Achieving SMART Objectives for Your Planned Gifts Social Media

What SMART objectives could your organization develop to achieve social media results for planned gifts? I have already mentioned several in my prior posts, but here are a few ideas from Beth Kanter’s 2011 blog post titled Benchmarking: Networked Nonprofits Measure Their Social Media Results in A Context.

I have adapted these ideas as they might work for planned gifts social media goal setting. Notice that these examples includes quantitative and durational qualities or goals.

• Increase planned giving website traffic by 25% in six months by dropping social media content on Facebook or Twitter with links back to your organization’s planned giving home page.

 • Increase planned giving eNewsletter sign-ups through social media channels by 50 names in three months by dropping regular links to eNewsletter sign-up on Facebook.

• Increase enrollment for a legacy society event or planned giving seminar by 25% in two months by marketing and dropping a link to online sign-up on social media pages.

• Doubling or tripling the number of fans on your organization’s legacy society Facebook page in one month by using Facebook ads and email invitations to encourage supporters to “fan our page.”

• Increase likes and comments with fans on Facebook to three comments per post in the next two months by dropping questions/surveys, mission-related images and YouTube donor testimonials on Facebook.

• Increase planned giving website traffic from Facebook by 20% in the next ten months by dropping frequent links to content on planned giving web pages.

These are just some of the objectives you might consider adopting as you begin to measure your organization’s planned gifts social media efforts. While many planned giving organizations are not yet engaged in the type of specific goal setting required by SMART theory, they are setting basic objectives for social engagement and seeing results.

In my next post I will share a few examples of organizations that are taking social media actions resulting in increased numbers of fans, responses and planned gifts. To learn more about planned gifts social media or view Crescendo’s GiftLegacy social media platform, call 1-800-858-9154 and ask to speak to a marketing specialist.

Are Your Planned Gifts Social Media Objectives Time-bound? Can You Measure Results?

I am continuing to cover the SMART method of setting objectives for social media. As I explained in my last post, I am applying SMART to planned gifts social media with the goal of helping your organization achieve results. Today, I am dealing with the question of whether your social media goals are time-bound so that you can quantitatively measure results for planned gifts. I will also look at benchmarking and using data points for measurement.

Time-bound

When developing objectives or goals for your social media, you will want to make sure that your objectives are time-sensitive. A social media timeframe usually answers the question “When?” Can you accomplish your goal this week, this month, within six months or one year? Setting a time parameter permits you to measure how successful your organization is at achieving its goals. 

For planned gifts social media, a time-bound goal means specifying a timeframe by when you desire to achieve a particular objective for planned gifts. For example, you might set the goal to increase your planned giving website traffic by 25% over one year by creating Facebook posts with links back to your site. This goal is one that can be obtained assuming you can review analytics on your website to analyze spikes in traffic over a one year period.

Benchmarking for Objectives

Benchmarking, or comparing your organization's social media activities and results with similar organizations, can be useful in defining your organization’s objectives. Beth Kanter notes in her 2011 blog post, Benchmarking: Networked Nonprofits Measure Their Social Media Results in A Context, that benchmarking is helpful because you are not just selecting attainable objectives “out of thin air.” You are developing objectives that measure results in a context.

Kanter discusses a study in this post conducted by Devon Smith in which an arts organization set SMART objectives based on a benchmarking study to generate fan conversation on art appreciation. The organization would look to benchmarks (standards set by similar art organizations posting to Facebook) to set an attainable objective for increasing the number of comments per post.

Using Data Points for Measurement

Kanter also points out that it is important to think about the type of data that is needed to measure results. Many times organizations collect copious amounts of data on social media activity, but do not conduct enough analysis to make this collection worthwhile. In a 2011 blog, 25 SMART Social Media Objectives, Kanter encourages organizations to concentrate on one or two data points that will guide the measurement process. The data points she looks to for measurement purposes are: increased awareness, actions/responses and behavior changes that result from an organizations social media efforts.

Taking Time for Reflection

You can also learn a lot from reflecting on which posts worked and which did not based on an analysis of your data. For example, if you received little or no responses from a post encouraging fans to click into your website and check their gift annuity rates, this may not be the best type of post for your social community. If you are promoting planned gifts, you might find that dropping a post with a link to download a wills planning guide proves to be of greater interest to your fan base. 

Reflection allows you to analyze your results and informs your future posting. Listening to your community and analyzing their responses is essential to developing effective social media content. And because the types of posts and tweets that work in other communities may be different than yours, reflection based on your organization’s particular data is a key to your social media success.

In the next post, I will share examples of the SMART method of setting objectives for planned gifts social media. To learn more about planned gifts social media or view Crescendo’s GiftLegacy social media platform, call 1-800-858-9154 and ask to speak to a marketing specialist.

Are Your Planned Gifts Social Media Goals Measurable, Attainable and Relevant?

In this post, I am continuing to cover the SMART method of setting objectives  for social media. I am applying SMART to planned gifts social media with the goal of helping you measure the results of your posts and tweets on planned giving topics.

Measurable

It is important to develop benchmarks to be sure that you can measure your progress towards achieving your social media goals. This usually involves answering the following questions: How much? How many? And how will I know when the objective is achieved?

For planned gifts, this means setting quantitative goals that you can actually measure such as the number of connections, requests, sign-ups, downloads and other responses within a specified time period (number of days, weeks months). For example, if you set the goal of adding 50 new planned giving eNewsletter sign-ups within 60 days of dropping a sign-up link on your Facebook page, it is easy to measure whether your objective is achieved.

Attainable

An attainable goal usually answers the question, how can this goal be accomplished? Your goals or objectives should provide a basic standard for performance, as opposed to being set so far out of reach that they are unattainable. Building relationships, marketing and closing planned gifts are all long-term endeavors. Make sure that your resources and time frame are realistic to achieve your goals. 

Can you realistically double the fans on your heritage society page in less than 30 days using Facebook space ads? More than one organization has answered this question in the affirmative. But, is this realistic for you and your supporters? You need to assess whether your organization has the abilities, skills and financial capacity to reach your goals.

Relevant

Are your social media objectives relevant to your planned giving efforts? Sometime for your goals to be relevant, you will need support from your CEO, CFO and other members of your team. Questions to ask in assessing whether a goal is relevant might include: Is this the right goal? Is this the right time? Does this goal meet your organization’s needs? Who is the right person in the organization to achieve this goal?

If you set your objectives with the goal of using social media to build relationships with supporters that could ultimately lead to planned gifts, your objectives will be relevant and aimed at achieving this outcome. In maintaining relevance, you again need to evaluate every objective (increasing planned giving web traffic, downloads, responses, etc.) to see that it is crafted to achieve your ultimate goal. Also, determine who will be posting to Facebook and tweeting on a daily and weekly basis and whether this person can help your organization reach its goals.

In the next post, I will cover the remainder of the SMART method of setting objectives and provide examples of how it applies to planned gifts social media. To learn more about planned gifts social media or view Crescendo’s GiftLegacy social media platform, call 1-800-858-9154 and ask to speak to a marketing specialist.

Setting Your Organization's Social Media Goals for Planned Gift

Holly Ross, President of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), says that it is important to begin social media with a strategy:  “A social media strategy map helps your organization think through objectives, audience, content, strategy, tools and measurement to support your organization’s communications and Internet strategy.”

As part of its WeAreMedia Project, NTEN adopted the SMART method of setting objectives for nonprofit social media.  SMART, which was published in “Management Review” in 1981, is a way of setting planning objectives or goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound.   

In this post, I will begin to summarize the theory behind SMART objectives and how you might apply SMART to analyze the results for your organization’s planned gifts social media efforts.

Specific

This week, I will cover just the first letter “S” in SMART – Be Specific!  It is important to be able to state the ultimate outcome you are trying to achieve with your planned gifts social media.  It helps to be able to answer questions such as:

What? - What does my organization want to achieve by using social media for planned gifts?

Why? - Why use social media for planned gifts?  Why create planned gifts social media goals for my charity?

Who? - Who will be posting, tweeting, listening and analyzing results for my organization's planned gifts social media?

Where? - Where will this activity take place?  Where are my organization's planned giving supporters?  Facebook? Twitter?  Google+?  Pinterest? 

Which? - Are there any other constraints to achieving my organization's planned giving goals?  How much time will this take from my day?  Are there costs involved?

Make sure that you make your planned giving objectives clear enough that they can be achieved.  Specify if your goal is to drop posts to increase eNewsletter sign-ups, wills guide downloads, requests for planned giving information or traffic on your planned giving website.  Determine who will do the posting and the projected results of your actions.  Then, you can begin to measure whether your goals are actually realized.  And if they are not achieved, you may need to go back and rethink your objectives. 

In the next few posts, I will cover the remainder of the SMART method of setting objectives and how it applies to planned gifts social media.  To learn more about planned gifts social media or view Crescendo’s GiftLegacy social media platform, call 1-800-858-9154 and ask to speak to a marketing specialist. 

Where Are You Going? Why Measure the Impact of Your Planned Gifts Social Media

Measuring and evaluating the impact of your planned gifts social media is important. If you adopt a robust social media strategy for your organization, your CFO will want to know what the return is on this investment.

You will also want to know that all of your time and efforts are being well spent.  While your organization’s social media ROI may appear unclear, there are numerous tools that provide you with ways to track responses and analyze results. 

It is easy to chart the growth in your Facebook fans and Twitter followers over time. Most blog platforms provide analytics to measure the number of visits and comments on your page. You can also evaluate the effectiveness of your tweets by counting the number of retweets, mentions and links back to your planned giving website from social media pages.

Before you delve too deeply into use of measurement tools, and begin to analyze a myriad of data, it is essential that you establish basic goals for your social media. That is, you need to know where you are going in order to determine how effective your organization is at achieving social media results.

In my next post, I will begin to cover how to set your organization’s planned gifts social media goals. Please post a comment or email me at kristen@cresmail.com to share how your organization measures the results of its social media marketing for planned gifts.  

To learn more about planned gifts social media or view Crescendo’s GiftLegacy social media platform, call 1-800-858-9154 and ask to speak to a marketing specialist.

Results Matter! Measuring the Impact of Your Planned Gifts Social Media

Once you have created your organization’s social media presence, it is important to begin measuring the return on your investment (ROI). For planned gifts, this means being able to track activity on your pages that results in responses, inquiries for further information, follow-up (possibly an in-person visit) and finally, closed gifts. The goal of this new series of posts is to help your organization establishing attainable objectives and use the right measurement tools to achieve results for your planned gifts social media.

The Need for Planned Gifts Social Media Measurement

An Idealware survey, referenced in nonprofit social media guru Beth Kanter’s June 15, 2011 blog post, asked nonprofits about their measurement of Facebook responses. Interestingly enough, 47% of respondents indicated that they are not doing any measurement. While 26% of respondents perform some sort of anecdotal measurement, only 27% actual had a substantial measurement plan. If your organization is already engaged in social media, how are you doing at measuring results? Are you aware of any planned gifts that have resulted from social media interactions?

Social Media Leads to Real Results

Is social media fundraising producing results? Blackbaud’s social giving infographic and study refutes the claims by some that social media does not increase fundraising dollars and demonstrates the true power of peer-to-peer fundraising. According to Blackbaud, social giving online has more than doubled in the last five years. People who use online tools raise six times more than offline only and social media has surpassed letter writing as a channel for fundraising by individuals.

In my next post, I will discuss why measuring the impact of your planned gifts social media is important to your organization. To learn more about planned gifts social media or view Crescendo’s GiftLegacy social media platform, call 1-800-858-9154 and ask to speak to a marketing specialist.

Blogging Strategies for Planned Gifts

This week, I want to share with you a story of one organization that is using a blog as its primary way to "get social" with planned giving donors. I spoke recently with Anna DeJarnette of the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. Heritage has created a web platform dedicated to blogging at http://www.myheritage.org. As the gift planning director, Anna writes regular planned giving posts to market current and deferred gift opportunities.

The http://www.myheritage.org site receives over 2,000 unique visitors each day. Anna has written a number of posts on bequests and gift annuities. She has also used donor stories as a way to market gift options including this one about a donor who established multiple gift annuities with Heritage and this one about a donor who created a charitable remainder trust.

With so many visitors coming to the site, Anna know that her blog posts are being read. She receives email and other contacts from supporters who are reading the information she posts and want to learn more. She can also track the activity from her blog to her planned giving pages, because all of Anna’s posts link back to the Heritage Foundation’s planned giving website.

Anna told me that her most successful blog post came after the East Coast earthquake. She posted a blog the next day noting that unexpected events occur and asking whether her readers have a plan in place for the future. She used the post as a way to advertise wills planning with a link to the website. Heritage created a special landing page on its site where to track who was clicking-through and expressing interest in planned giving.

Within days of posting this blog, Anna received 18 requests for wills and estate planning information and lots of visits to the Heritage Foundation website. Anna says that she sees the blog strategy is working. Her blog posts are helping to increase responses and traffic on the Foundation's planned giving pages.

Do you need help with creating a blog or using social media for planned gifts? We can help! To learn more strategies for planned gifts social media, please contact us at 800-858-9154 and ask to speak to a marketing specialist.