The Wildlife Conservation Society is leading the pack (pun intended) at using technology to connect more deeply with their constituents. Here are 5 things they did to improve engagement:
1. Remove data silos so you can engage people the way they want to engage
Avoid a scenario where the “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.” Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) used Salesforce to get a 360-degree view of each constituent.
When you remove data silos, you can engage with people the way they want to. Jonathan Palmer, Executive Director of Strategic Technology at the Wildlife Conservation Society, shares:
“There are so many ways constituents can engage with WCS: visit the zoo, sign a petition, make donations, make a post on Facebook. And, you know, we’ve always had these anecdotes about how people are touching our organization in different ways or how, how families are touching the organization in different ways. But only with Salesforce have we actually been able to bring that together into one place and understand, ‘Wow, this person is, is not just a one-off visitor to our organization but this one is, this person is deeply engaged in our organization,’ or this family cares so much about conservation that they’re all supporting our mission.’ ”
Make sure you can use technology to help your staff see the big picture about your constituents!
2. Personalize, personalize, personalize!
Never send an email blast with the same content to your entire database.
Debbie Schneiderman, Executive Director of Customer Relationship and Channel Marketing, shares:
“We’re not cookie-cutter managing two million relationships. We are able to put in place flags and journeys that are very specific to the reasons that the customer wants to connect with WCS. So, maybe they’re a zoo goer who wants to know more about our conservation work. Or maybe they don’t, maybe they just want to know what’s happening at other zoos. We can create profiles and journeys that take them on an individualized path. That helps them uncover their relationship with wildlife in a very personal way.”
Use technology to engage your constituents in the issues that they care about and drive them to take action. Make sure that you can tailor content to what your constituents care about.
3. Demonstrate the impact that your constituents can have by taking action
Jan Kaderly, Vice President of Public Engagement and Digital Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society, explained that in the old days, WCS was the actor and asked donors to support their work on the ground to save wildlife. While that’s still important, they now also recognize that conservation in the face of global systemic threats to wildlife demands a systemic and global response. So WCS is empowering millions of people, around the world, to be able to take action at a moment’s notice, to impact policy and conservation action.
We need to mobilize people quickly. Thanks to fast actions they could take with Marketing Cloud technology and engaging 100,000 constituents, WCS was able to re-route a highway in Nigeria within six weeks. And it was going to cut right through a mountain gorilla habitat!
4. Pick a partner that cares
Your technology partner should also care about the issues you care about.
You should be able to use tools like artificial intelligence to have predictive models that can say, “what does this constituent want to do next?” (Which comes back to personalize, personalize personalize.) Predictive models for nonprofit fundraising and marketing can help you customize content that’s tailored to your supporters. One example of this is Einstein Analytics with Salesforce for nonprofits. (For more on this, see this blog about donor engagement and fundraising emails that write themselves.)
5. Wow constituents with customer service – on any channel!
You should be able to go from a social media complaint to a customer support request seamlessly. With Salesforce Service Cloud, the WCS customer care team can be connected to social media and resolve constituents’ questions and concerns quickly. And great relationships with your constituents means that then your customer service team can connect the dots for fundraising and go from a complaint to a “wow” experience and deeper engagement.
Global issues need technology to help scale. Your nonprofit deserves the best tools to advance your mission. For more about how to put this all into practice, here’s a helpful e-book on how to overcome 3 common nonprofit marketing challenges.