Tag: Event Attendance

Higher Education Event Strategies: Utilizing Texts for Your Alumni Event Fundraising Strategy

  • Event Trends
  • EventUp Planner Contributor
  • October 11, 2024
texting strategies for fundraising

As your university’s alumni go about their days leading teams, conducting research, and making an impact on the world, they may forget about the invitation they got to your next fundraising event. The email might sit in their inbox for weeks before they open it, only to realize then that the event already passed.

A text message, however, will cut right through the noise and get your alumni’s attention moments after you send it.

Your alumni want to give back to the university that gave so much to them, but they’re busy people. Meet them where they are by incorporating texts into your event fundraising strategy. In this quick guide, we’ll cover several ways you can use SMS for alumni fundraising events, explore tips for writing impactful higher education text messages, and even provide some examples that you can copy and paste. Let’s get started!

Why use texts for event fundraising?

Let’s face it—your event guests are already on their phones. Text messages help you engage them exactly where they are, drawing their attention back to your fundraiser and increasing overall engagement.

According to Mogli’s SMS marketing guide, text messaging works for all different types of audiences because of this channel’s:

  • 98% open rate. This metric is astounding compared to other communication channels (just compare it to email’s 35.63% average open rate). Almost all of your recipients will open the texts you send them, meaning you can easily share event reminders, fundraising appeals, and updates that you know will reach alumni.
  • 19% click-through rate. Not only will the vast majority of recipients read your texts, but about one in five will click on the links you send. Whether that’s a registration link, survey, or donation request, high click-through rates mean more alumni engagement with your events.
  • Easy, fast engagement opportunities. Reading every word in an email is a big ask for busy alumni. Text messages, on the other hand, are short and sweet, encouraging guests to read and respond to your requests immediately.

On top of all these benefits, text messages are extremely flexible. You can use texts for everything from fundraising appeals to feedback collection to thanking volunteers. These messages can be casual or formal, sent to one or many recipients, and even open the door for authentic one-to-one conversations. 

Using texts to improve every stage of your fundraising event

To successfully add texts to your event fundraising strategy, think about the entire attendee journey. Alumni hear about your event, decide to attend, participate in your activities, then reflect on their experience—and you can engage them with texts at each of these pivotal moments. Let’s break down how.

Before: Text marketing

The marketing strategies you use leading up to your event will determine not only how many registrations you secure, but how many alumni come to the event ready and excited to donate. 

While you shouldn’t rely on texts for your entire marketing strategy, using them to send quick reminders, event teasers, and updates will help you connect with alumni and boost excitement for the event. Incorporate texts into a holistic multichannel strategy to prepare alumni to give.

For instance, you might send a formal invite to alumni via email or direct mail, then follow up with a text that says “The date of our annual alumni fundraising gala is set! Check your inbox to learn more.” Or, you could send weekly texts leading up to your auction that provide sneak peeks of special items and links to your event landing page.

During: Guest engagement

Sending texts during the event itself can boost participation and fundraising results. Remind guests to give, point them to virtual engagement opportunities, celebrate milestones, or send event logistics to help them navigate your space.

Take a look at these example texts to see what your engagement strategy might look like:

  • Darlene, you’re officially checked in! Click here to access the event schedule, map, and fundraiser details. And don’t forget to have fun 💃
  • Hi Ana, we hope you enjoyed the first day of Alumni Weekend. Don’t forget about the events still to come. Can we count on your donation tomorrow?
  • 📣 Last call for silent auction bids 📣 You only have ten minutes to get your final bids in—act fast to make sure you win the items you want! 
  • Thanks for joining virtually, Evan! As you watch the livestream, don’t forget to check out our live fundraising thermometer and leaderboard here. Have you donated yet?

For both in-person and virtual events, text messages like these can bring alumni’s attention back to your fundraiser and encourage them to stay actively engaged. Think about any moments of your event when guests might get distracted, such as towards the end of the auction portion, and draft messages to re-engage them.

After: Fundraising follow-up

Finally, send text messages after the event ends to thank and follow up with guests. Prompt follow-up helps you show appreciation for the alumni who attended and encourages them to give again in the future.

Use SMS to send follow-up messages like:

  • Personalized thank-you messages for all guests and donors.
  • Reminders that there’s still time to donate if they didn’t do so at the event.
  • Post-event surveys for collecting feedback.
  • Updates on the event’s total fundraising revenue and what it will go toward.

You can easily send these personalized messages at scale with the help of text automation. For instance, the best text marketing apps enable you to create strings of messages that automatically populate with donor information from your database, such as their names and donation amounts.

Tips for crafting alumni fundraising texts

When it comes to actually writing the event text messages themselves, there are a few best practices you should keep in mind:

  • Personalize whenever possible. To make personalization easier, Double the Donation suggests segmenting your alumni based on shared characteristics like giving level or class year.
  • Shoot for 160 characters or less. Keeping your messages short ensures that they don’t get split into multiple texts by some carriers and that alumni can understand what you’re asking them to do with just a glance.
  • Ask questions to encourage responses. Ending your texts with a question invites alumni to respond directly, boosting their engagement. 
  • Give a clear next step. Explain what you would like alumni to do next (i.e., RSVP for your event, donate, or fill out a survey) and provide a link so they can take action easily.

Refer back to these tips each time you draft a message for your event fundraising strategy, and take note of which strategies work best. If you realize that asking a certain question increases text response rates, for instance, incorporate it into more messages going forward!

Engaging alumni before, during, and after events is easier with the right tools. Check to see if your university’s CRM or marketing software supports text messaging, or consider investing in a specialized solution that comes with robust automation and reporting features. With a scalable system and the best practices we discussed, you’ll be able to engage more alumni with texts in no time.

 

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Using SEO to Increase Association Event Attendance: 3 Steps

  • Event Management
  • January 23, 2024
This guide covers how you can use SEO to increase association event attendance.

Preparing for an upcoming event is one of the busiest times in an association professional’s career. After all, there are so many tasks to take care of, from determining event ticket prices to setting up your venue. But your most crucial tasks are promoting your event and encouraging your audience to register. After all, how can your event be successful without any attendees?

Increasing attendance for your association event is a challenging task. It requires you to use all of your marketing channels and tools, including your website. And what better way to supercharge your efforts than with search engine optimization (SEO)? This practice increases your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines such as Google, enabling you to reach a wider audience and garner more event registrations.

To help you get started with increasing attendance for your association event, we’ll go over three crucial steps to implementing SEO for your site. With the proper know-how and a robust website builder, you’ll be well on your way to achieving SEO success.

1. Perform Keyword Research

The foundation of SEO is made of keywords, the search queries that web users input into search engines to find the information they’re searching for. By threading the right keyword throughout your content, you can increase the chances that a web page will rank for that query, therefore increasing your event and overall organization’s visibility.

Ideally, you want to pick a keyword that has:

  • High search volume. Search volume refers to the number of web users that search that keyword. The higher the search volume, the more likely people will find your website.
  • High relevance. The keyword you choose should be highly relevant to your event to ensure that you reach the right target audience. For example, you might choose “professional networking workshop New York” to attract young professionals in New York to your professional development event.
  • Low competition. Some keywords are more competitive than others, making it more difficult for users to find your website. Ideally, the right keyword will have lower competition, so your site will rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP) and thus gain more exposure.

It’s difficult to determine whether a keyword meets this criteria simply by looking at the SERP. We recommend brainstorming a list of keywords relevant to your association’s event and then evaluating their search volume and competitiveness using keyword research tools.

According to Getting Attention, some of the tools you can use to perform keyword research include:

Identifying the right keywords is only the start of SEO for your association’s site. However, it’s the most crucial step—without the right keyword, you won’t be able to reach your target audience and set them on the journey to becoming an event attendee.

2. Create A Well-Designed Event Landing Page

After establishing your keyword, it’s time to optimize your event landing page for it. Incorporate the keyword naturally into the meta title, headers, meta description, and the body of your content. Create blog content that relates to your keyword as well. This allows search engines to understand that your site is related to your chosen keyword and helps it rank higher on the SERP.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to experiment with local SEO, especially if your event is in-person or hybrid. Implement local SEO by creating locally relevant content, optimizing your Google Business Profile, and identifying local keywords. This way, you can target individuals who live in the area and can easily attend your event if it’s open to the general public beyond your member base.

Aside from scanning the content of your page, Google also looks for user experience to determine the rankings of websites. Whether you created your association’s site and event landing page from a template or scratch, make sure that it is:

  • Branded to your nonprofit. Incorporate your association’s branding throughout your event website, including your logo, colors, and fonts. This practice allows visitors to immediately recognize that the site belongs to your organization.
  • Easily navigable. For the best user experience, visitors should be able to easily understand how to navigate through your site. Incorporate important links on your site’s header and footer and consider implementing drop-down navigation menus.
  • Accessible. Make your site accessible to everyone by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which set the international standard for web accessibility. Ensure that your site is easily understood by screen readers by including alt text describing any visual content and providing closed captions or transcripts for any audio or video content.
  • Mobile responsive. The average person spends three hours and 15 minutes on their phone every day, and 20% of smartphone users spend upwards of four and a half hours on their devices every day. Support your members’ web browsing preferences by ensuring that your site is mobile-responsive.

If you’d like some examples of well-designed websites, take a look at Morweb’s list of the best nonprofit websites to get a better idea of how to incorporate SEO and great design on your association’s site.

3. Monitor Results With Data And Analytics

Much like how you would evaluate the success of your event with event analytics, you should monitor the results of your SEO efforts as well. When assessing your performance on search engines, keep track of the following metrics:

  • Unique visits. This metric refers to the number of unique visitors that access your site. A higher number of visitors means that you’re getting the visibility you want, but this could be attributed to other channels in addition to SEO, like social media or email marketing.
  • Organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to visitors who access your site through SERPs, so if you’re seeing an increase in this metric, then it’s likely that your SEO efforts are on the right track.
  • Bounce rate. This metric refers to the number of visitors who visit your site and then leave without exploring the rest of your pages. While it’s impossible not to have a bounce rate if the rate is extremely high, then you might have some on-page navigation issues, or your content quality may need to be improved.
  • Conversion rate. Conversion rate refers to the number of web visitors that take a desired action, such as downloading a resource on membership benefits or signing up for an email newsletter. For your event landing page, the conversion to pay attention to is usually registering to attend the event and paying for tickets.
  • Keyword rankings. This refers to how highly on the keyword’s SERP your page is ranking—the higher your ranking, the closer to the top of the SERP your page will be, and the more clicks you’ll get.

Look at all of these metrics together to evaluate the success of your SEO marketing. For example, if you’re seeing a lot of organic traffic but a high bounce rate, then you know that your SEO strategy is working well but that there may be on-page issues you need to address. Or, if your page is ranking highly, but you’re not receiving much traffic, then you may need to optimize your landing page for a better keyword.

Planning an event takes time, and so does increasing event attendance and acquiring qualified event leads. To ensure that your SEO strategy is a success, give yourself the time you need to establish a thorough marketing strategy. And don’t be afraid to revise that strategy if you’re not seeing the results you want.

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