Are Your Donor Stories Boring Your Readers to Death?

Storytelling is all the rage in planned giving now, and that has resulted in a proliferation of donor stories that are … sometimes ineffective and even downright boring. They start at the beginning of the donor’s life, describe education, career, family, hobbies, and on and on, taking hundreds of words to get to the point: Why the donor decided to make the planned gift! Sometimes, surprisingly, the gift is never mentioned at all.

3 Reasons Why Newsletters Don't Get Read

Newsletters are still a major part of most nonprofits’ marketing plans for planned giving, and for good reason—when done right, newsletters are well-read and are an excellent way to elicit response from some highly qualified prospective donors. But readers get turned off when newsletters make one of the three errors described below.

Planned Giving Marketing Tip: Slogans Matter

In today’s busy world, an organization needs to communicate—clearly, succinctly and intelligently—what it does and why. While a mission statement is certainly one useful method of communicating the purpose of your nonprofit, a slogan can get that same information out more readily while also achieving your communication goals.

Get Results: Using Landing Pages to Convert Website Visits into Donor Leads

If your planned giving office is keeping abreast of today’s fast-paced technology, then your organization likely already has a professionally designed website and, hopefully, a planned giving website geared specifically to potential donors. Once you have people visiting your planned giving website, now what? How do you convert those visits into donor leads?

The Contest

No, I’m not referring to the famous television episode of Seinfeld! I’m referring to ways to get your donors and prospects to actually read and keep your planned giving newsletter. As mentioned in Gypsy… “You Gotta Get a Gimmick!” My gimmick for this article was the first sentence of this paragraph. It hooked you in, right?

Is Your Marketing Tugging at the Right Heartstrings?

Your planned-giving marketing materials can be wonderful educational and motivational tools. They can provide potential donors with important tax updates, target specific audiences by life stage, and reflect your unique mission. But are your materials tugging at the right heartstrings?

Pentera’s Integrated Marketing Strategy Helps Frostburg University Promote Planned Gifts

Frostburg University's Take on Help from Pentera, Inc.:

When director of major and planned gifts Cherie Krug came on board at Frostburg State University two and half years ago, the school had a growing fundraising operation but had never really focused very heavily on offering planned-giving options to donors. Also, in the middle of a capital campaign, the need to get started was urgent.

That’s when they decided to turn to respected industry leader Pentera, Inc. for help. Pentera worked with Frostburg to develop a customized marketing strategy integrating print, Web, and eMarketing to promote planned giving. “Our donors were used to writing a check for the Annual Fund,” says Cherie. “Everything Pentera does for us helps our donors think in a different way. It’s a whole other piece of giving.”

After about a year of consistent marketing, Frostburg began to see results: Donors started asking about making planned gifts.

#1. Featured Strategy: Build loyalty through education and meaningful, relevant communications

The Compass: Creating Your Legacy, Frostburg’s newsletter, focuses on a particular type of gift in each issue. According to Krug, “The language is easy and simple to follow.” She continues, “The examples are great. I have the volunteers working on our campaign read the newsletter; it helps them learn what they’re talking about.”

Pentera’s production of the newsletter is painless for Frostburg: “I say I want to feature gift annuities and maybe some other kind of estate planning; Pentera finds the articles. The ease and convenience of it is just amazing.”

In addition, most issues contain a donor story written by Pentera’s testimonial-writing service and donor-profile questionnaire, two of Pentera’s many creative services. “The donor stories are wonderful,” Krug says. “Something that would take me or someone else here weeks to do is quick, accurate, and beautifully written.”

R. Sam Griffith, president of the FSU Foundation, is a financial advisor in a major company. He doesn’t hand out compliments easily. Yet in a phone call with Cherie Krug and Bernard J. Davisson, II ’81, vice president for advancement and the foundation’s executive director, Griffith praised the Pentera-produced newsletter. “He said, ‘This is one of the best marketing pieces I’ve ever seen coming out of this division,’ ” Krug remembers. “‘It’s clear, it’s easy to read, and it gives great information.’“



#2. Featured Strategy: Donor-friendly Web site that is easy for the novice as well as the expert to navigate

Frostburg knows that while traditionally the newsletter was the main component for a planned-giving marketing program, now it is just one piece of the whole. Their Web site is another major piece.

“The Web site is a great way for a relatively new donor base to go online and learn about planned gifts,” Krug says. “It’s easy to navigate and very helpful. We’re finding more and more that even our older alumni are on things like Facebook, so the electronic component is very important.”

The easy-to-navigate Web site includes diagrams for illustrating the ways to give to Frostburg as well as easy-to understand detailed descriptions and benefits that donors can read while they do their planning.

Frostburg’s site also includes Pentera’s signature interactive feature, the Life-Stage Gift Planner™, which Pentera pioneered over a decade ago. The Life-Stage Gift Planner™ allows donors to explore various gift options most appropriate to them based on the financial and personal issues they are facing during their particular life stage. As Frostburg is focusing on bequests, the site gives examples of various types of language that a donor can easily access and use when updating or writing a will.

The Web site is very flexible and kept up-to-date. Every month, an article spotlighting current trends in planned giving is posted to keep donors coming back to learn more. Pentera also keeps Frostburg’s site fresh with new donor stories and automatic updates with any changes to legislation or rates.

Frostburg trusted Pentera’s industry knowledge, experience, and willingness to customize their products to Frostburg’s needs. And as a result, the integrated marketing strategy has made a huge impact on their planned-giving department.

As Cherie Krug says about working with Pentera and its expert, friendly, and helpful staff, “…it is just amazing. It’s been a great experience.” And more important, donors are directly benefiting too. They are being educated and cultivated and in turn are responding and asking about planned gift options.

For more information about how you could achieve success with your planned giving marketing like Frostburg has, contact us at info@pentera.com or 317.875.0910, ext. 251.

Sarah Lawrence Joins Pentera's Exclusive Integrated Marketing Clientele

Pentera would like to extend a warm welcome to Sarah Lawrence College as we begin working with them to develop their new planned giving Web site, as well as a comprehensive integrated marketing campaign, including print newsletters, postcards, eNewsletters, and print advertisements.

With a diverse student body and a strong reputation for its rigorous academic standards, Sarah Lawrence College has a long, distinguished history of offering its students a personalized education, tailored to meet each student's unique interests and abilities. Sarah Lawrence chose Pentera because of the unique combination of industry-leading content and unparalleled customization options that we offer through our planned giving Web sites, eMarketing products, and print materials. We are excited and honored to help them educate, motivate, and build lasting relationships with their potential donors.

For more information about Pentera's integrated marketing strategies and programs, please visit http://www.pentera.com/, email info@pentera.com, or call 317-875-0910 x251.

Integrated Marketing: Is Your Newsletter Talking To You? It Should Be.

by Leila A. Wheeler, Marketing Associate, Integrated Marketing Department

Your planned giving newsletter gives your prospective donors a lot of information. It increases donor awareness about your planned giving program, provides relevant information on opportunities to give, and even offers personal, touching stories from other donors. It talks to them.

But how much is your newsletter talking to you?