Hosting live events is a crucial part of the success of your organization. Events can be important for a variety of reasons including fundraising, outreach, and raising awareness. There are so many moving pieces involved in creating a great event, but perhaps one of the most important is marketing your event to prospective attendees. After all, an event is nothing without attendees!

Luckily, event technology is capable of aiding and streamlining all of your event marketing. Bring in more attendees by letting your event technology help you:

1. Promote your event online
2. Track and use your attendee data
3. Communicate with attendees early and often
4. Use configurable marketing software
5. Raise awareness for your organization’s mission

Don’t shy away from adopting new technology trends as you plan and execute your next event. Marketing tools will ensure you see your attendee numbers growing steadily.

Let’s get started!

1. Promote your event online

The majority of people get their news straight from their phones. It’s a huge part of how we interact with the world today. Therefore, your organization should take advantage of any and all opportunities to promote your event online. Your organization’s website and social media pages, in particular, are crucial to the success of your event marketing.

To ensure everyone has easy access to information about your event, create a dedicated page on your website for it, including:

• The time/date of the event
• The event’s location
• The purpose of your event
• Why your event is important

If your events require a significant investment of time and resources to plan, it’s probably a good idea to use event-specific tools. Using digital marketing platforms designed for nonprofits will let you easily create campaign and event microsites that include embedded donation tools.

Remember, an effective website is only useful if people actually visit the site. Approximately 25% of traffic to your site’s ticketing and registration sites comes from social media. This avenue cannot be overlooked, so your organization should plan an effective social media strategy and track its engagement to ensure your online promotion is a success.

2. Track and use your attendee data

The complexities of data management have been known to be the downfall of many event planning teams. The data can easily become overwhelming if not properly maintained and managed. Make sure you are tracking and recording key attendee data so that you can more accurately appeal to individuals for future events.

People in your community or space attend your events because they support your cause, want to learn from your insights, or are simply interested in the event for personal reasons. If you want to guarantee that your invitees will actually be interested in attending your next event, the best place to start is in your list of past attendees.

Foster deeper engagement by establishing relationships with existing supporters or contacts and encouraging them to maintain their involvement in your organization. You can track your data in a constituent relationship manager, or CRM, to ensure the volume of your data does not result in an administrative slow-down at your organization.

3. Communicate with attendees early and often

As is the case with any fundraising or promotional effort, communication is key! Your organization should start contacting potential attendees well in advance of the event itself to increase the likelihood that your event gains traction. The best way to communicate with your attendees is via email— around 78% of event coordinators credit email marketing as their most effective marketing tactic.

Use your organization’s digital marketing tools to design an email campaign. You should be able to:

• Create and schedule your email campaign
• Segment your recipient list
• Receive detailed analytics reports about your campaign

Don’t let your nonprofit be held back by short-sighted communication strategies. Reach out to attendees frequently to remind them about your event. Motivate your attendees by impressing upon them the importance of supporting your organization.

4. Use configurable marketing software

If you want more people to come to your event, your organization needs to be organized and prepared to take tackle it from all sides. This means you should be equipped with all the tools you need to host and market your event beforehand.

Use configurable marketing software that is specifically tailored to the needs of your organization to ensure you are well-prepared.

At DNL OmniMedia, our experience is mostly in offering Blackbaud consulting services to nonprofits that need customized tech solutions. We recommend to clients (and to any organization!) to always look for configurable software or integrations. Adding capabilities in a way that won’t complicate your data management is the key to growing your toolkit sustainably.

5. Raise awareness for your organization’s mission

The best way to appeal to attendees is to spread the word about your organization’s mission and vision for your community. With all the moving parts of event planning, it can be easy to forget about simply communicating your organization’s mission or the core purpose of the event.

However, don’t forget the importance of personal endorsements from community members. Peer-to-peer fundraising allows individuals to share your organization’s information with their personal networks. Most people will be more likely to support an event or fundraiser if a friend or family member personally recommends it to them.

In the for-profit space, this is analogous to ‘social proof’, like online reviews and social media engagement. Look for ways to get actual customers, supporters, and industry experts involved online in organic ways. This will help to seriously increase your visibility.

Not only can these strategies provide a great boost for your broader efforts, but it will expose more people to your organization and as a result, help you promote your particular event.

Marketing an event successfully can often seem like an insurmountable obstacle, but it doesn’t have to be! Marketing technology has the power to greatly enhance the success of your organization’s event and entice more attendees. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to drawing a crowd.

The post Marketing Your Nonprofit Event: 5 Tech Tips to Draw a Crowd appeared first on Method.

In today’s competitive philanthropic environment, these events must be well-executed to produce maximum results.

The right planning, marketing, and event management tools help ensure event success, but the right strategies must be in place for the plan to go off without a hitch. Here are three foolproof strategies for planning top-notch fundraising events.

1. For best results, start planning early

The phrase ‘plan early and often’ rings true in the nonprofit world for good reason. When it comes to planning charity events and fundraisers, there are so many moving parts that it can be hard to keep everything straight.

Start planning your fundraising event at least 3-6 months out to give you and your team enough time to get organized and excel. This also gives your donors time to plan for your event.

To get ahead of crunch time, complete as many tasks as possible as early as possible, including:

• Identifying and segmenting your donor and supporter list
• Dealing with event logistics and planning for the day of the event
• Organizing employees and volunteers
• Running your financial and non-financial event goals by your board

While planning early is a best practice for any kind of fundraising event, it’s especially critical for success when events and campaigns are centered around specific days, like Giving Tuesday.

2. Know how to connect with your target audience

Everyone loves a fundraiser, but the only way to get people there is to invite them — preferably with a creative and unique invitation idea. In the world of fundraising events, marketing effectively to your supporters and donors is important for two reasons:

1. It ensures that people register for and attend your event.
2. It drives attendees to donate time or resources to your cause.

Let’s look at these communication channels a little further.

Registering and engaging with attendees

Registering people for an event can be a nightmare without the right tools. However, there are countless event registration platforms out there with endless features.

To take the guesswork out of event registration, look for a few baseline must-haves in your registration technology:

• The ability for attendees to customize ticket sales, packages, and individual donations with ease
• A sponsor-specific registration page that can be easily customized
• Easy check-in functionality for your event team and attendees
• Back-end organization capabilities for seating arrangements, promotional activities, financial data, and more

Reaching out and engaging with attendees also requires a strong donor management platform to hold all relevant donor contact and outreach details. Your team can leverage a nonprofit CRM solution to easily contact new and returning donors and spread the word about your upcoming event.

Encouraging donations

Once the event is in motion, it’s time to maximize donations. Carefully explain to your supporters how your online auction site works. Additionally, you should keep your supporters updated on the status of auction items throughout the entire auction time period. Explore the OneCause online charity auction guide for more information about the steps you should take to ensure a smooth user experience.

When hosting a fundraising event, the best way to attract donations is to have clear call-to-actions (CTAs) on your website and in your social and email communications, as well as clear call-outs on your event registration page and even on the tables at your event. This way, people can easily add a donation during registration, or donate in real-time during your event with a Text2Give solution.

3. Create a seamless omnichannel experience

The best fundraising events are the ones attendees reminisce about for days or weeks after the event concludes. This means creating a true omnichannel campaign around your event instead of a simple one-and-done approach.

While the word ‘omnichannel’ is most closely associated with marketing campaigns, the concept also rings true for nonprofit teams looking to spread their message to a wider audience.

For your next fundraising event, create an omnichannel experience for attendees before, during, and after your event.

Before:

• Set up social media accounts specific to your event, as well as an event microsite with all relevant information.
• Include these social and web links in every single promotional email or direct mail communication you send.
• If you are hosting a charity auction, open up your online auction site a week or two in advance so attendees can start bidding on items early.

During:

• Ask event attendees to include your event hashtag in any social posts they share from your event.
• Hire a videographer or professional photographer to capture content for a post-event production.
• Provide instructions for text donations during your event to truly intertwine the in-person and online elements of a modern fundraiser.

After:

• Send a thoughtful follow-up email to all attendees and single out high-profile donors or sponsors.
• Include some videos or pictures from your event for a personal touch.
• Think about extending the time period on some high-ticket auction items for even more impact down the road.
• Include CTAs to donate on all follow-up communication to keep your charity top-of-mind.

Elevate your fundraising with technology

From nonprofit-specific CRM platforms to innovative text-to-donate solutions, the incredible growth in technology has opened doors to nonprofits that were previously reserved for other forward-thinking organizations.

To truly take your next fundraising event to the next level, you must be willing to invest the time and resources necessary into taking your event online, at all stages of the planning process.

The post 3 Strategies to Plan Top-Notch Fundraising Events appeared first on Method.