Tag Archives: SMS Marketing

Text to donate

How often do you contact your donors?

Text to donate
Text to donate

With all the hype about GDPR and opting in vs opting out, many charities refrain from communicating with their donors and supporters. We believe it is essential to stay in contact with those who give to your cause, to keep them in the loop about how their donations help, what projects you are working on, upcoming events and much more.

Automated updates

Our system is designed to allow you to send your donors on an SMS journey, you can begin with a Single Giving campaign with consent enabled to gather opt-ins and from this, use our outbound SMS tool to keep in contact with them. Also, with having consent enabled on your campaign, you can also make use of our “extra response SMS” tool which allows automated texts to be sent to your opt-in donors weekly, monthly or at a delay of your choice.

When someone opts into future contact by your charity using InstaGiv’s SMS services, they are always sent a text in response, to acknowledge their consent preference and to give them the opportunity to opt-out again.

Recorded and trackable

All SMS correspondence between any mobile and your text campaigns with InstaGiv are fully recorded and stored on your account within the mobile history section; this information is stored for the benefit of the charity should they ever need this traceability information, and acts as an additional safety net. Our system has the intelligence to block any mobile number from receiving any SMS’ from you if they have opted out at any time post opting in.

When someone opts in, and their mobile number is on a recipient list for you to use within outbound SMS, if any mobile number, later on, opts out again, you do not need to scan through lists upon lists to remove their mobile number.

85% of people prefer SMS

From a recent survey carried out, we discovered that over 85% of people prefer SMS communication over phone call, I suppose it is because people do not need to take much time out of their day to read and respond to a text message, however an information call can take up to 30 minutes on some occasions.

From some client research, we can also see a trend in the times of outbound SMS’ being scheduled; most clients tend to send or schedule their sends for the late evening time after 6 pm.
At this time, most people are on the tube, trains, bus or at home, so they have time to check their phones.

Keeping in contact with your donors has never been easier, let us know if you would like one of our friendly advisors to give you a 1:1 demo.

Written by Caitriona McCarry
Client Accounts

SMS Marketing

5 reasons why you should be using SMS marketing over Email

SMS Marketing
SMS Marketing

Email is usually the medium of choice for marketing. Most people find that they receive a couple of marketing emails daily and ignore quite a few of them. Or they spend their lifetime sitting in an inbox, with the ‘intention’ of being followed up on. But that never really happens.

SMS, on the other hand, remains a much more intimate way of getting in front of your target audience. It’s usually a quick message from a friend or family member. With more and more people using their smartphones for their everyday business, people tend to look at their phones much more than they will look at their emails.

SMS marketing campaigns have increasingly become a quick and cost-effective marketing platform. And when you look at how audiences respond to SMS marketing, you may be surprised to see how well it competes with email. Let’s look at some of the main advantages of an SMS marketing campaign, compared to an email marketing campaign.

SMS can reach more people than any other platform

Email can reach anyone with an internet connection, but what about those who don’t have access to it? Of the 7.5 billion people in the world, less than half, which is around 3.7 billion have access to the world wide web.

Mobile phones are a very different story.

According to GSMA real-time intelligence data, there are now over 9.01 Billion mobile connections worldwide, which surpasses the current world population of 7.67 Billion implied by UN digital analyst estimates.

Just think about it, people may have one or two mobile phones and generally use them every day. It’s not uncommon on the other hand for people to have a couple of email addresses, some of which are rarely used. They might use just one regularly, meaning your marketing messages may be getting lost in transmission.

Mobile phone figure stats
Mobile phone figure stats

Higher open rates for SMS marketing

Common sense can tell you that people are more likely to open an SMS than an email. According to a new research study, Americans check their phones an average of 80 times a day while on vacation, with some checking their screen more than 300 times each day.

Opening your inbox and finding five or six marketing emails can make you unlikely to click any, especially if you have lots of other emails coming in for other reasons.

Email marketing can prove difficult when people receive so many emails. An SMS, on the other hand, is so short that most people will take the time to read it. Recent research showed that the average open rate in the UK for emails was just under 25% while estimates for SMS marketing in recent years state that as many as 98% of phone owners open an SMS message, usually within a few minutes of receiving it.

Higher click-through rates for SMS

The data also shows a much higher click-through rate for SMS messages compared to emails. The most recent research shows that email marketing tends to generate a click-through rate of around 4.2%, compared to 36% for SMS messages. When you work that out, that means around one in every 25 people will click-through when they get an email, compared to one in three for an SMS. SMS is a much more effective way of driving potential customers towards your website.

Quality Over Quantity

As people’s email inboxes take in more and more messages for all angles, the chances of your email sitting there unnoticed are quite high. This means that email marketers tend to send quite a lot of emails, hoping to eventually catch the attention of their target with one or two.

For SMS, you know the open rate and click-through rate is high, so you have to work on crafting one or two good messages. That’s simple too as you only have a small number of characters to fill. You just put the most important information in your text and get right to the point straight away. Campaigns that adopt SMs marketing often prove to be much cheaper than email marketing campaigns.

SMS is Cheaper

It’s a much cheaper medium, as you are sending out fewer campaigns. It should also be more cost-effective, as a high click-through rate should lead to some sales. This means the SMS campaign should soon pay for itself.

They also take much less time to create. You don’t need to worry as much about the design as in an email. You also don’t have to worry about how it will appear on different devices. InstaGiv can help your charity create SMS marketing campaigns that work. We work with more than 300 charities to help boost their fundraising with SMS. To find out more, check out our Services page or Contact Us.

Why are charities using text-to-donate?

I am sure you often wonder when you’re working within your charity or fundraising role, what is the best way to go with your next campaigns? Or why are charities starting to use SMS donations more and more now?

We have put together a few of our main thoughts as to why charities may choose text-giving over other methods, or else to add to their list of donation collection methods.

User-friendly

Our first thought is that text-to-give is incredibly user-friendly. There are no forms, fuss or verification checks required. The donor simply texts their chosen charities “keyword” to the 5 digit shortcodes and a donation is made.

People don’t often like to partake in anything that takes up too much of their time or requires long-haul forms. It is also user-friendly for the charity. Text campaigns can be created and inactivated in a matter of minutes. This helps to reach deadlines that little bit easier.

Quick and Easy

SMS Giving is also quick and easy to do. It takes around 60 seconds or less to send a donation by text. If someone wanted to give a charitable donation without much effort – SMS is the answer.

Most people within the UK today either own or have access to a mobile phone, therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to make a donation. If you are at an event with no change in your pocket, no problem – you probably will most likely have your phone with you so the donation can be made easily through your phone. Donations can be as little as £1 too.

Detailed reporting on progress

Reporting is so important when it comes to SMS fundraising, you need to be able to monitor the progress and measure the success of your campaigns.

Mobile Fundraising and Engagement with InstaGiv has a realm of various reporting functions from your inbound campaign report, consent and opt-in report, Gift Aid collection report and much more.

Our regular giving reporting displays everything from the number of subscriptions per month, number of new sign-ups, gross donations per donation, number of skips and stops, retention percentages and much more. This is essential and is readily available with InstaGiv campaigns.

These are just to name a few; the reasons are endless as to why charities continue to choose SMS giving as part of their fundraising efforts. Other thoughts we had include:

  • It’s cost-effective
  • Has a fast turnaround
  • Works in real time
  • It can be accessed 24/7 among lots of other benefits

We hope you enjoyed this week’s blog if you have any thoughts you would like us to focus on we would be happy to hear them. Reach out to us at help@instagiv.com.

More from instaGiv

Top Tips for your SMS Campaigns

Charities and Social Media

The Growth of SMS 

 

SMS comps

Top Tips for your SMS Campaigns

We have brainstormed and came up with our top four recommended tips for your SMS campaigns. These tips will help your charity in the long run between gaining an extra 25p per pound donated by adding Gift Aid, to increasing your supporter base by enabling consent and gathering opt-ins.

First things first…

Customise your Response Message

Grab the fact that you get to create your own response message by the horns. The bounce back SMS goes straight to the donor’s handset after a donation is made, this is in place to allow you to thank your donors, you get 160 characters to use so we try to encourage our clients to use up this space wisely. Perhaps also say something like “check out how your donations help”, with a URL to your website, this, in turn, will help drive more direct traffic to your charity’s website. Remember, people tend to read and digest the contents on an SMS received to their phone.

Add Channels

Adding channels to your campaigns brings the benefit of knowing which of your marketing channels are working best for you. You have a number for every marketing channel that you have your text code and campaign advertised. Allowing you to analyse your inbound report and view which channel is reaching the biggest audience and drawing in the most donations. If you are spending your budget on paid ads or expensive advertising, channels are perfect for measuring success.

Enable Gift Aid

Our Gift Aid tool allows you to collect names and addresses from your donors. We have two GA collection methods for you to choose from, both of which records and stores all declarations on your platform. You can then view down downloads this information at any time to send to the HMRC for processing. Enabling Gift aid is recommended as you can claim an extra 25% per one pound that is donated to your charity.

Enable Consent

Add the consent feature to your campaigns, this is where you can gather opt-ins from your donors and supporters. InstaGiv has two methods that you can choose from; Implicit and Explicit. With both, all consent records and stored on your platform where you can easily view and download them. Consent is user-friendly and straight forward, for example, rather than having your donor’s text KEYWORD to donate, ask them to text KEYWORD, YES to donate and opt-in- simples!

Social media for charities

Charities and Social Media

Almost all businesses, organisations, charities and not for profits have a social media presence, why is this? Well because the likes of Facebook has 2.3 billion users, meaning social media is one of the easiest and direct methods of promoting your cause and reaching out to your supporters.

It’s not that easy though, you need a following of supporters who are legitimately interested first, which can be somewhat difficult to build.

To enhance the engagement and conversation on your social channels, it may be a good idea to have cause-related content.

Content

Have content that encourages people to stop scrolling through their feed and stop at your post. Have something engaging, something that is eye-catching and encouraging people to comment or share, which is more likely to spark a discussion among your supporters.

Having content that drives engagement will also give your charity the opportunity to gain feedback, as many people tend to put their thoughts and opinions into the comments section below a post.

Credibility

Ensure your social profiles are credible, when someone visits your page for the first time, they are most likely going to form an opinion or thought instantly, first impressions are everything and all that! So, make sure you have got your page fully up to date, giving visitors an insight into the hard work you do to fight your cause. The use of visuals also ways work a treat – people love images and videos over long reams of paragraphs.

Increasing your Following

Everyone knows how difficult it is to increase your followers and supporters on social media. Engage in conversations and posts related to your cause or sector, this can be sort of like “online networking” as such.

Lastly and most importantly, promote, advertise and scream from the rooftops as much as possible. Try to get your cause into the limelight at every possible opportunity. Have your social icons on everything you do, all merchandise, email footers, advertising materials and so on.

There was a program on BBC 1 NI last night called “The Search”, it was actively advertised and promoted over social media the days leading up to it. The program was about missing people in Northern Ireland. This show zoomed in on the work carried out by the CRS – Community Rescue Service. A charity that is run entirely by volunteers. This was an eye-opener into the work that this cause and these people do, which is all voluntary.

It had encouraged me to donate as well as look into how I sign-up or help to be a part of their rescue team.

A lot can be done when actively promoting your cause as widely and as much as possible.

Check out our latest blog post on key dates for your diary, and you could use some of these in your upcoming social media strategy.

SMS marketing

The Growth of SMS

It’s no surprise that SMS has grown significantly over the last number of years with the massive growth of technology and smart phones.

Almost everyone owns or has access to a mobile device of some description. For many of us, our phone is like an extension of our hand – we physically could not live without it! (I know I couldn’t).

SMS is the one sure way to get your message across effectively. Almost all texts received to a handset, have an open rate of 100%.

We wanted to find out for ourselves

An online survey was recently carried out by our team, with participants across the age ranges of 22-50+ on the use of SMS and mobile technologies.

We will be creating an e-guide will all of our stats collated together and analysed to give an insight into the world of SMS and peoples preferences.

SMS is actively used by many businesses and charities to market their message across to their audiences.
I remember when I first started to receive such communications from businesses.

It was from my dentist, reminding me of the date and time of my upcoming appointment. I instantly thought to myself how handy that was! If you’re like me, you often forget things and are trying to organise yourself at the last minute, so this reminder text was perfect.

Why use SMS as means of communication or marketing?

The list of reasons why is endless but to name a few;

  • Its personal
    The recipient will open and read the text
    There is no junk/spam box on a mobile phone
    Texts are short, sweet and to the point
    It doesn’t cost a lot and is very effective

SMS within business

Text messaging in the business sector is commonly used for brand awareness, offer discounts, reminders, events, lead generation and notifications.

The charity or not-for-profit sector most commonly uses outbound for;

  • Support for petition
    Rallies for last minute disaster appeals
    Event sup ups
    Gathering opt-ins
    Gathering contact details
    Donation requests
    Advocacy
    Cause awareness

SMs is a great all-round tool for anyone wanting to raise either cause or brand awareness and for those who want to get their message out there instantly.
Our upcoming e-guide will outline SMS in a more detailed fashion, giving you the inspiration to go for it.

Use PSMS in a broadcast or DRTV appeal

Premium SMS
Premium SMS

Trying to get your supporters to actively engage and donate on a regular basis can be tricky – especially heading into the new year. A great way to get in front of them at the right time is with Premium SMS (PSMS).

You can use PSMS in a broadcast outbound text, DRTV appeal, social event or any type of fundraising activity.

Last minute crisis

Sometimes things pop up last minute or unannounced, like an unfortunate incident. This could result in a disaster appeal and you may choose to send a broadcast SMS to gather donations or actively advertise your text code as widespread as possible, to raise awareness and ask for donations.

In terms of the outbound SMS, if you have a list of recipients or a database of opted-in supporters gathered from using our consent feature. You can use these to send an urgent text asking them to reply with one of your donation keywords, to give to your cause. You can use this as a single one-off donation, or to subscribe your supporters to regular giving which is monthly gifts.

To use PSMS as a standard text-to-donate campaign it is as simple as creating your text code, customising your campaign and advertising it to your supporter base. The journey is very straightforward as we like to focus firmly on the donor experience.

Keyword

Texting a donation is as simple as texting a KEYWORD to 70###. While we have fixed price points for all our donation keywords, we also offer our clients the full flexibility of giving their donors the option to give more or less than the default amount, without having to create additional keywords and campaigns.

All donations and responses to outbound texts are recorded on your InstaGiv platform. You can view your inbound report which captures the finest of details right down to the donation amount, date and time and content of inbound texts.

Our regular giving reporting is something we often get praised on also, keeping tabs on donor retention can be somewhat exhausting and hard to do, with our regular reporting we make it so much easier for fundraisers. Our system is equipped to capture and record data right from the number of sign-ups per month, repeat donations, number of SKIP/STOPS per month, cumulative retention statistics and much more.

Quick turnaround

Our turnaround time is very quick. We aim to have all new requests actioned and set up within the same working day. Often enough, we can do this very soon after the request or registration is received.

Find out more information

If you’d like to find out any more information on PSMS, shortcodes, a member of our team would be more than happy to talk you through the process. Fill in the form on our contact page and we will be in touch as soon as possible.

Alternatively, please contact us directly on 028 7087 8220 or email us at help@instagiv.com.

Instagiv
Instagiv

 

Gift Aid

Is your charity making the most of Gift Aid?

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What is Gift Aid?

Gift Aid gives charities the opportunity to get an additional 25% for each £1 donated by their supporters.

Traditionally, declarations were collected via forms, with quite a lot of paperwork involved. Nowadays, it is friction-less, efficient and with a much faster turnaround.

Gift Ait is one of the most important tax reliefs for charities and it’s worth over £1.2 million to the charity sector every year, according to HMRC.

Are you promoting your donors?

Research from HMRC shows that people respond the most when they are prompted to include Gift Aid in their donation. They also responded well when they are told exactly how much was claimed the year previous and what the money went to.

You must be transparent with your donors and tell them exactly how this money is spent. Explain what more could be done if everyone claimed it on their donations.

You also need to ensure your volunteers, and supporters fully understand what the Gift Aid system is and the benefits of it. HMRC have also stated that people who understand Gift Aid are more likely to claim it when donating.

Make the right claims

Education is so important when it comes to Gift Aid. You want to make sure your employees or volunteers are explaining it fully to your donors and supporters in order to eliminate any flawed claims.  It is estimated that around £45 million is made in mistaken claims every year – more than £15 million lost due to fraud.

To ensure you are keeping on top of all your donations, regular audits and internal checks are the best practice. You should also contact long-standing donors who claim gift Aid to ensure they are still paying tax.

How can InstaGiv help you?

We have modernised the way you manage your Gift Aid from your supporters, by solely capturing it with SMS. This integrated system is completely automated, that reports in a user-friendly manner to successfully make your Gift Aid claim with HMRC.

There are two ways to capture it, via SMS or via a web form. You can select which one you prefer in the setup of your campaign in the overview area.

For both methods, the Gift Aid ask is sent via SMS at a delay after the supporter receives their thank your response message. Supporters reply to the text with their details, and for the web form method, supporters click the URL and complete the form.

The Gift Aid ask is sent out at a delay, for example, 5 minutes after your donors receive the thank-you response message. Gift Aid can be claimed on future donations and those made in the past four years.

Addresses are captured and stored in a dedicated area of your InstaGiv dashboard, where you can easily download all declarations, in preparations for processing.

Our form has been approved by the HMRC and is fully compliant. Both the form and the SMS capture all details needed and has the appropriate legal terminology.

Book a demo today

To find out more, request a demo or a call-back today. One of our friendly team members will go over everything in more detail with you.

Alternatively, for more information on this additional guidance on licencing, please contact us at any time on 028 7087 8220 or email us at help@instagiv.com.

Instagiv
Instagiv
Halloween fundraiser ideas

Halloween Fundraising Ideas

Halloween is fast approaching and there is no time like the present to organise a festive fundraiser. Halloween gives the perfect backdrop for any kind of party or event. Why not spice up your spooky get-together and raise some money for charity too.

To get your creative juices flowing, we’ve come up with 5 great fundraiser ideas. Whether it’s in work or just for fun, you could organise a ghostly gathering this Halloween for a good cause.

Halloween
Halloween
  1. Pumpkin Carving Competition

This is something we’re having in our own offices and I cannot wait. My carving skills are next-level and I think I have a great chance of coming in 1st place.

Get your work colleagues together and gather up your pumpkins and have some fun. Donations can come in the form of an entry fee.

  1. Spooky Sponsored Walk

A well-organised run or walk in your local town is a fantastic way to get everyone together and raise as much money as possible. If you have the funds, you can give out medals to those who cross the 5K finish line.

Again, you can ask people to donate a certain amount to enter the race and ask them to raise their own sponsorship funds a week prior to the event.

  1. Dunking for Apples

If you host a Halloween party every year, why not make it exciting and have a ‘Dunking for Apples’ competition this year. You could ask people to donate for every dunk and raise much-needed funds really quickly.

  1. Pumpkin Pie Bake Off

Forget about the Great British Bake-off, this year it’s all about the Pumpkin Pie Bake Off. Get your friends together and have some fun in the kitchen. After you’ve carved your spooky Halloween decoration, you can use the contents to make a tasty (or not so tasty) treat. The winning pie can win a prize!

  1. Bonfire event

This one might be a bit harder and will only work if you have the space and health and safety for it. A festive bonfire event with sparklers and fireworks could be the event-of-the-year. You could ask your local council are they doing anything for the Halloween holidays and suggest they partner up with a local charity to raise some funds while doing so.

InstaGiv

Using the different holidays throughout the year is always a wonderful way to help promote your cause, by launching a fundraising campaign. At InstaGiv, it is around this time of year that all the different holiday friendly keyword requests start to come in, recently we have had some of our clients request new campaign keywords such as; scary, fright, Halloween, ghost, creepy, Santa, merry, Christmas and much more.

Why are they doing this? Well because SMS is the quickest most effective and user-friendly method of collecting donations. It beats standing out in the freezing wintry weather with collection buckets. In addition to that, each donor gets an instant “thank you” response message, this is fully customisable to the charity, allowing you to increase engagement with your donors further by perhaps, inserting a link into the response message or asking them to opt-in to hear more about your cause.

Book a Demo today

To find out more, request a demo or a call-back today. One of our friendly team members will go over everything in more detail with you.

 

New Year, New Ideas at instaGiv

Start the new year right with instaGiv's Text Giving Products

Start 2018 Right with instaGiv’s Text Giving Products

Any regrets of Christmas parties or Christmas overindulgence is fading and people everywhere are starting 2018 with earnest resolutions. It’s a great time to think about how to boost your charity’s donations.

SMS Marketing could be just the thing. It was predicted recently that it will become very big in 2018.

The State of SMS report revealed that 93% of people in the UK now own a mobile phone and if sent a text message, 98% of them will read it by the end of the day.

The report also said that around 50% of companies use SMS Marketing at the moment. This is expected to continue to grow, reaching as high as 92% by the end of 2018.

Why not get ahead of your competition by sorting out your SMS Marketing with instaGiv’s range of Text Giving Products?

Text Giving Products – Single Giving

Single Giving involves texting a code to make a one-off donation. This proved to be one of the most popular products with clients in 2017.

It really comes into its own at big fundraising events. Instead of dealing with loads of forms and cash, you simply ask people to send a single text to short number.

It’s also great for raising funds in response to emergency situations.

Text Giving Products – Regular Giving

Regular Giving is a quick and easy way to sign up donors to donate a specific amount to your cause at regular intervals.

It’s a feature that doesn’t take much time or effort to get ready and can be fully automated once it’s all set up.

Visit our blog on Regular Giving to find out more.

Text Giving Products – Ready for Gift Aid

Our system also makes it easy to manage Gift Aid. This allows charities to receive an extra 25p from the government for every £1 they receive in donations.

Using instaGiv’s platform it only takes 90 seconds for a supporter to donate and sign up for Gift Aid.

Check out our Gift Aid blog for more information.

Text Giving Products – Competitions

Our Competitions feature gives supporters the ability to create and customise contests via SMS. The system can even automatically pick winners for you.

If you have some prizes which you think will peak your supporters’ interest, take a look at our blog on SMS Competitions.

Text Giving Products – Consent

Our Consent Feature helps to ensure that charities have documented consent from their supporters for all of their campaigns.

This is particularly important ahead of the General Data Protection Regulation. The GDPR, which comes into effect in may, will mean that companies need to rethink how they deal with the personal data of EU residents.

Read more about how instaGiv can help with GDPR Compliance in our blog on our Consent Feature.

Find Out More About instaGiv’s Text Giving Products

We are of one the UK’s leading providers of mobile and digital fundraising solution, working with more than 300 UK registered charities.

InstaGiv are passionate about securing as much funds as possible for charities using our mobile and digital tools.

That’s why we have simple and transparent pricing structure that allows charities to scale their fundraising efforts to suit their needs.