, , , , , ,

Automating Nonprofits with a Dash of Humor: Bringing Efficiency and Laughter Together!

Welcome to a whimsical journey through the nonprofit industry, where automation and humor unite to revolutionize the way we make a positive impact on the world. In this blog, we’ll explore how nonprofits can leverage automation with a touch of humor to streamline operations, engage supporters, and spread laughter along their noble mission. Get ready to witness the power of laughter-driven automation in the nonprofit sector!

  1. The Comical Volunteer Onboarding: Volunteers are the lifeblood of nonprofits, and onboarding them can be a tedious process. Injecting some humor into the volunteer registration and training process can make it enjoyable for everyone involved. From quirky welcome emails to playful training videos, infusing humor into the onboarding journey can create a lighthearted atmosphere that keeps volunteers engaged and excited to contribute.
  2. The Hilarious Donation Reminder: Automation can be a game-changer when it comes to donor management. Instead of sending generic donation reminders, why not add a comedic touch? Craft witty email templates or social media posts that nudge donors with a smile. For example, “Hey there, superhero! Just a friendly reminder that your cape is ready for another act of kindness. Donate today and save the day!”
  3. The Laugh-Inducing Thank You Notes: Expressing gratitude to donors and supporters is essential for nonprofits. Automated thank you notes provide a perfect opportunity to spread some laughter. Include funny quotes or personalized jokes to show your appreciation. Remember, a chuckle can go a long way in making your donors feel valued and connected to your cause.
  4. The Jovial Event Invitations: Fundraising events are a staple in the nonprofit world, and automation can simplify the invitation process. Spice up your event emails by incorporating humor into the subject lines and content. A witty invitation is more likely to catch the recipient’s attention and increase event attendance. Who can resist an invite that promises an evening filled with laughter and making a difference?
  5. The Quirky Social Media Campaigns: Social media is an excellent platform for nonprofits to spread awareness and engage supporters. Combine automation with humor to create unique social media campaigns. Create humorous videos, share funny anecdotes related to your cause, or host caption contests that involve your followers. Laughter can make your cause more relatable and inspire a stronger connection with your audience.
  6. The Playful Impact Reports: Impact reports are essential for showcasing the results of your nonprofit’s efforts. Infuse these reports with humor to captivate your stakeholders. Include funny anecdotes, highlight heartwarming success stories, and present data in a visually appealing and amusing way. Laughter can make your impact reports more engaging and memorable.
  7. The Comedy of Volunteer Appreciation: Volunteers dedicate their time and energy to support your cause, and showing appreciation is crucial. Instead of the usual thank you emails or certificates, why not host a hilarious volunteer appreciation event? Organize a comedy night or a talent show where volunteers can showcase their hidden talents. Laughter can bring volunteers closer together and foster a sense of community within your organization.

Conclusion: In the world of nonprofits, automation and humor can be a winning combination. By embracing automation tools and infusing humor into various aspects of your operations, you can create a vibrant and engaging experience for your volunteers, donors, and supporters. So, let laughter guide your automation journey, and watch as efficiency, effectiveness, and mirth intertwine to make a lasting impact on the world.

Remember, in the realm of nonprofits, laughter is not just a tool, but a catalyst for change. Go forth, automate with a touch of humor, and make the world a better and brighter place, one giggle at a time!

/by
, , , , , ,

The Art of Sales Automation: Crushing Targets and Laughing All the Way!

Welcome, to a world where sales automation reigns supreme, and laughter is the secret ingredient to achieving sales success. In this blog, we’ll take a light-hearted dive into the wonderful world of sales automation, exploring how humor can be a secret weapon in your pursuit of exceeding targets, closing deals, and keeping your sanity intact. So fasten your seatbelts, and let the laughter-driven automation begin!

  1. The Rise of the Sales Cyborgs: Picture a world where salespeople are transformed into superhuman beings – part-human, part-machine, and all hilarious. Sales automation is like a trusty sidekick, enhancing your abilities, streamlining your processes, and giving you more time to crack jokes with your customers. It’s like having a personal assistant who never fails to make you smile, all while boosting your sales game.
  2. The “Automated” Cold Call: Ah, the dreaded cold call – the bane of every salesperson’s existence. But fear not, for automation is here to save the day! Imagine a scenario where your automated assistant seamlessly dials the numbers, delivers your pitch flawlessly, and even throws in a witty one-liner to break the ice. “Is your refrigerator running? Well, great! Because our product will keep your business running smoothly too!” Who could resist such charm?
  3. The Magical Power of Personalization: Sales automation allows you to personalize your outreach at scale, making your prospects feel like they’re the only fish in the sea. With a touch of humor, you can turn a generic email into a delightful surprise. Adding a funny GIF or a clever pun to your automated email can make all the difference. Remember, a smile is just one click away from closing that deal!
  4. The Game-Changing Chatbot: Chatbots are the superheroes of customer service, answering queries, and handling objections with ease. But let’s not forget the humor element. Program your chatbot to sprinkle some laughter throughout the conversation. Imagine your customer asking a question, and your chatbot responds with a cheeky joke to lighten the mood. Who knew customer support could be so entertaining?
  5. Sales Reports and Puns: A Match Made in Heaven: Ah, the joy of sales reports! While they may not be the highlight of your day, why not inject a little humor into them? Instead of dull bar graphs and pie charts, why not include a “Pun of the Month” section? For example, “Our sales are skyrocketing! Let’s keep reaching for the stars and avoid crash landings!” A good laugh can make those numbers much more enjoyable to analyze.
  6. The Art of Social Selling: Social media is the playground where sales automation and humor can come together beautifully. Craft witty posts, share relatable memes, and engage your audience with clever captions. By infusing your social media strategy with humor, you’ll not only attract attention but also build an authentic connection with your prospects. Remember, laughter is the shortest distance between two people on the internet!
  7. The Hilarity of Sales Gamification: Sales automation and gamification go hand in hand. Why not turn your sales targets into a fun competition with a comedic twist? Give your team humorous nicknames, create silly trophies, or organize a “Sales Olympics” event where the winners get to wear ridiculous costumes. Laughter can boost team morale, drive healthy competition, and help everyone stay motivated even during challenging times.

Conclusion: In the world of sales automation, laughter truly is the best medicine. Incorporating humor into your sales processes can create a delightful experience for both you and your customers. So, embrace the power of automation, let your jokes flow, and watch as your targets shatter and your sales soar. Remember, in the pursuit of success, a little laughter goes a long way!

Now, armed with your trusty sales automation tools and a sense of humor, go forth and conquer the sales world, one chuckle at a time!

/by
, , , , , ,

Zoho CRM Marketing Automation (The Complete Guide)

What is Zoho CRM Marketing Automation? The role of CRM marketing automation has moved from being a luxury item within CRMs to an imperative and is one of the key ways to increase productivity throughout your organization. Thankfully a few of the CRM’s out there designed for nonprofits have made the setup and running of […]

Read more
/by
, , , , , , , , ,

How To Touch More Leads And Develop More Relationships In Less Hours

Consistent and timely communication with leads, prospects, clients, and customers is a requirement to keep your sales pipeline full of opportunities.

As a successful sales professional, following up and truly building relationships and stewarding opportunities through the customer journey can be a time-consuming process.

In most cases, this leaves a sales professional with two options on how to touch leads consistently:

  1. Spend time writing emails and handwritten letters at your desk for hours a day. This means going to the CRM and looking up the prospects name and contact information and handcrafting a simple “thank you for coffee” email by hand.  If you’re new to the organization you don’t know what to include and what others have used before (you’re left to the wolves).
  2. You skip this step and continue working with new donors hoping to close the deal upon that initial meeting. And when you look back and see that you have met with dozens of prospects and generated a number of opportunities to cultivate, you realize it’s been so long since you spoke with them you can’t remember what you spoke about or if you thanked them for the meeting.

In this situation, you need a system that can automate some of these processes or at least make them faster.

Segmented data-driven email marketing automation creates an environment where the sales team and the customer feel supported throughout the customer journey.

As you can see in the images below you can develop organization-wide or individual sales follow-up templates that can be used to easily send personalized communications out to leads and prospects.

These templates merge in the unique information of the constituent from the CRM record, as well as the meeting information (online screen sharing link) should you choose.  Once the appropriate template has been selected you are then allowed to enter the unique text to personalize the templated letter based on the relationship and move on with your day.

If you’re looking to get hours or days back on your schedule, this may be the solution you’re looking for.

/by
, , , ,

The Death of Data Entry: How Your CRM Should be Entering its Own Data

Heretofore data entry has been a necessary evil of the having a CRM; it’s also one of the major reasons most of your staff aren’t using the most powerful tool in your fundraising and operations arsenal. So for mission’s sake, the death of data entry can’t come too soon.

Let’s take a quick example of data entry’s cumbersome nature by looking at how your development staff might be experiencing it. Let’s say you (reasonably) ask that each team member log notes in CRM after each meeting or phone call with a donor. What you might hear in response is that the follow up took as much or more effort than the engagement itself.

Yet this information is invaluable so that when anyone looks up the donor record, whether it is program staff responding to an inquiry or event staff looking for possible entry points for developing a sponsorship relationship they all have a history and context for the next engagement. This keeps their conversations relevant and on point.

This kind of context is also imperative to maintain consistency in engagement whenever there is staff turnover.

Logging volunteer and program information often present a similar level of manual labor woes. Staff is tasked with entering hours spent on particular projects, information from volunteer applications or vital program stats such as attendance and demographic information.

This kind of quantitative data is vital for donor and grant reporting, as well program development and volunteer management, but it often goes underreported since entering the data into CRM generally takes a back seat to program delivery.

Email is yet another key receptacle for gathering valuable program, donor, volunteer and constituent information, but most will tell you this is where you can find the biggest holes in a conversation timeline or data bucket, with different staff reaching out or responding from different areas within an organization at different times for different reasons.

This can leave your team searching through both their organizational emails and their CRM to retrieve information and can make for missed opportunities or gaps in reporting and history vital to nurturing relationships and programs.

Rather than expecting staff to data enter all these email interactions into a constituent’s record, most CRM’s now offer integrated email so that every email flows out of CRM and every response flows right back in so you can see who has engaged and what those conversations were about in one place. This doesn’t necessarily mean your CRM has to have built-in email functionality, but it should certainly allow you to integrate with products like Gmail and Outlook that your organization might already be using.

The bottom line is that it is mission critical to have your CRM doing the data entry by capturing phone calls, emails, and other communication lines such as social all within that constituent’s or program’s record.

The same goes for capturing campaign and donation information. If you are still sending out direct mail campaigns, those generally need to be manually created in CRM as campaigns, and when the donations start coming in, those too will need to be manually tagged or otherwise coded to reflect that they are in response to a particular campaign. While there are bulk data entry options in most CRM’s, any database administrator or accounting staff person will tell you it is still time-consuming to make sure everything is entered correctly.

The same goes for email campaigns. Your nonprofit CRM software should either allow you to send out email campaigns as part of its email marketing functionality or allow you to integrate with products like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact.

But even if you have those products integrated with your CRM, the incoming donations are likely still coming in without you knowing exactly what campaign they are in response to leading to more research and data entry, and coordinated efforts between your accounting department and CRM.

With the coming of single source product suites, however, your channels should be integrated into CRM and enjoy the kind of direct communication lines that effectively eliminate this kind of data entry. Let’s revisit email campaigns to give you an idea of what this kind of direct line communication is like.

First of all, your CRM really should have internal email marketing functionality or an integration as mentioned above. This allows you to put a giving button directly into the email that can link donors to a landing page specific to the campaign where they enter their donation information.

It can look exactly like your regular website donation page, but with a campaign specific field or fields (hidden to the viewer) that not only bring that donation transaction information into CRM automatically but also ensures it is coded correctly to associate it with the particular campaign.

From here you can then set up a simple, personalized auto-response thank you and follow up series of emails with campaign updates. This eliminates the need for mail merged thank you letters that are a pain to set up or a generic email thank you that doesn’t further engage the donor.

For example, perhaps you want to automatically send out campaign updates to all donors who have given with the latest dashboard showing how their donation is being put to use (a key in establishing trust and a foundation for that all important change in status from one time, to a regular donor.) Because you have been capturing data throughout the campaign automatically in CRM, those dashboards are easy to create without any data entry and can then automatically update and be shared in email or website updates set up to be sent out automatically from within CRM. This eliminates having to export any data and then manually create monthly reports or send out separate emails everytime you want to send an update.

Or perhaps you want particular development team members notified if someone in their portfolio responds to a campaign so they can make a phone call thanking them. You don’t have to manually pull a report weekly and send to team members, you can just set up a quick automation that sends a task alert to associated team members when a gift comes in so they can then follow up. That follow up, by the way, will have much higher rates of follow-through when staff isn’t having to separately enter the notes and data from the follow-up call.

Let’s remember, the middle letter of CRM is “Relationship,” and every interaction your staff has with your CRM should be about supporting the development of those relationships, not entering data. If the data is already there you create a positive user experience for staff, one in which they feel supported, not taxed by their technology tools. Their CRM experience moves from being one where things are asked of them to one where information is given to them to help them do their jobs, and that means more of your mission realized.

These are just a few examples of how we are moving toward a data entry free experience, and there are many more, including how constituency portals and webforms can take care of data entry for you – see links here for more on those opportunities. And on a final note lets also keep in mind that with more data automatically flowing into your system, your ability to generate high-quality reporting and analytics is augmented. While this is fodder for another post, suffice to say for now that this increase in quality data better informs your key organizational decisions and moves your organization into a place of nimble, real-time proactive adjustments, rather than reactive, after the fact responses. More on that later, but for now let me be the first to say farewell to data entry – RIP.

/by
, , , , , , , ,

The New Imperative of CRM Automation and Why It’s Time for Nonprofits to Embrace It

The role of automation has moved from being a luxury item within CRMs to an imperative and is one of the key ways to increase productivity throughout your organization. Thankfully a few of the CRM’s out there designed for nonprofits have made the setup and running of automation far more user-friendly and far more powerful than it has been even in the last few years. With older CRM’s automation was a cumbersome and clunky undertaking for users and it took a lot to get even basic automation running. As such, it was underutilized and typically either not set up, or only used for a few redundant processes. This stood in juxtaposition to most corporate CRM’s whose designers focused heavily on automation and recognized it as the game changer in efficiency gains that it really is. So now is a great time for your nonprofit to embrace using CRM automation as it will only be growing in relevance in the coming years. Another tangential benefit of automation is that it inspires planning. If you know what automation and workflows to put in place it is because you know how these fit into overall goals and outcomes for your organization, both internal (for example, tracking development team lead conversions) and external (for example, getting a campaign to its goal).

Automation is a functionality worth asking about in some detail if you are exploring a new CRM. Here are a few guiding questions:

  • Is automation easy to set up? This is definitely something you would want to see demonstrated in a demo.
  • Will automation run on social, email, chat, survey responses and support tickets – in other words, does it apply across the system?
  • Can you visually see the flow of triggered actions? If it isn’t intuitive to you, it can create problems when executed.
  • Does automation include real-time notifications? Will staff be alerted when someone engages on any channel (email, call, chat, survey response, support ticket, social)?
  • Will your CRM suggest macros for recurring actions and workflows the system sees you repeating? Users are busy doing, and sometimes don’t realize there might be a way to automate a set of tasks; smart CRM’s will see these patterns and ask users with a prompt whether they would like to add a macro to automatically run a series of actions.

Automation is an upfront investment in set-up and mapping out of workflows and communication triggers that compliment user’s roles. But the investment is well worth it these days as it is one of the most valuable tools in helping your team keep up with its many communication channels and to free them up to focus on higher level engagements and opportunities at timely periods within a given cycle or workflow. Across your organization, automation is the key to scaling your marketing, fundraising, and other communication efforts so take the time to see what your CRM can do. Power to the user!

Want to see automation in action? Here’s a quick video to show you how to set up a basic workflow:

For more information on Nonprofit Vertical Source CRM click here.

 

/by
, , , , , , , , , ,

Why You Need Real-Time Data In Your CRM System and How to Get It

There’s been a lot of buzz about real-time data being one of the most valuable evolutions within the CRM software market and with good reason.

CRM’s were designed upon the premise that we could use data to drive decision making and strategy, and we have seen that bear out first with how it informed sales, and increasingly with how it can inform program and organizational direction.

My boss actually refers to our CRM as a “decision making support tool,” with the idea that any decision we make should be driven by our data, not just our gut.

I say “just,” because there will always be an important place for subjectivity and the vision of leaders that carry with them the experience of being in the field and on the personal front lines of a particular cause.

That said though, there’s nothing more elegant than when our egos can yield to include the objectivity of our data in the pursuit of realizing the most of our missions. After all, and we often forget this, data is just a way of aggregating and organizing a human response.

In this way, there is lifeblood in our analytics and having the right tools to use this powerful information to make decisions that optimize our systems will always be far from mechanistic.

What feels mechanistic to us, however, is how clunky our CRM technology has felt to use when pulling together these responses.

In the past CRM’s did not invite human interaction mainly because their very design was a bit sterile and machine-like.

As a result, they dampened the passion of users seeking to engage them as support tools to further very human pursuits.

As technology (from AI to apps) has become more user-friendly though, we are becoming more interactive than ever with our tools and design has come a long way.

We can still be left feeling disconnected and out of touch though as we gather a piece of information from one tool or other, but continue to lack a way to bring all of this information together in an integrated, real-time way, which is when information becomes it’s most valuable and gives us the most human insights.

So when we talk about real-time data, what do we mean? Let’s take an example.

Perhaps your organization has an app that tracks students who are suspended, the reasons for the suspension, and duration of absence.

No doubt knowing this information instantly is critical, but leveraging that information to make decisions depends on how integrated that app is within your larger technology landscape and that of other stakeholders.

For example, perhaps when this information is logged it sends out a notification to all teachers alerting them to the student’s change in status and asking them for follow up actions such as posting homework assignments for that student for the days missed in advance of the absence.

If your app is integrated with your CRM, you can have that incident information flow directly into your larger data pool to allow you to use reporting to track overall suspension rates week to week or year to year so you can track triggering event trends by types for example.

Perhaps you find there is an uptick in kids suspended for bullying, or perhaps more drug-related activity starts to become apparent.

This informs what interventions or changes the school might take to address suspensions overall in real-time, and if this report is automatically emailed quarterly to other community agencies it can serve to inform their perspective and potential responses.

So even in this simple example, leveraging real-time data can have both short-term and longer-term impacts within multiple areas of your organization’s sphere of influence.

We were recently working with a community foundation and had the chance to see another example of how real-time data was bringing valuable returns.

They were able not only to be on top of what their own data was telling them in real-time (thanks to their CRM and a few other well-integrated tools working together), but could compare data across their grant partners, constituents and staff, as well as across different areas of funding so that their whole community benefitted from relevant, timely reporting about what might be working or not working to achieve common goals and outcomes.

They were also able to share that data with funders as programs were being implemented allowing their stakeholders to feel connected and relevant to the work they are supporting.

This kind of active reporting encouraged continued involvement with the foundation and engaged their board members and committees in a similar way with up to date dashboards offering simple, but compelling visual presentations of current data.

Even something as a simple as a dashboard posted on your website that shows the up to the minute status of a campaign or event goal can be a significant motivator for action.

Executive teams, boards, and program directors are shifting from waiting until the budget season to look at last year’s numbers (both financial and programmatic) and coming to expect timely updates so they can make decisions and adjustments throughout the year.

Your CRM should accommodate this evolution by allowing you to set up simple automation triggers to pull and send reports or post updated dashboards on various areas of organizational activity.

For example, if it turns out a particular public health speaking engagement had low turnout for the first three times it was offered in Q1, and the feedback from event surveys suggest the need for more relevant content, or perhaps an alternative preference for program delivery medium (perhaps a webinar is easier for those with severe RA since getting to an event in person might be subject to how a participant is feeling on that particular day for example), these changes can be made as soon as the data reveals the necessary course correction.

Bottom line – if decision makers are automatically getting reports and results with real-time data, decisions can be made in a far more timely and informed fashion.

To achieve all of this, of course, you need the right tools, connected in the right ways.

Basic things like your CRM having easy to use automation and web forms that connect to your website and a survey tool that can pull data directly from or about an event or program and have it flow right into your CRM are some of the things you should consider when looking to incorporate real-time data.

Also, consider whether your financials are flowing into CRM so you can generate reports that can, for example, cross-reference program cost with program participation and send an automatic report to program directors and appropriate committee members or executive team members.

To make real-time data work for you, it has to function within an integrated experience where your CRM, website, financial software, and other mission-critical operational tools are all sharing their data.

And that experience should have flexible tools within it so you can you easily (meaning without an IT person) customize and add modules and fields to your CRM, or create a webform that captures information unique to your organization.

Of course, you should also be able to access all your tools on a mobile device so that your staff can input or pull data anywhere, anytime, and do things like engaging with someone on social as soon as a post, comment or like comes in to keep these conversations fresh, timely and authentic.

So it is good to ask whether your organization has the right technology landscape to support the valuable contributions of real-time data, and if not it’s a great guiding question to help you start to analyze what you might need or need to adjust within your technology infrastructure to make real-time data a reality.

It also means ensuring that this landscape is well-traveled among your staff, and investing the time and resources necessary to have all your staff trained on all your tools (not just having someone specialized in one or the other.)

With your tools and your people working in concert, you will start to feel how the harmony of engaged data starts to inform every decision your organization makes in support of your common vision.

So don’t let the opportunities of real-time data slip through your fingers – now is the time!

 

/by
, , , , , , , ,

Why Your Fundraising CRM Software Should Be Built to Scale

One size doesn’t fit all, but for too long nonprofits of all sizes have either had to settle for stripped-down fundraising CRM systems with limited functionality (and let’s face it, less than appealing user interfaces) or be roped into expensive, complex systems that were unwieldy to administer for smaller scale shops. Thankfully CRM’s are more […]

Read more
/by
, , , , , ,

Gift Entry is a Key Differentiator in Nonprofit CRMs

If there is one differentiator that highlights the difference between CRM’s designed for nonprofits and all others it is gift entry. This has been one of the main reasons nonprofits have been so limited in their choices for a CRM solution, with only a few large players offering the necessary functionality to handle donations and […]

Read more
/by
, , , , , , , ,

The Benefits Of CRM Software Automation In Your Business

Automation: We define automation as “the creation and application of technology to monitor and control the production and delivery of products and services.”

A word that is thrown around a lot when it comes to using technology.

We would like to take the opportunity to provide a list of opportunities you immediately incorporate in your business to reap the benefits of CRM software automation in your business critical functions (and feel comfortable with).

  • Streamline communication

    • Communication with your leads, clients, customers, vendors and other segments happen without human involvement.
      • For example, does it require you or a member of your staff to remember to send recurring invoices out on a monthly basis?
      • Do subscriptions service reminders and lapsed subscriptions service reminders require a huge effort to get out of the door?

  • Consistent and predictable results

    • If reminders and communications with constituents happen accurately and consistently you can begin to develop forecasting based on the timely execution of processes and tasks.  If I know the night of the 31st, all recurring invoices and subscription reminders will go out with a link to a payment page where they can make their payment online I can forecast based on previous months of us performing this we will have an influx of revenue the first of every month.  In most cases when we perform this, we get an 18% immediate subscription payment closure rate.

  • Enforce accountability

    • If the entire organization is aware there will be weekly or monthly reporting on sales activities and they should use this to be successful at their job there should be no obstacles in their way for meeting expected goals.

  • Minimize costs, positive impact on staff morale and reduction in manual errors

    • If leadership or other internal staff members or volunteers are performing routine tasks in the areas of data entry, entering contact reports, tracking phone calls, updating event attendance, etc these are tasks that can be automated.  Which will provide a higher level of accuracy and increase the morale of internal staff members.
/by