not, and then drive them with a clear call to action. Even if it’s stewardship, just make sure that the message is clear that you’re thanking them for their support and you don’t want them to take action is important so that when they read it in that five to eight seconds that they are taking a look at it, they’ll understand right away what the nature of this is.

Stephanie Drahan: And then, like any other direct response channel, in texting we have the option – and should utilize it – to include personalization. Like David said, the text should come from a person that is developing a relationship. If you have somebody on staff that manages your sustainers, that’s the correct person for your lapsed sustainer upgrade, or lapsed sustainer recapture, or your upgrade. But you should also be recognizing the people that you are texting, whether that like, “Hi Leah, it’s Stephanie, thanks for your last gift.” And then we can also pull in right for the lapsed sustainer, we can say exactly what their last monthly gift was, and that is what we were asking them to come back at with renewals, things like that.

And like David was saying on initial stewardship texts, I did one for a client this year. Their first text we deployed their program on Leap Day. And so, we leaned into Leap Day and said we were leaping with joy for their support. And, you know, try to make it fun, which I think is another thing text messaging can do. You can be a little more fun, a little more casual in your messaging. But then within that message, we also recognized whether they were already sustainers, already donors, or just our general supporters, so that like any direct response channel, we are showing our supporters that we know who they are and that we know their relationship to our or to the organization because that just is going to make them feel better. It helps show that this new channel from which we are deploying is authentic and with the organization, and we are continuing to build that relationship with them.

Host: Let’s get into some specifics around technology. David, could you share with us some of the tools that nonprofits can use for peer to peer or broadcast text messaging, and what are some of the upfront costs to getting started with it.

David Sachetti: There are a variety of tools that are available on the market where, especially for small-scale texting, an organization can purchase and then begin using it directly. There are a lot of companies out there that will do that work for you and in a very cost effective manner. We leverage an organization that we work with on behalf of all our clients that helps us to deploy a lot of these campaigns in a very cost effective manner. There are a lot of options available depending on the size and the budget that you have that will get you the same end product, which is a strong text that can be deployed accurately and effectively.

Stephanie Drahan: I think one of the benefits of what David was describing is our relationship with another organization. That organization really assists in the setup of our peer to peer texting for clients in deployment and provide us with strategic recommendations from what they’re seeing across their clients, but also in the actual registration process nonprofits have to go through to get their text messaging program stood up, whether that’s on broadcast or on peer to peer. The partner we’re working with will facilitate that on the peer to peer side and then on the broadcast side.

Those companies are also going to work with nonprofits to get through that registration process to create that short code, register with the cell phone companies. There have been changes since text messaging came on the scene 10 or so years ago, where there are more consumer protections and ensuring that nonprofits are who they say they are, which is wonderful for transparency and also for deliverability. These companies are going to make sure you’re doing your due diligence to be set up legally.

Host: All right, another two part question, and I think I’ll start with you, Stephanie. When it comes to measuring success, what are some KPIs or benchmarks that nonprofits should keep in mind to know whether their text messaging efforts are yielding them the results they want? And then my second part of the question, which David I’d love for you to answer, is in the different campaigns where we’ve leveraged text messaging for our clients, what are some of those stats and kind of success numbers that we’ve seen how SMS can really fuel all the different channels in a campaign? And so, Stephanie, I’ll start with you.

Stephanie Drahan: When you’re kicking off your program, the things you want to be looking at is deliverability. You want to make sure that the text messages are being delivered to cell phones, making sure you keep a clean list. You’re going to pay per message delivered so you don’t want to try to message people that aren’t there. You want to track your growth to see how your list is growing over time, particularly as you implement cell phone capture on your forms and direct mail or digital.

Once your program is running, I think the things you want to keep an eye on are the unsubscribe rate – people who are texting stop or otherwise removing themselves from the file. Obviously, as you launch a program, that’s going to be higher, so you want to see it come down over time. We always recommend that you benchmark against yourself. There are industry benchmarks out there, but your best benchmark is your past work. And then we want to look at click through rates, direct revenue, average gift – really ensuring that’s happening, that those are in line, again, benchmarking against yourself.

And then I think, really the most important piece, which is the most complicated, you’re going to see direct revenue to the texts, but where you’re going to see the most impact on your text messaging program is looking at that holistic view. You want to do match backs. You want to see that you send the text message to these donors. Did they respond in another channel? Did we blow our direct mail projections out of the water? Can we match that back to say those people received a text. Same with digital. You might see an increase in some of the advertising or email depending on kind of what the timing alignment of those things are. Looking at your white mail, especially on your website. Are people going to your website hitting your main donate button? That’s not necessarily tracked back to a campaign, but did they receive a text message? Maybe that’s how they got there.

David Sachetti: I can just chime in here and add a couple of specific numbers for a client that we work with where we have been leveraging texting to support their direct mail efforts. We have seen texts connected to direct mail deadline dates. If there’s a campaign where a direct mail piece goes out or has an email go out, and it’s got a specific campaign deadline date, we have sent text messages right up ahead of that deadline date as a reminder to people. They may have received that mail piece several weeks prior or email several days prior, and those text messages have done very well to drive revenue directly to the text messages that Stephanie was mentioning earlier and have more than paid for the cost of deploying those text messages.

With an ROI of four to one, I mean, who wouldn’t take that all day long? It’s a great way to generate revenue and touch points for a campaign towards the deadline. And then we’ve also tried sending text messages ahead of direct mail in-home dates, and that also has been really effective at increasing the response and revenue to the mail piece with offline donations between 3 and 5 percent in an increase to those individuals who have gotten that text that says, hey this campaign is going on please watch your mailbox for an important letter from blah, blah, blah. That has done well to increase revenue to the mail by three to 5 percent across some of our mailings.

Host: When you said, David, the increase in the three to five%  is that the average gift went up if a text message was an element that was a part of that campaign?

David Sachetti: it’s a great question. And what I will say is that it’s more around the number of gifts and revenue generated that refers to that kind of three to five%. Those that responded to the deadline text that I mentioned earlier, their average gift is much, much higher. And I think Stephanie mentioned this at the beginning of our conversation, where the average gift for our donors that are responding directly to the text and making a contribution on a landing page is, in some cases, triple the direct mail average gift that we see in that campaign. It’s more evidence that multi-channel donors are so much more valuable than single channel donors.

Host: What a powerful example and number to end on. David, Stephanie, thank you both for taking some time out of your day to kind of break this topic down for our listeners. Do either of you have any final thoughts before we hang up today?

David Sachetti: The only other thing that I will add is, like anything else in your fundraising program, you should wade into it very methodically. Try a campaign. Try a couple of techniques. See how the results perform for your program, and then measure and implement it in a methodical way, rather than just opening up the flood gates.

Stephanie Drahan: Yes, I would absolutely echo that. And I would also say that many like David was saying, we’re integrating with direct mail pieces or deadlines. So, there’s content you already have in house in your hands that can be leveraged on this channel. Whether that’s around our fundraising asks, but also around perhaps the engagement or cultivation messages right that we can help you leverage so it is not necessarily all brand new content. It’s just a new approach and a new way to take what has been working for you and add another channel.

Host: Thanks for joining us on another episode of Go Beyond Fundraising. We hope these conversations have equipped you with the tools and inspiration to take your fundraising, marketing and advocacy efforts to the next level. If you are ready to transform your nonprofit’s growth and impact, visit teamallegiance.com to get in touch with the experienced team at Allegiance Group + Pursuant. We are here to help you make a lasting difference. Until next time, keep up the phenomenal work you do every day. Together, we can create a brighter future.