How to Use Pardot for Fundraising as a Not-for-Profit

This blog was written before Pardot was renamed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. You can read more about the name change and what it means here.

We often talk about Pardot for typical B2B or B2C businesses but not-for-profit organisations can use the marketing automation software in a unique way to reap the benefits for marketing activity too. Specifically, using Pardot for fundraising can be a highly effective way to recruit new and repeat donors.

It goes without saying that fundraising is a crucial avenue of support for NFPs. A lot of hard work goes into developing campaigns and communication strategies to reach your audience and encourage donations and for many, the organisation simply cannot function without well-run and successful fundraising.

In this blog, we’ll show you how using Pardot for fundraising can help your organisation get the funds you need to deliver those all-important services.

Using Pardot for not-for-profit fundraising success:

• Automate your fundraising journey
• Correctly attribute your fundraising success
• Take advantage of grading and scoring
• Optimise your email marketing journeys

1. Automate your fundraising activity

Fundraising can come in all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to reaching your donors online it makes sense to lean into automation to help get the job done. Pardot is designed to make your marketing activity more efficient and effective to ultimately convert more leads (aka donors).

By using Pardot for fundraising you can automate your fundraising campaigns and requests for donations from both individuals and organisations, in accordance with your overall fundraising strategy. 

Most NFPs send timely and pre-scheduled email campaigns to drive fundraising pushes. However, consider that there are potential donors coming to your website every day and for those who already exist as contacts in Pardot, it makes sense to trigger an automated email based on their website behaviour. Why wait until your next scheduled campaign to request a donation when you can strike when the iron is hot?

2. Correctly attribute your fundraising success

The key to consistent growth for any organisation is monitoring and reviewing the success (and failures) of your campaigns. The same rule applies for NFPs, as regular assessments of your campaigns helps to inform future decisions and strategies.

If you’re not using it already, Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is a valuable integration available for NFPs. Designed specifically with nonprofit organisations in mind, the NPSP gives you and your team a unified view of all your marketing activity and engagement with constituents. Using this integration also helps you make more informed decisions backed by data.

Ultimately, however you are using Pardot for fundraising, it gives you the ability to track campaigns and review what worked and what didn’t, making it easier to understand what you can do differently next time - or continue doing if something is bringing you results!

A final tip here: to help make it easier to assess your success, always be sure to set up your folder structure and associate your new Pardot asset with the most relevant campaign, in line with best practice.

3. Take advantage of grading and scoring

The ability to grade and score prospective donors is a game-changer. By assigning points to prospect behaviour and interactions you deem valuable (such as signing a petition, or downloading a PDF from your website), you will have a better understanding of how warm or cold a potential donor is.

Better prospect scoring and grading will give you greater insight into who you are reaching out to and what will resonate most with them (for example, a direct phone call, email, or other mode of contact). This is particularly useful when determining who you should reach out to and how to help secure donations during significant fundraising campaigns.

While it can sometimes be a complex endeavour, with some best practice knowledge under your belt it will help you to implement better segmentation as part of your email marketing activity.

4. Optimise your email marketing journeys 

With a better idea of your audience base and who you’re talking to based on prospect grading and scoring, you can also create customised and optimised customer journeys to reach new and existing donors based on their relationship with your organisation. It also gives you a better indication of how to shape your messaging and calls to action.

By optimising your email marketing journeys according to what you know about your audience, you are creating more effective messaging and communications to encourage a greater likelihood of receiving a donation.

Of course, always make sure that whatever email marketing campaign you are putting out there, that it is GDPR compliant.

Are you a not-for-profit organisation looking to improve your use of Pardot for fundraising? Our team is here to help and we offer a free audit to get you started!