The inspiration for these Marketing Matters comes from an article that was available several years ago at NewMediaCampaigns.com titled “10 Ways to Market Your Non-Profit Online.” (The page is no longer available.)\u00a0 Since your school is a non-profit, I’ve tweaked them a bit so that these items relate directly to your school and what you need to do to market it effectively in today’s technology-rich environment.<\/p>\n
7) Designate a day for supporters to change their profile pictures to represent your school<\/strong><\/p>\n Use social media to announce upcoming events and news about your school, but also use social media to let your advocates show their support!\u00a0 Designate a significant day (perhaps your patron saint’s feast day, or the anniversary of your school) where people are encouraged to change their avatar or profile picture to your school’s logo, or place badges on their Web site that represent your school.\u00a0 Remember that the networks of your supporters are much wider that your school’s network alone.\u00a0 Use that power!<\/p>\n 8) Utilize a mobile text messaging campaign<\/strong><\/p>\n While email campaigns are still an effective marketing technique, the average open rate for anon-profit email campaign is only 27.66%.<\/p>\n Text messaging however, is still uncluttered and 97% of all marketing messages are opened – 83% of them in the first hour!<\/p>\n When there are Spring gala events on the horizon, it helps to know that there are usually many gala events held during the Spring.\u00a0 As a personal anecdote, a few years ago, my nephew on my wife’s mother’s side of the family decided to postpone their wedding from the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend 2021 to the summer of 2022.\u00a0 A few weeks later, a cousin on my wife’s father’s side of the family passed away, and a memorial service was been scheduled – for the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.\u00a0 Texting helped to facilitate that communication to family members.<\/p>\n Realizing the power of texting, send out a reminder text to registered attendees a few weeks, and a few days in advance of your big event AND on the morning of the day it happens!\u00a0 If, for some reason, they can’t make it, they can make a contribution via text, or could forward their reservation to other friends who might be able to attend.\u00a0 You’ve reserved a space for them, and there’s nothing worse than having an event, and people don’t show up to create empty seats (think “Parable of the Wedding Feast”).<\/p>\n When your school has its Annual Appeal, allow your supporters to donate to your school by texting.\u00a0 By all means, Do Not Spam<\/strong> individuals who have entrusted you with their cell phone numbers (as we currently see happening with political candidates).\u00a0 You must have a significant reason to text them.\u00a0 Because of its incredibly high open rate, text messages can be a powerful way to reach your audience, but people guard their mobile number more carefully than they do their email address.\u00a0 Because email addresses can be free today, texting usually has a “plan” associated with it which the customer pays for.\u00a0 The Federal Trade Commission has a number to which someone can forward a phone number from which they received a spam message.\u00a0 The FTC can then investigate the matter, and may result in punitive actions since doing so can be considered to be fraud.<\/p>\n Two more tips to round out the 10 come your way next week!<\/p>\n \u00a9 Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2011-2026 (Original Publication Date: 201103021)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The inspiration for these Marketing Matters comes from an article that was available several years ago at NewMediaCampaigns.com titled “10 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MM-Purple.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ggCS-MQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3028"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8136,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028\/revisions\/8136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}