Ep 70: Hidden Revenue: Engaging Repeat Customers and Forgotten Prospects

EPISODE 70

A New Approach to Nonprofit Funding and Engagement

 
 
 

PSA: You're leaving money on the table by overlooking repeat customers, donors, or forgotten prospects! 

We're breaking free from the myth that these groups have exhausted their ability to contribute and demonstrating how reaching out can unlock new revenue streams for your nonprofit.  

Listen to find out the power of an abundance mindset, and the art of making your asks without apology.  Understand the significance of focusing on the 'yeses' and not getting discouraged by the 'nos'.  

Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded?  Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect

Steal my Prospect List! Lead Gen just got a lot easier!

Resources mentioned:

 
 
 

Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.

TRANSCRIPT:

00:02

Welcome to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast for nonprofit leaders, mission-driven creatives and social entrepreneurs. Get ready to stop dreaming and start doing. Here, ideas become action. We prioritize purpose and profit. You ready? Let's go.

00:20

Today I'm going to give you a strategy that is often forgotten, often not on your radar, often undervalued, and if you take what you learned today and go pick a segment to use this strategy for, you will see an increase of revenue come in now, this year, this month, this week. So I want to talk about repeat customers or repeat donors, like, fill in the blank, repeat clients, forgotten prospects, forgotten customers or clients and recurring giving. So, repeat folks, forgotten folks and recurring folks. Okay, those buckets and what I often see. You get wrong about it. What I often see so many people have a miss about. Okay, there are so many organizations that are bucketing people in these categories and excluding them from invitations, from offers, from appeals, from campaigns, from launches, because they've decided that this group of people has already raised their hand and shown interest in this one thing. Ergo, they're not going to be interested and or they won't contribute to this other thing. So to give you a very granular response or example, one would be somebody who is a monthly donor. Let's say they give 50 bucks a month. They've signed up to be a monthly donor. They've been doing that for six months or a year. Many times organizations will decide because they're already a monthly donor, that is their threshold. Let me segment them out of this campaign. Let me segment them out of this fundraiser, right? Another thought that would be behind that is like that's their ceiling. They've chosen to give even a higher number. Let's say they give $5,000 over the course of the year, but they give it a monthly and a monthly gift, right? So you say to yourself, you say to your staffers, your colleagues that's their ceiling. Right, they already give $5,000 a year. Okay, total mistake, total mistake.

02:38

Another way that I see this is for a one-time donor, client, member okay, so they gave a gift of 500 bucks, right, they gave it. And you say that was it right, that was them. That was them showing up and supporting our organization, supporting our mission this year, full stop. Ergo, I'm going to assume and maybe even exclude them from this email, from this outreach, from this strategy, because I don't want to bother them, I don't want to hound them, I don't want to nag them. I want you know right. And so you're putting them in this sort of like. Not only I'm picturing a four burner stove, not only are you putting that group on the back burner, you're kind of taking them off the burner.

Okay, this is often a huge, huge mistake, and you may be saying to me, christina, like I can't, what do you want me to do instead? Do you want me to tell my monthly donors that they need to contribute to every single campaign we have? Do you want me to tell that amazing donor that just gave a gift of $250 that they should give a gift again? And before you get all like spicy and hyped up about that, I want you to be like what? What if you did? What if you did? What if you did? What if you did do those things? Okay, the problem here, and the misstep and the misinformation here, is that you're assuming for them that, no-transcript, this is it, this is it. This is all they want to do, right?

04:05

So let me give you a couple of examples that have come across in in my life recently. One is I Saw this Instagram ad. We're gonna go into the e-commerce space. I saw this Instagram ad for this eyeliner. This eyeliner looked really cool. It was a color I hadn't seen before. It's kind of like this silvery, metallic thing and they had shown it on a couple of different eye colors and skin types and I was like, oh, I kind of like that, I feel like I'd be interested in that. I'm gonna say you guys, I'm gonna say I saw that ad a Lot, maybe 15 times, before I decided to buy it. So what's the first lesson is Christina did not buy that eyeliner, I they had to warm me up, right, warm me up. They had to show me and make offers multiple times. Finally, I decided to buy this eyeliner and then, when I bought it, I said, well, I kind of like this other one too. While I'm at it, I'll get those two.

So I ended up getting this eyeliner, which was a Victoria Beckham eyeliner, which cracked me up because I hadn't really seen I've never seen her products in real life. I've never. I don't, I don't know, I don't know her stuff that well, but I really liked the colors and it seemed cool. I ended up ordering these two pieces and the delivery part, the messaging part, was impeccable, like it was a Standout, like even the way that it was boxed, even the way that it was put in a dust bag. It was like so lovingly sent to me. I was like, oh my god, this is a really Luxurious company, like this is a really great company.

05:39

And then I tried the product and the product is like I've never had an eyeliner like this, like it's velvety and amazing. And I know we're not, you're like, okay, eyeliner, but listen, I had not. I've never had an experience like this with, with like a makeup brand where I was like, oh my gosh, this is like really, really high quality. That's my thought about it. Okay, high quality, high customer experience.

Now they could say Christina has now ordered not one, but two products. She's good, she's hit her ceiling right, she's raised her hand, she's hit her ceiling, she already did the order bump, she got two things she's done. And that would be such a disservice, not only to them but to me, because now I've had a really great experience with a company as a First-time buyer and what I'm thinking instead is what products are in my drawer at home that I feel Okay about. But I could really elevate right if I wanted to. Like I was on their site and I was like, oh, I kind of like this color. Should I order this color. I kind of curious about this thing, right, because I had such a great experience.

06:38

Now, instead, if they said, well, she ordered on black Friday, let's leave her alone between now and your end, because we don't want to hound her, we don't want to bother her, we don't want to overdo it, right, what would happen? Number one they would likely not see any more sales from me. Number two they would get out of that top of mind for me. Yes, I would still use the product, but they would just stop, start to lose that loyalty piece. Right, because they just stop Coming in my inbox, showing up on Instagram ads, right, do you see? And what is the outcome of that? It sucks for them, right, because they now lost a customer that they could retain, and it sucks for me Because I actually really enjoy their products.

Right, and should they have some sort of new, limited-time color, great, great new other product or skincare? People like I kind of want to know about that. It makes me curious. It was such a good Experience just for this one product that I'm very curious. Like oh, what's their skincare stuff? Like, what's her blush? Like what's her whatever?

07:38

Like, right, and there's only one way I could answer that question right is through continually hearing from them, from them showing case studies, saying hey, here's somebody who you know has skin like yours, who's tried this product. Here's a before and after. You guys can do all of this with your programs. You could do this all of this with your services. Do you realize that, right? Okay, so do not assume, just cuz somebody showed up and they were really supportive, that that's it for them. That's really really A bomber, okay. The result of that for you is often underfunding, okay.

So another way that I see this come up is assuming that all of the folks that maybe gave last year but didn't this year your livens, maybe your cybents they gave some year but not this year are gone. They're goners, right? I? I saw LinkedIn post about this recently where somebody said to some effect of like don't waste your time, right, don't even waste your time. And I was like what? These people who gave one one year but not this year, some year but not this year, were warm At some point. They said, yes, I care about, I trust you, I care about what you do, I believe in what you do. They literally stood up and said I want to support you, don't abandon them. At least put them through an email automation. At least send them a letter. At least put them through some sort of sequence before you decide nope, they're done right, because your option is to go find new people who do not know like and trust you right. That's how you build a higher and are a bigger supporter base, a bigger client base, or and or. Go over here to your warm people that are a little cooled off and say let me reengage you, let me, let me invite you to take another action. Tell them you miss them. Tell them you miss them.

09:39

Okay, I use Instacart, that grocery delivery service, and what I've noticed is we used it a ton, definitely in 2020. That's when we started and then we've been using it pretty consistently for a while, but lately, I think, just lifestyle stuff has gotten us like oh, let me pop over to the grocery store. So, even using it less, they noticed that. They noticed that they're like we don't want to lose Christina. Now the argument could be you guys, she's gone, we lost her right. But they said no. At some point she used us regularly. At some point she knew, like, entrusted us, let's not decide for her. Let's make her an invitation to come back in and they put me through an automated kind of email series. They have a special offer to like come use this discount, right? They're like, no, she's not gone, right, I'm going to invite her back in, which, by the way, it works, I'll totally. Next time we need a grocery run, I'm like, yeah, let's use them.

Okay, don't decide for people. There are so many people. Think about this for a second and like, really think about it. There are so many people that want to help you. There are so many people that want to support your mission. There are so many people that would partner with you, but you haven't found them yet. You haven't asked them yet. You thought about asking them, but maybe you said I don't want to bother them, right, you assumed that they would think that you were bothering them. You assume that they would think, God, they're really hounding me or nagging me. None of that is actually true. So when you think about the well of your customer and client and donor base, your member base, your subscriber base on your email list, and you think about them and you decide, well, I don't want to bother them. They already showed up for this campaign. They already saw, they already heard about this thing and if they cared, they would have donated them. If they cared, they would have become a member. Then, if they care, they would have contacted us. Then no, no, no, no, no, no.

11:47

Remember how many times did I have to see that eyeliner at? It was like 15 times, I'm telling you. It was a lot of times, but I was just like on the fence. I wasn't sure. My thought about it was do I need another eyeliner? No, but at some point it was like this tipping point of like. You know what I actually want to. I want to give it a shot. And this is that same tipping point for many, many supporters of like. Yeah, I actually want to.

12:10

Okay, the next thing I want to tell you about is this idea of like going to the place where you're like. All right, what if somebody is like how dare you send me another email? I already made my gift for the year. How? Why are you asking me Like or whatever, like some sort of like, whatever the naysayer piece of it is like. Go to the place where you're like. Figure out what that is Like, the thing that's keeping you from going to your monthly donors and asking for more, to going to your livens and putting them through a engagement, reengagement series, to going to the people that gave maybe one or two times this year and asking them to give again.

What is the reason why you're saying, what's your objection for that? I'm not going to do that. I don't want them to blank, fill in the blank, okay, so go to that place where you fill in the blank. And then I want to just give you this my favorite prompt, right? What if that's true? Like, so, what? So what's what to what? What if the person says, nope, not for me. No, thanks, Okay, that's okay. Do you know that, like it's okay, you can tell a story in an email that says dear loyal supporter, I see you, we're so grateful for you. Here's what we're up to. Here's what we've done this year. Okay, together as a collective, you've been part of this movement. You've been part of this change. But here's the thing we're not done yet. Here's the thing we still are working towards. This goal, this revenue, this thing, this campaign. Can you help us get there, right? I'm not going to be pissed off if you send me that email, even if I have already donated, right?

13:50

The other piece of it is what I see is organizations that are really under that $3 million mark are scared of this. They're scared of this entire strategy that I'm laying out for you. Organizations that are past the $3 million mark are like of course we do this, of course we do this. Of course we ask for more, or of course we ask often. Of course we ask unapologetically and of course we are grateful. Of course we show the outcomes. Of course, right, and remember, the unsubscribe button and the unfollow button are there for a reason. People are allowed to use it. You know it's okay, you can use it. Instead, I want you to focus at least 90%, but I would prefer 100% of your time thinking about the first group, the people who are like I want to be here supporting your mission. I care about what you do and I'm glad you asked. I'm glad you asked.

One of our students recently shared that for her campaign, her top donor had already shown up and given and she was so grateful and she sent out a following I think it was an email to her list saying you know, we're not done yet. We didn't reach our goal, we're not done yet, and this donor stepped up and made a second gift. She was like I was blown away. She just didn't expect that. That was the tipping point, the catalyst, because her thought was well, they've already given, that's their big gift, it's done Right. Instead of being like they've already given and here they are giving more because life is abundant, because they want to, because they can. Right. Can you imagine if she just hadn't sent that email? You know, and this was just a mass email, so this was in a direct email, right? This is what I see again and again. This is why more is more need more emails.

15:37

How can you apply this to your social? How can you play this to your organic marketing, right? How can you apply this to your outreach? Think about the people who would be a yes if you just pitched them an opportunity to join your social street team, to join your digital ambassador program, to make a second gift, to join your monthly giving program. Right? People focus on the people who would be a yes, not the people who would be a no. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, our brain just gets totally freaked out and we focus on the people who are gonna have their feathers ruffled right. Focus on the people who, by the way, everybody signed up for your list in the first place. They made the donation in the first place. They became a member in the first place. So give them the thing that they want right. Focus on them. Focus on the yeses. Send the text Book, the coffee, pitch the program or service. Launch the community. Invite them to be a street teamer. They're literally waiting for you to do that.

The for-profit brands and businesses making millions of dollars are doing this. They still have loyal customers and clients. It's not like they're making money and people are peo'd. You know they're making money and they're growing their mission. Bombus is always my favorite example of this. I'm not mad at Bombus for sending me a bunch of emails about buying their socks right. They have a beautiful give-back program. They make great socks and if they launch a new campaign with a new colorway of socks, cool.

17:05

I'm never annoyed. When they show up at my inbox three times a week, I'm just not. It doesn't bother me. In fact, I'm not even thinking about them, right? Unless it's for me that day If I'm like, oh yeah, let me check out the sale, I don't really have a negative connotation. I'm only like how is my interest level right? So focus on the people who are like yeah, I signed up to be here. If I'm not in the mood to take action today, that's okay, but I'm staying here. I'll focus on the people who you know, who will feel like that, that inner, mean, mean, dialogue. You have the people who feel like, will feel like you're nagging and hounding and things like that. So we're going to focus on the positive at least 90% of the time. Okay, if the little little chatter comes in 10% of the time, fine, you can edge your way up on there, make invitations, make asks.

What is the takeaway from today? Think about your repeat customers, your repeat donors, your forgotten prospects, the people you're like oh yeah, I should send them an email. I should ask them to blank right the forgotten people, the recurring people, the people who are monthly, but you've decided that's their ceiling. What if none of that was true? Okay, focus on them. They are waiting. They're literally waiting. You're going to email them, you're going to call them today. You're going to send them a DM Like think about what that piece looks like for you. Think about who would be a heck. Yes, and go, make some connections. I'll see you next time. Like what you're hearing and want to take this to the next level. I want to invite you to go to purposeandprofitclub to watch my free class. In there I will tell you the number one thing, that's keeping your nonprofit or social impact business stock, and what to do instead. Go to purposeandprofitclub.

You Get To Have Purpose And Profit. I’ll Show You How.

 
 
PodcastChristina Edwardspurpose and profit, marketing, entrepreneurship, purpose driven, nonprofit, social impact, mindset, productivityComment