Picture this: Your non-profit just wrapped up a successful event. Your attendees went home happy, and your event planning team can finally relax.
However, your event took weeks of planning, and the experience you put together is still fresh in your supporters' minds. Why not make the most out of your team’s hard work and keep up the momentum with your communications in the days that follow your event?
An omni-channel event communications strategy is an approach that gives your organization the opportunity to continue stewarding donors before, during, and after an event.
To execute this strategy, you can share a single coherent message across multiple channels, such as text messaging, email, direct mail, and video. All of these channels fit into a unified stewardship experience for your attendees, and each touchpoint informs the next.
In this guide, we’ll explore five tips to help your non-profit build a successful omni-channel post-event communications strategy.
Omni-channel communications require coordination, and your team will achieve the best results by organizing your campaign before your event even begins.
Your team needs to record attendance, contact details, and any actions that attendees take after the event to send the right message through the right channel. Take the following steps to set your team up for success:
Gather contact information and preferences during registration. Your registration form should be detailed without being overwhelming. Ask for basic information such as phone number, email address, preferred contact method, and permission to send texts upfront to ensure your team has all the details it needs for post-event communications.
Connect your systems. Making sure the software you use for registration and ticketing, storing donor information, texting, and emailing can speak to one another saves your team time manually entering data between systems and keeps important information from slipping through the cracks.
Choose a core message. Focus on one impact story or theme from your event, and build your post-event communications strategy around it. It should be simple enough to distill into a single sentence that doesn’t get watered down when used across multiple channels. Once you land on a message, move on to the kind of language, tone, and visuals you want to incorporate in your campaign.
By preparing to gather the right data in connected systems and refining your messaging in advance, your team can spend more time building relationships with event attendees and less time searching for their information.
Text messages are a great place to begin with your post-event communications. After all, the average American checks their phone around 205 times per day, with 76% looking immediately after receiving a notification. Your attendees likely have their phones close by, ready to read the texts your organization sends them.
To maximize your text messages’ effectiveness, you should:
Thank attendees within one day of the event. The first thing attendees should receive from your organization is a thank-you that ties to your campaign’s core message. Sending a text ensures that your appreciation doesn’t get buried in a crowded inbox. With this first touchpoint, include a short, thoughtful message and receipts for any bids made if your event included an auction.
Give each text a single job. momoGood’s guide to non-profit text messaging recommends including one call to action per message to avoid overwhelming supporters and give them a clear next step. Examples of next actions might include answering a survey about the event, watching a recap video, or signing up for recurring giving.
Answer replies quickly. Text is a two-way communication channel, which means your attendees may text your organization back with questions or feedback about the event. Keep the conversation going and engage attendees with timely responses. To organize your replies, consider using AI-powered texting tools that can sort your supporters’ messages by topic and flag the ones that need attention most.
See how your supporters engage with your text. Replies to your messages and clicks on calls to action might indicate that attendees want to hear more from your organization.
Social media allows your organization to publicly thank everyone who took part in your event. Your team likely took plenty of photos and videos, and platforms like Instagram and Facebook are a great place to show them off.
Engage with your community online by tagging sponsors, speakers, volunteers, and attendees in your posts, and be sure to repost your attendees’ snapshots from the night as well.
With social media, it is important not to forget about the comment section. Even if you primarily use your posts to broadcast your message and thank participants, you will need to keep an eye on what your audience says about the content you share.
Replying to a kind comment from an event attendee gives your team a chance to build a relationship with that supporter and demonstrate that your organization values its community.
Video helps supporters recall your event after the fact and shows them what their participation made possible.
Create a 60 to 90-second event recap video centered around one outcome of the event that pairs with the message of your campaign. Feature one speaker, such as your executive director, an event volunteer, or a beneficiary of one of your programs, to keep it focused and compelling.
Though you are creating a single video, you can use it in a variety of ways. Link to it in your texts and emails, share it on social media, and even include it in your mailers through a QR code.
You can make your video feel more personalized to each supporter by tailoring the accompanying message to thank them by name or reference their giving history with your organization. Then, track your views and watch time to see which attendees might appreciate a personal follow-up most.
Handwritten notes can help your message continue to stand out after you’ve already sent attendees plenty of digital communications. This channel is especially effective for major donors, event sponsors, and supporters who prefer paper over smartphones and computers.
To ensure that your direct mail feels like part of the same conversation as your digital outreach, stay focused on your campaign’s core message and include a photo from the event.
Give your notes a personal touch by asking a member of your non-profit’s board or an executive team member to sign each one. Build this into your event stewardship plan from the start, so that you can mail them in time to reach supporters about one week after the event. That way, your attendees see how much your organization values each one of its supporters.
A strong post-event communications strategy utilizes different channels for different purposes while remaining united around a single message.
To take an omni-channel approach after your next non-profit fundraising event, start by ensuring that your registration form collects contact preferences, asks about text message consent, and integrates with other systems your team uses to coordinate donor communications.