Mobile marketing for fundraising has quickly grown into a major channel for donations. Most mobile programs are no more than 2 years old, so if you were an early adopter and have a program over a year or so old, consider yourself  old hat. Let’s start off with a few statistics that demonstrate the explosive growth of this medium:

• $350,000 raised in 2008
• $2,000,000 raised in 2009
• $35,000,000 raised by the Red Cross for Haiti in 2010 alone

The kind of growth we’re seeing here isn’t linear. It is exponential and by large orders of magnitude. The take away here is that mobile fundraising is rocketing forward in terms of total dollars being raised and will soon be on par with other channels.

Ok, so hopefully with those stats alone your interest is peaked. If you are interested in getting a mobile marketing program off the ground here are a few things you need to know:

Don’t use the Red Cross as your mobile marketing model.
Although the Red Cross is a good indication of what is possible, the massive influx of donations was actually driven by wide scale mass media promotion via every major TV station and almost every popular social media channel. It would be nice if every campaign you ran had that kind of coverage but the odds of that are very low… We sat down with the company who ran the Red Cross’s mobile program and the lucrative deals struck with cell phone companies to funnel money from on file bills is simply not available to other organizations. Or rather you could with huge percentages taken out.

Do include mobile giving options across all of your marketing materials.
With the minimal space requirements needed for mobile giving programs, it makes sense that the plug should be included across all of your fundraising channels and content streams. Place the call to action in your emails, on your homepage and even your direct mail programs. Most importantly, make sure you offer mobile giving at any live events.

Focus on compelling content streams.
Ultimately, the goal is to develop a double opt in list of people wanting content from your organization. If people give you that trust, capitalize on it by offering quality content. This means that your mobile messaging program absolutely cannot consist of only requests for donations. No one wants their phone spammed but many people do want to know the latest information on causes they care about. Be that source of content.

Keep in touch.
Your mobile program must have a regular content schedule (like all of your other channels). If your plan is to send 1 message out every 3 months, you will quickly find that people have forgotten that they opted in and your churn rate will skyrocket. As with everything in donor management, you are trying to build a relationship.

Plan for scale.
In our research, we’ve found that building your list and setting up the program initially is actually a low to fair cost when compared to email programs or web development. Even mobile applications can be developed at reasonable costs despite the fact that it is a cutting edge medium. The transmission costs once you get rolling however can be tricky. Some vendors we reviewed charged a nominal $.03 per message which is competitive. However, multiplying that out over a large list can make distribution costs rise. Plan ahead so you are not crippled by your own success.

Start now.
Chances are that in your specific area of fundraising, many of your competitors have not embraced this new tool. Capitalize on this fact by getting ahead of the curve. Kick off even a small program, do some tests and figure out what works the move ahead. If you spend all year deciding you will miss the boat.

The short and sweet conclusions is that people are ready to interact with organizations via mobile and explosive growth is occurring with mobile fundraising. is7 has been analyzing the market trends, researching vendors and developing strategies for mobile fundraising geared to NPO’s of all sizes. If you’d like more information or are interested in us consulting with you on your mobile initiatives please contact us.

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Tags: analysis, analytics, cell phone, cell phone fundraising, cell phone marketing, compelling content, content, donations, donor management, donors, fundraising, Haiti, is7, low cost, market trends, marketing, mobile, mobile applications, mobile fundraising, Mobile Marketing, non-profit, nonprofit, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit marketing, NPO, Red Cross, relationship

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