Raj Khera, Executive Vice President, and chief marketing officer at Wealth Engine, shares his tips on how nonprofits can utilize digital communications to meet their goals.
In the nonprofit world, communications have become more digital over time. Raj Khera, Executive Vice President, and chief marketing officer at Wealth Engine, a company that uses artificial intelligence to provide data and analytics to nonprofits, has seen the shift's benefits firsthand. The digital communications revolution is here – whether it’s for branding, fundraising or public relations – and we at UNDP can be at its head simply by incorporating the most effective digital communications practices into our daily workflows.
Elyse:
Welcome to Digital What? A podcast series where we join UNDP personnel and experts in conversation about the digital communications questions you’ve always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.
Today we speak with Raj Khera, Executive Vice President and Chief marketing Officer at Wealth Engine, a company that uses artificial intelligence to provide data and analytics to nonprofits to help them with fundraising.
Today, Raj is speaking with us about how digital marketing has influenced the nonprofit world. Raj may be a tech and marketing genius, but don’t let that fool you… he’s also lived a pretty colorful life as a drummer in a Bollywood band.
Raj:
The one time I was doing the show in Philadelphia and the show is like a three-hour set. We finished the show and we're done. We're exhausted. But the people that hired us to do the show did not want us to stop. So they said, look, we're going to start taking care of you. You just keep playing. So what they started doing was throwing $1 bills on the floor of the stage. And it's kind of interesting because, you know, three hours into the show, a lot of them have been drinking a lot. And so they didn't remember how much money they'd thrown. And so weird, we just kept on playing and playing. At the end we collected all these fives and 20s and 10s because they ran out of ones. It was actually kind of funny to watch because as a band we're actually probably the few sober people left. So we could play this at the full set.
Elyse:
So, how do say, the worlds of Bollywood music and non-profits intersect? Well for the show to go on, both often depend on their audience’s support and financial backing. Raj says that in the nonprofit world, this is especially true.
Raj:
If they're donating to you, they want to know what you're using the money for. They want to know the impact that you're having. And so as we talked about stories that you share, that that's really valuable.
But of course, we've got social media, we've got other forms of digital communication. They're really changing the way people get information. There's this morning briefings people signed up for just to get an alert about what's going on. And so all that's done by e-mail or in some cases even through text. But it's all digital. It's really transforming the way nonprofits communicate.
Elyse:
It’s good to start with the basics. Raj suggests one of the most consistent channels to reach your audience is through email marketing. There’s a strategy to it.
Raj:
E-mail is a big form of communication. And people do sign up for newsletters. The big thing that you can do is time your emails. So when you send an email message out, if you send it to a group on, say, a Friday afternoon, there is a very strong likelihood that that message is going to get a much lower response rate because people are packing up for the weekend, they're going away. Then by the time Monday comes on there, or maybe they're checking their email later on, but it gets kind of buried. You know, it's not really top of mind. So if you want to send an important, important business related communications, you probably want to send that on either a Sunday evening because oftentimes executives and other higher level people who are planning the week out managers, things like that, oftentimes check their emails to plan their week out after dinner on Sunday. That's actually an interesting tidbit that we found when we researched this data. We actually did a study of over 1 billion emails and we found that that was one of the key times to send. The other times are before or right after work on Mondays and Tuesdays. So 7:30 in the morning to maybe 8:00 or after or say 4:00, 4:30. Those also get good open rates because people tend to wind down the day and they're like, OK, we get it. All right. And they're not fighting fires that they have out throughout the day. They're actually able to spend a little bit more time. And so those time slots tend to work a little bit better. Now, on the flip side of this, if you wanted to share a heartwarming story, something that could help carry somebody through the weekend, sending something on a Thursday, for example, would be better. And in such cases, maybe even on a Friday, I wouldn't send a business-related communication on Friday. But maybe a heartwarming story about an impact you just had that could be affective. So timing is pretty important for when you send your communications based on this type of communication you’re sending.
Elyse:
And if your audience is connected with their hearts to your cause, they will want to hear from you.
Raj:
They're going to want to hear from you in different channels. They'll follow you on Twitter, they will follow you on Facebook. If you have a story they'll share it with other people. So the big thing you want to do and this hasn't changed regardless of media. This is the same from traditional marketing in print to television to digital. You must have a story. You must connect with people's hearts, because when you connect with their heart, that's when they start to open up. And you can actually have an army of your biggest fans being your champions. You know, if you post something about a wonderful story that's heartwarming on social media, people will then share it. And so then you get an expanded reach, much more so than you could with just print, because people wouldn't be saying, hey, look, I got this wonderful postcard and passed it around to people, you know, we just don't do that. But on the other hand, if you've got a really heartwarming e-mail or you saw a video and that really connected with you, you'll probably share it with your community, with your friends, your social circle. And it's very easy to do it digital.
Elyse:
Next is social media. You just need to know where on social media, you’re most likely to find your audience.
Raj:
People are on different types of social media. You really should find what resonates with folks. For example, if you're targeting a younger bracket, they tend to be on Instagram. They tend to be on Snapchat. Number one TikTok. if you're targeting a little bit of an older bracket Facebook seems to be the dominant platform. If you want to try professionals LinkedIn clearly a dominant platform there. There are tools that are out there where you can just type in your message once and they'll get broadcast to these different channels that you've got.
Elyse:
When publishing content across various social media platforms, you also want to think about aesthetics. Think like a brand. What brands are most appealing to you? What are they doing that attracts your attention?
Raj:
So you would one have one consistent look and feel that maps the organizational look and feel. And so you designers, graphic designers can help reinforce the brand carried over from what is normally print and other media into the digital world. So your Web site, your color scheme, your color palette, things like that should be standardized across the platform. And then you've got templates inside there that people can pull down and say, okay, this is my newsletter template, this is my general communications template. This is a quick announcement template. So you've got different messaging that you can send out. And that way everything looks cohesive. It's branded properly. It's got a consistent look and feel and it doesn't look like it's all over the place.
Elyse:
To keep things consistent, it’s also helpful to have a social media posting set of guidelines for every department.
Raj:
It's almost like a checklist that they can just pin up on their board. So they know here's the thing that you need to make sure before any message goes out and then clearly provide training to individuals so that you've got that messaging clearly articulated so that you minimize the risk of anyone making a mistake.
Elyse:
Personalizing your messages is also important because it makes your audience feel like you are talking directly with them.
Raj:
So this is where knowing your audience is going to be a key factor. And so, for example, if somebody sent me a message about golfing, I would find it interesting. But I'd say I've got two kids. I've got, you know, I do other things on the weekends. I don't have time to spend golfing so that that type of message will be completely lost on me. And so, however, if they sent me something about drums, I would actually like that, you know, it'd be pretty neat. So, knowing what people want is important.
Elyse:
Luckily, there’s technology out there to find out if your messages are resonating with the people that you’re sending them to.
Raj:
So that's part of personalization. The reason this is really important is that when people get emails, what's happening is that Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft, anybody who manages emails, they're actually tracking whether Emails get opened or not. What that means is if people are not opening a message or they are clicking delete in microseconds, just getting with the message, they know and they think that that message may be spam or irrelevant to that audience. And so rather than future messages going into the inbox, they sometimes get routed to the bulk folder. And then you wonder when you send a message, well, why did somebody get it? It's because your message was not resonating. So you really want to make sure that you're what's called an open rate is as high as possible. Good open rates hover anywhere between like twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen percent or more. Anything below 8 percent open rates, you probably want to tweak the messaging. So when you find that they have that engagement, the more connected to you, they're more tied to you going to do more for you.
Elyse:
If people are not opening up your messages, sometimes it’s as simple as tweaking your subject line in an email. Making such adjustments is easy. You just need to know what potential pitfalls to look out for when you are crafting your message.
Raj:
You really have to look at your numbers constantly when you start to see things like open rates decline or perhaps a high number of unsubscribes so people have been saying hey I don't want this anymore. That's important. Also, people if click on the report spam button in their inbox thinking that your messages are spam, that's also of concern. So there’s lots of things that you have to watch for. But putting somebody in charge that really understands the industry, understands what the right metrics should be, can perhaps flag areas where additional training is needed so that they can shape the conversations that you're having with your audience. I think those are very important things to keep in mind throughout the whole process. The upside potential here is massive because you get the data almost instant instantaneously.
Elyse:
All things considered, adopting digital communication into our work lives makes a lot of sense at UNDP. The speed at which we can get information now has changed everything.
As Raj expressed, we have to embrace it as an organization.
Raj:
The digital revolution is here. If you think about what is in your pocket right now, it's a smartphone and that's how you get a lot of your information. All this digital transformation is happening. If you're not part of it you will get left behind. I mean… don't you want to feel that what you're doing is making a difference? How do you actually know that with print? You do to some degree, but you really know that with digital because the numbers are there. You can tell if someone's opening a message, if somebody is clicking. If somebody is sharing it fun on social media. You can see if people are quote-unquote liking what you're posting. So you can tell instantaneously what is resonating with your audience and you can use that to tweak your messaging down the road much, much faster. So if you're reluctant to get into digital marketing or digital communications, I understand. I understand it's hard to learn something new but embrace it and you'll find that you'll have so much more opportunity going forward. You'll be able to be much more effective at your job. And you'll be, you'll feel the reward because you can see oh wow, I did something based on this data that I saw and it helped us get to this higher level. So I would say embrace it and move forward.
Elyse:
This episode of Digital What!? is produced by Oscar Durand and myself. Our theme music is by Lemon Guo, and additional music is by Chris Zabriskie, and Epidemic Sound, and sound design by myself. Special thanks to our expert, Raj Khera from Wealth Engine for taking the time to speak with us. To listen and subscribe go to wherever you find your podcasts or DigitalNow dot UNDP dot org.
I’m Elyse Blennerhassett. Stay with us.