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Donor Engagement
Donor Engagement (Overview)
Donor Engagement (Overview)
Gary Armstrong avatar
Written by Gary Armstrong
Updated over a week ago

Using Engagement, you can notify, update and above all else nurture your donors using the the most effective and direct channel of communication that exists: Text Message.

What's it good for?

If you're reading this and you lead a church, imagine keeping the congregation up-to-date on things like:

  • Service cancellations due to inclemate weather

  • Notes or highlights from a past or upcoming sermon

  • Small group notifications and messages

  • Pictures from missionary trips

If you're a non-profit leader, you could:

  • Update donors on an upcoming campaign

  • Communicate with guests attending one of your fundraisers

  • Send pictures from a recent community outreach event

  • Let people know about volunteer opportunities

If you read carefully, you'll notice that you can send pictures in your messages. That's right!

Oh, and did I mention that you can make a donation ask right in the messages you send? Yup! All a donor needs to do is reply to the message.

Here's an example:

With your help, we were able to give 100 kids new shoes for our Back-to-School event this month! πŸŽ‰πŸ™Œ But there are still 50 kids that need your help. Reply with the word SHOES to make a donation so no kid is left behind!

When they reply with the keyword SHOES, they are able to make a donation through Txt2Give. How awesome is that?! And if you noticed, emojis also work just like any other normal text message πŸ‘πŸ»

Dashboard Changes

In a few days, when you log into your Txt2Give dashboard, you'll notice that the menu looks a little bit different. You'll now see that you have two new menus named Engagement and Giving.

The menu items under the Engagement section will help you manage your Contact Groups and Engagement Keywords, as well as see your Opt-ins and Contact Group message history.

Everything related to donations can be found under the Giving menu. You'll see some familiar menu items, such as Causes, Donation Recurrences, Donations and Donors, as well as one new item: Keywords.

A Giving Keyword can be either short-code-enabled or not. You can have multiple short-code-enabled keywords.
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Sending Messages

The way you create and send a message to the Contact Group is just like any other text message: from the messaging app on your mobile device!

You'll need to have one or more Engagement Keywords set up in your account, and people opted into them before you can start sending messages (more on this later).

Under the Engagement menu, you'll be able to add new keywords to use with our short code (444999). You can create as many keywords as you'd like. They are billed at $5/month per keyword and you can set them up yourself right in the dashboard.

Messaging uses credits. Each message you send uses 1 credit and each credits cost 5Β’ USD. Credits are purchased in blocks of 200, so one block of credits will cost $10 USD.

Your message credit account balance will be shown at the top right of the dashboard. If clicked, it will take you to your organization's credit transaction history, or ledger, which will show all credits purchased and spent.

When you attempt to send a message but there aren't enough credits in your account balance, a block of credits will automatically be purchased and charged to the payment method on file for your account.

You'll have the ability to send your messages to different segments using Contact Groups. When creating a Contact Group, you'll be able to use criteria like Opt-in Date, Opt-in Keyword, Donor Location, Donation Status, Causes, and more to segment your Donors.

You'll designate one ore more Authorized Senders; people on your team to whom you will give permission to send messages to the Contact Group.

When you create a Contact Group, it will be assigned a 10-digit Messaging Number. To message the group, simply send the text message you want to broadcast to the group to the Messaging Number. Your message will then be queued for delivery to your donors. It's that simple!

Sending a message to a Donor Group and receiving confirmation

Don't worry. Your personal mobile number is private and never used as the sending number, and donors won't see the Messaging Number, either. The "from" number of the message they receive will be a randomly-assigned communication number from our short code provider.

Donor receiving the message from the randomly-assigned communication number

How will donors opt-in to receive messages?

Donors will have to opt-in with an Engagement Keyword that you create in the dashboard in order to start receiving messages from your organization. Once created, you'll need to advertise your new keyword and short code number to spread the word and get people opting in!

Once opted-in, you can start sending messages to people through the Contact Groups you've created.

How can I message existing donors?

Even though Engagement Keywords are meant for communication and Giving Keywords for giving, there's nothing stopping you from communicating with them over a Giving Keyword opt-in. If you've been using the short code prior to this release, all of your existing donors are opted into your keyword that's been migrated to a new Giving Keyword. All you need to do is create a new Contact Group start messaging them.

However, just keep in mind that we don't recommend sending messages to donors over a Giving Keyword opt-in. Here's why.

If the donor starts receiving messages over the existing Giving Keyword opt-in they don't want, they could opt out. Once they do that, they can't make donations again unless they opt back in. They may not do that if they think they will continue getting unwanted messages.

A nice compromise would be to send one message to existing donors over the Giving Keyword opt-in that says something like

We'd like to send you updates from time to time about what we're up to here. If you'd like that, text INFO to 444999.

where INFO is a new Engagement Keyword you've created. Doing it this way allows those interested to opt-in, and others won't. Either way, the giving keyword opt-in remains in-tact.

How excited should I be about this?

We think that our Engagement feature will be a game-changer for your organization in terms of how you stay in touch and nurture the relationships with your donors. By using it regularly, you can convert those on the sidelines into first-time donors, and then first-time donors into invested, long-term supporters and advocates.

How can I get access to Engagement?

If you're on our most current pricing model (v2) or have signed up for the Pro Event Plan, then congratulations! You automatically have access to it. If you're on one of our older pricing plans, you'll need to first upgrade to our latest pricing model.

You can see your current plan in the Dashboard by clicking My Account then Settings, then look where it says Plan toward the top.

If you need to upgrade just contact support at support@txt2give.co or click the round chat in the lower corner of your screen and we'll get you taken care of.

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