What Integrated Marketing Means to Me -- Allison Porter
	Posted by Allison Porter at Jan 26, 2012 04:10 PM CST

For me, integrated marketing means raising more money. It also leads to more diverse audiences, effective education and cultivation opportunities, broader PR, and more comprehensive “reach” as organizations promote their missions. It also ensures a seamless donor experience.

For the most part, we’re finding that donors are inherently multi-channel anyway, so integrating our marketing is a no-brainer. Our Web donor files are made up of 40-60% direct mail joins, and our Web joins (if given the appropriate opportunities) reciprocate and give through direct mail and telemarketing efforts. And if you take the time to match back your online gifts following the receipt of a direct mail package, you’ll find that direct mail drives as much as 5% more revenue online. And – no surprise here –follow-up emails can trigger as much as 25% more direct mail revenue when coordinated with the mail schedule.

The challenge with integrated marketing? Our own silos – the separate departments managing what should be seamless donor communications, the one-dimensional databases trying to manage multi-dimensional multi-channel donors, and the communications vehicles that only serve one audience. Not to mention the people who tell me an email/mail/phone effort is “cannibalizing” their email/mail/phone effort. Enough with the silos. You’re doing your mission and your donors a disservice when your strategies aren’t integrated.

Bottom line: I’m a fundraiser. My job is to help my clients raise as much money as possible. That said, I also recognize that they have a responsibility to promote their missions and build constituencies of support that go beyond raising money. So we work hand in hand with our clients’ program, advocacy, communications and marketing departments, to integrate messaging for all of these areas without diluting or distorting the message.

The key validator is the fact that when we integrate messaging, channels, and audiences, we see stronger donor value, higher retention, better engagement, and more satisfaction in our organizations. As fundraisers we need to challenge ourselves to do a better job of managing the mix – diversity, but not at the expense of profitability and productivity.

If you’re looking to raise more money, increase donor value, diversify you’re audiences, cultivate donors, and build stronger relationships – be everywhere in a way that makes sense to your donors, so you can capture their spirit of giving whenever and wherever it seizes them.