Thursday, June 6, 2013

Improving the constituent experience so as to never fear it being shared



Your constituents are sharing experiences they have with you. This profoundly influences the journey others they know will take and the decisions they will make to become engaged with you. Your marketing efforts have one level of effect but they are always seen as your marketing efforts. What others say, in a peer-to-peer way, are the most potent influencers of all. Word of mouth has always been powerful. Technology now allows for exponential reach for the person who shares their experience of you. It isn’t what you say about yourself but it is all about what others say about you that counts. 

At some point, a constituent will start a journey with your nonprofit. It may be small and unnoticeable to you to begin with. Maybe it was that $10 donation they made when a friend who was participating in an event asked you to give. You can give a lot more and you might.  Think of what that experience is like for them. Think through it very carefully. Also think through how to help them along the journey to a higher level of engagement. Is it all intentional? Major donors don’t go from $10 to $1,000,000 in one big leap. The $10 donation experience, however, has to help start and support that journey. Every one, marketing, development, advocacy and mission programs need to align to contribute to the experiences that lead to an engaged journey. It needs to be mapped out and it needs to be intentional. And everyone needs to be on board with the strategy. The framework of internal collaboration is not difficult: listen to the constituents, learn, create engagement experiences, and adapt to improve the engagement experiences. 

·        Listening involves the conversations they are having as they discover you. Follow that same path yourself and evaluate how it feels in the context of the more important journey.
·         Learning takes the form of how key words are used, questions that are asked and how the responses may contribute to a theme and how those themes in fact evolve to deeper levels of engagement.
o    This requires an ability to apply those key words to learn how constituents are engaged which lead to others becoming engaged with you as well.
o    Refine your key word strategy based on how others are searching and interacting with you.
o    Your search engine marketing efforts can benefit in a huge way from what you learn.
o    Look to see how constituents are engaged in a search for a certain experiences today that could lead to a discovery of your mission. 

·         Do you have a defined path from discovery to engagement in one of your communities? If so, engaged constituents can become a respected resource to attract others into the community.
o    Develop a content strategy to support community engagement.
§  YouTube videos
§  Social-friendly website and landing pages
§  Useful blog posts
§  Constituent reviews and testimonials on social sites.
o    Develop a strategy to involve constituents in fixing problems. This should be public and rapid.
§  Develop a social media command center with a team to monitor key social media channels to convert negative constituent experiences into positive ones. 

Use a continuous improvement process for your constituent’s journey that you are creating. This should support internal collaboration and external engagement.
o    This should create a path between shared constituent experiences and program innovation.
o    The insights you gain can lead you to rethink roles, rules, procedures and processes. A procedure you have may create a kink in an otherwise well thought out constituent journey. 

Shared experiences (and they will be shared) are ties that bind the decision making potential constituents will make. In the connected world with access to mobile, social and the internet anytime anywhere, experiences will be shared on demand. You have a great mission. That isn’t the issue. The unconnected and siloed experiences you are not intentional about may not be what you want shared on YouTube. Design the type of experiences you want shared. You have to assume the experience, whether good or not, will be shared. That level of design will free you from fearing someone sharing the truth.

1 comment:

  1. Hmmmmm....very interesting, i think this may be my favorite in the Manifesto.

    A quick question.

    How do you develope a stunning experience and further engagement for a billionaire donor, who lets say donated approx $12,000.00 over 4 years to a certain nonprofit. :-))!

    Lets say this billionaire does not want to be publicly recognized, never needs to know particulars, never asks for details other then the initial basic need info and is not real talkative because he is so busy.

    How do you take them further down the journey when they are used to being on journeys with and boards of major nonprofits and all it entails? How do you let them know it is not just money you are after from them but wish to give back to them in some way. The nonprofit i am talking about has tried many things, but simply has not been able to go much further with that donor although they know each other well and communicate fairly often evidently.




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