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Cause Marketing Master Class

Ecommerce Master Class Step 8: Marketing the Nonprofit Relationship

Sonia Nigam
May 20, 2024
Sonia Nigam

Now that we have identified your donation personas (Step 1), chosen your targeted first nonprofit (Step 2), established a relationship with your preferred nonprofit (Step 3), chosen the best donation options for testing (Step 4), deployed our best practices to optimize conversion (Step 5), put in place best practices for AOV and LTV (Step 6), identified a turnkey compliance solution (Step 7)...

It's time for stp 8: marketing the nonprofit relationship.

Doing all of the above, you will achieve a minimum of 19% conversion improvement, 18% AOV lift, and 20% LTV bump.

This is Step 8 in the process. If you haven’t completed the previous steps, please go back and walk through them. This process is simple, but it’s necessary to follow each step sequentially to optimize your results.

The ten key steps are as follows: 

  1. Choosing your donation persona
  2. Choosing your ideal charity
  3. Running a test for your ideal charity's cause
  4. Picking and testing the best donation option
  5. Conversion best practices
  6. Optimizing AOV and LTV
  7. Understanding compliance
  8. Marketing the nonprofit relationship
  9. Leveraging multiple personas
  10. Measuring success

In this class, we will learn best practices for marketing your partnership with a charity. 

Marketing the relationship between your ecommerce business and partnered nonprofit organizations is crucial for maximizing the benefits of cause marketing. 

This step focuses on leveraging various marketing channels to promote this relationship, thereby increasing visibility, engagement, and ultimately, conversions.

We'll cover strategies including email marketing, social media marketing, product inserts, and press releases, utilizing both the nonprofit's donor databases and your business's customer base.

Customer/Donor Base

You’ve got customers and prospects. 

Your charity has donors and potential donors (“Donors”).

By following the best practices in Steps 1, 2, and 3, we know that our customers love our chosen charity’s cause. 

Additionally, our charity’s Donors have a high probability of loving our products. 

That’s the true beauty of Steps 1, 2, and 3.

Remember, not only does your charity affinity increase sales to your current customers and prospects, but your charity also brings an established, known audience of potential new customers.

Pause for a moment. 

Contemplate this sentence once more: 

“Your charity brings an established, known audience of potential new customers.”

Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

As a general rule, most ecommerce companies spend almost all of their gross margin on the first sale to acquire a customer. 

Profits are earned through subsequent purchases by new customers.

As we studied in Steps 5 and 6, there is a tremendous opportunity to increase conversion, AOV, and LTV with your current stream of customers. 

Now, we have access to a new group of prospective customers through our chosen charity’s database. 

You will want to take advantage of this opportunity.

Here’s what works:

  • Treating new customer prospects as customers you should invest in acquiring, accepting that there is always some level of CAC.
  • Running specific campaigns on the charity’s emails and social platforms, directing traffic to specific landing pages with special coupons to offer Donors a special deal on purchases.
  • Offering a special promotion where you donate a larger percentage of the sale to the charity. Invest in those prospects.

Here’s what doesn’t work:

  • Announcing on the charity’s and your email and social platforms that you now have a partnership and they can donate at checkout or do roundups, etc.
  • The first interaction with their Donors is the most important. They are asking themselves, “Is this a real commitment? Are they ‘in’ on this cause that I care about?”

If you want to acquire new customers from their database, you have to regard their Donors as new customers and be prepared to invest what you would to acquire any other new customers.

Don’t forget, studies show charity-aligned customers will be more loyal and buy more from you.

Not only are you investing in future sales, you are investing in a larger future LTV.

How much discount should you give, and how much should you donate?

Time for some marketing math. 

First, calculate your AOV. 

Next, determine the gross margin you make on that AOV. 

Then, calculate your CAC for a new customer. 

For example, if the AOV is $100, the gross margin is $45, and your CAC is $40, you know that for a new customer brought in through your charity relationships, you can afford to give away discounts and donations so that your net gross margin on the customer is $5. 

This is the same amount you would make on any new customer acquired through other means (on average). 

We have seen that this is the revenue-maximizing strategy overall for your relationship.

Don’t look at this new pool of prospects as free sales. 

We want to maximize LTV, so be prepared to make a CAC-equivalent investment at the outset.

In email and on social media, your charity can run a campaign announcing that if their Donors come to your ecommerce store, they:

  • Save 20% on any purchases for a limited time by using a special code.
  • You will donate $10 to the charity for every purchase over $50 and $20 for every purchase over $100.

This will drive new sales from the charity’s Donors and establish a new, incremental customer relationship for you at your typical CAC.

Some of our customers worry that their current customers will catch wind of the promo and use it. 

Yes, some established customers will. 

They, too, will deepen their relationship with you based on your cause. 

Remember, you nailed the cause selection in Steps 1, 2, and 3.

In general, the impact will be a new wave of incremental, loyal customers with higher AOV and higher LTV than average.

Email

For all campaigns, follow this four-part plan, repurposing the content for each channel.

First, have the charity send emails to its Donors announcing the relationship and including the special offer we discussed. 

Run these “announcement” emails once a week for at least four weeks, with slight variations in messaging, but consistently communicating your company’s commitment to the charity and its cause. 

Ensure the charity keeps the emails short and sweet, focusing on the special offer for their Donors.

Below is a sample email using our women’s SCUBA clothing company:

Second, send emails to your customers announcing the relationship. 

Consider A/B testing the special offer announcement with a segment of your existing customers to gauge its impact without incurring significant incremental costs. 

Like the charity email announcements, run these “announcement” emails once a week for at least four weeks, consistently communicating your commitment to the charity and its cause.

Sample Email, using the charity's name:

Third, share compelling stories of individuals or communities benefiting from the charity with your current customers. 

Stories humanize the cause and inspire readers to take action. 

If the special promotion period has lapsed, that’s okay; you can still remind your customers of the opportunity to donate to the charity at checkout.

Fourth, continue to run exclusive offers for “Donors Only,” targeting donors who have not yet become customers. 

If you send a great email offer and 20% open it and 5% of those convert, what do you know?

You know that 80% didn’t open it and 99% of the charity’s donor base has not yet become customers. In ecommerce, not everyone is shopping or engaged all the time. 

Make sure you maintain a regular cadence of converting their “unconverted” donors into customers. 

Consider running periodic promotions (e.g., Giving Tuesday) where you offer special discounts on products overall, or targeted products, to anyone who donates at least $X amount to your partner charity.

Two important facts to keep in mind:

  1. You’re partnering with the charity to drive donations and increase your own incremental sales at the time of the donation.
  2. You are aligning yourself with this cause in a way that instills greater brand and store loyalty from your customers.

So, make sure you keep talking about the relationship. 

Don’t go quiet! 

Continue discussing the relationship, the cause, and your engagement at least once per month.

Ready for Step 9?

Learn how to leverage multiple personas in your campaigns.
Go to Step 9

‍Social Media

This segment outlines a strategy for leveraging social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, LinkedIn) to announce and promote a partnership between an ecommerce business and a charity. 

The plan is structured into four parts, emphasizing the repurposing of content across different channels to maximize reach and engagement.

As discussed via email, you will maintain the same cadence as the email segmentation. 

Begin with an initial announcement. 

Both the ecommerce business and the charity should coordinate their announcements and promotions in a unified format.

Your ecommerce business should replicate the charity's announcement across all social media posts, adapting it to reflect the business's perspective. 

Use the email layout as a guide for crafting consistent messaging. 

Below, we'll showcase several examples of social media posts for illustration.

Ensure your initial announcement is visually compelling, utilizing graphics or video on each platform. 

Publish each post simultaneously across all channels, maintaining consistent messaging while adapting it to suit each social media platform's nuances.

Ongoing Messaging on Social Media

  1. Focus on the mutual benefits of the partnership and the impact on the charity's mission.
  2. Use relevant hashtags (#CharityPartnership, #SupportTheCause).
  3. Post at least once a week for four weeks, varying the content slightly but maintaining the core message of the partnership and special offer.
  4. Retarget your social media engagement. Make sure you have ad accounts set up on each of the social media platforms. Then retarget those people that engage with your posts, or linger on posts, with ads that show the special offer they can use if they donate.
  5. Engage in story collection. Gather impactful stories from the charity about the individuals or communities they support. They most likely already have stories that you can repurpose and use with your current customers and prospects.
  6. Create emotional and visually appealing content (photos, videos, testimonials) to share these stories.
  7. Focus on the human aspect and the positive impact of donations.

Product Inserts

Product inserts are physical pieces of marketing material included in the packages you send to customers. 

Remember, a key value driver of partnering with a charity is the extended and larger lifetime value you can create.

An important part of increasing the LTV formula is product inserts.

They can be very effective in communicating your nonprofit relationship.

Here are some methods you can use:

  • Discount Codes: Offer discount codes for future purchases as a token of appreciation for supporting the cause.
  • Informational Inserts: Include flyers or brochures that explain the partnership and its impact. Highlight how the customer’s purchase contributes to the cause.
  • Donation Requests: Provide information on how customers can make additional donations or round up their purchase total to support the nonprofit.
  • Thank You Notes: Include personalized thank-you notes acknowledging the customer’s support of the nonprofit through their purchase. This adds a personal touch and strengthens customer loyalty.

Example: A beauty brand partnering with a nonprofit that supports women's shelters could include a brochure in each package detailing the partnership, a heartfelt thank-you note, and a discount code for the customer’s next purchase.

Summary

We’ve outlined formats, methods, and principles for communicating and marketing your new charity relationship. 

As a rule, keep working at it. 

Aligning your company with a customer persona-connected charity is a constant win that increases conversion, AOV, and LTV. 

Consistently communicate to your customers, prospects, and the charity’s donors and prospective donors that there is a solid, meaningful relationship in place and that you care about a cause they care about. 

Keep nurturing the relationship as much as you can.

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