Ready to connect with donors in a new and exciting way? A chatbot may not be the first thing you think of, but it can be a surprisingly effective way to engage your social media followers, website visitors, and more. Read on to learn eight ways chatbots help nonprofits grow.
In a perfect world, your job as a nonprofit involves gathering plentiful donations. Unfortunately, our world is not perfect so you need to do some outreach as well. As the world is changing, you should embrace top-performing digital marketing tools.
Do you want to get the most out of the fundraising season? You need to know the magic words that increase donations. But they don’t have to be spoken by a person. Since over half of global internet users are on Facebook, chatbots can be a great engagement tool. Here’s how you can use them to engage donors.
While older generations prefer to talk over the phone or engage after seeing a printed ad, many millennials and Gen Z prefer talking to companies on social media. This is a great opportunity to connect to younger audiences.
Even though many people believe Millennials and Gen Z to be lazy and entitled, they’re on a par with the Greatest Generation when it comes to charity work. 10% more Millennials contribute to charity than the Baby Boomers. Gen Z is also more likely to be involved in volunteer work. They’re also keen on using the Facebook Fundraiser tool.
Source: Facebook
Both of these generations check their social media accounts more than they do email, so chatbots are ideal for engaging them. Here’s how to appeal to young people in the conversation:
If you have a Facebook chatbot, you can run an ad campaign that takes users to Messenger rather than to a website.
A click-to-messenger ad is your regular Facebook ad that will show on the feed of a person who Facebook believes may want to talk to you. However, instead of taking them to your website, it takes them to your company’s Messenger. The chatbot takes off from there.
To make this effective, you need to target the right audience and set the right goals. While your audience would depend on the type of NGO you run, your goals should remain the same. Your ad campaign objectives should be set to “Messages.”
Source: Facebook
This will automatically set the ad set goals to Click to Messenger. You can also choose Conversions if you are tracking them with Facebook Pixel. Then, you can leave the ad placement set on automatic or choose the specific places where you want to see your ads displayed based on the audience.
Keep the message of this ad engaging to increase CTR. Ask a question or provide an intriguing line at the end of the ad, and more people will head over to the Messenger. For instance, you could end the ad with “Find out how you can help instantly.”
You can A/B test different ad texts to see what formula engages your audience the most.
You can go further and run an in-Messenger ad campaign. This type of ad shows up as a sponsored message in a person’s Messenger app instead of their feed. This is what it can look like.
A chatbot is necessary for this type of campaign because customers who get a surprise message from a company would expect you to answer immediately. Often, it’s just impossible for an NGO that doesn’t have the funding to hire people to man Facebook Messenger 24/7.
This type of ad campaign supports Messages, Traffic, and Conversion objectives. Set any of these goals when creating a new campaign, and set the ad placement to sponsored messages.
Since the message would appear in a user’s private messages, it will be cut short as you see on the screenshot above. The most important thing for this type of ad is to make the most of the 30 characters Facebook gives you to impress the audience.
Pro tip: If your nonprofit is in the education sector, an AI chatbot can really enhance student’s learning experience. Here are some use cases that you can explore for AI chatbots for education.
This will not only improve the overall educational experience but also save a lot of time and increase productivity.
You don’t need to launch an ad campaign to put a chatbot to good use. It can show amazing results on your nonprofit’s Facebook page. Set up the Messenger to open automatically and greet customers, and you’ll receive much more engagement.
Go over to your Facebook page, hit the “Settings” button, and choose “Messaging.” Set “Show greeting” to on. Create a message, and your customers will see a greeting whenever they visit the page.
Here’s how this would appear – on a desktop.
Source: U-Report Global/Facebook
Since people will be accessing your page 24/7, you can’t expect to answer all of them. Set up a bot that would steer a conversation, and your team can focus on more important tasks.
It can even be a very simple bot like this.
Source: U-Report Global/Facebook
It grabs the person’s contacts and offers browsing options. This helps the customer find what they’re looking for faster and makes sure you can contact them late.
If you open the Messaging folder in business page settings, you’ll see the option to add Facebook Messenger on your website. On its own, this may be a good idea. Adding it to your website is easy as there is usually an app or plugin available for website builders like WordPress or Wix.
It’s just as good as any other live chat software, but it grabs so much more data from leads. Combine it with a chatbot, and it becomes the perfect way to engage website visitors.
Click on the “Add Messenger to your website” button, and you’ll go through a couple of screens like this. In the end, you’ll get a code that you can embed on your website.
Whether you’re using a Facebook bot or a custom one, you can integrate it on your nonprofit website. Set the bot to greet visitors and offer to start a conversation. Since the bot answers instantly, more people will be engaged.
When you add Messenger to the website, you can also place its button on pop-ups.
The problem many websites face is that users can’t find the information they’re looking for. Some don’t even want to look and prefer to use voice search or get answers immediately by talking to a representative on a live chat.
You can curb that with a chatbot, since it will answer all commonly asked questions. Set it to send “Can you find what you’re looking for?” messages when a new visitor enters the website to help them navigate.
If you want to take automation to another level, send this message to show that user behavior has been lost. Deliver this message at the micro-moment of customer need, and more customers will integrate with the bot.
For instance, you can set up the bot to send this message when a new visitor spends a few minutes browsing the website but without spending more than 30 seconds on one page or using the search button.
Email marketing is one of the best tools for both acquisition and retention. But that’s not because email is a magic media. It’s because newsletter subscribers are interested in your brand, and consistently receive messages with content from you.
This means they see you as the authority and agree to communicate with you, which makes them more likely to donate. The same is true about Messenger. With a chatbot set to send people who’ve contacted you new articles from your website, you can use Messenger as a substitute for email. This will remind them about your NGO and spread your perspective on issues that need donors’ attention.
Each customer conversation with a bot is a lot like a sales conversation. It doesn’t matter how the customer starts the conversation with the bot since it can turn them from a potential donor to an actual one. The “donor funnel” actually looks very much like a typical sales funnel (awareness > interest > decision > action).
One way of doing this is by giving the recipients of an ad campaign a “Donate Now” button as this commercial company does with “Shop now.”
Source: Charity:Water/Facebook
That may feel too pushy, though. There’s a more advanced approach, but it will require you to experiment with the bot.
You need to split test your chatbot to see what pattern of conversation converts more donors.
Now that you have plenty of ways to engage potential donors with chatbots, you can save money on advertising and increase conversions. You can even create your first chatbot for free or make use of an NGO discount. Here’s a list of tools you can use to do that.
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