What is Conversational Marketing?

Many organizations believe that making a phone call is the same as having a conversation. Unfortunately, things are not that simplistic anymore. When recruiting donors, a one-size-fits all approach is no longer effective. Use these tips to improve the quality of the donor conversations you are having:

1.) Start with the donor

It is Incept’s belief that conversational marketing requires a deeper understanding of your donors’ needs and preferences. To truly have a conversation, you must engage your audience using numerous mediums, listen to what they are saying, or not saying, and ensure the communication is flowing…both ways. The days of communicating with donors strictly based on your goals are over. It is important to understand why your donors are engaged and how to improve the entire donation experience.

2.) Understand that conversations are more than just phone calls

In today’s day and age conversations no longer require a telephone. The foundation for a true conversation is using a medium that is most preferred by the donor and engages them to communicate with you. This includes text messaging, personalized emails, direct mail, and social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter. To ensure your donors are being communicated with via the method they most prefer, blood centers should be using all forms of conversations, maintaining their donors’ communication preferences and using them together as a communication recipe!

Traditional “tele-recruitment” involves pulling call lists based on a specific set of criteria, usually determined by mobile drive history or current inventory levels. This type of tele-recruitment is sporadic and leaves many donors without a contact and others overwhelmed with too many donation requests.

3.) Be consistent

At Incept, we have found that consistent messaging along with providing donor preference options are the keys to building your brand, long-term growth, success, and creating stability within your inventory.

4.) Don’t limit yourself

Your conversations should start by looking at all eligible donors. That’s right, all eligible donors. Regardless of where they’ve donated in the past or what procedure they’ve given in the past. Next, analyze where they’ve given in relation to what is upcoming. Then determine what procedure is best for them to donate based on donation history, blood type, and special antigen markers.

5.) Educate and appreciate you donors often

Your initial conversation with the donor should begin with education. Education on the type of procedure that the donor is best suited for. You will find that in over half of your productive conversations your donors are willing to help where it is needed most. Those not ready to try something new should be scheduled for the procedure they’ve done in the past. Shifting your donor base to the right procedure ensures optimal inventory levels ongoing. Offering location choices to the donor let’s them know you value them and want to make their next donation as convenient as possible.

Continue educating donors on where they are needed most and make certain that in each message, they know how much they are appreciated. Allow each donor the time to process your request and accept a new procedure as their personal way of helping save lives.

Whether your center is making goal or not quite there, improving the conversations you are having with your donors will provide tremendous long-term benefits and stave off fluctuations in inventory by converting your donors to the right procedure and offering locations that are convenient for them.

I encourage you to re-examine your strategy and maximize the conversations you are having with each and every precious donor.