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Charity marketing strategy: how to raise funds using a lottery and raffle campaign with inbound marketing

A Charity Marketing Strategy: How to Run A Lottery And Raffle Campaign Using Inbound Marketing

Download The Complete Guide as an eBook Table of Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Benefits of Inbound Marketing
  3. Effective Inbound Marketing Strategies
  4. How to Make Inbound Marketing Work For You
  5. Set Up An Online Charity Lottery
  6. 5 Ways to Run A Successful Charity Raffle

1. Introduction

In this digital age, majority of the charities and nonprofits still resort to traditional marketing methods, such as, direct mail, print ads or expensive pay per click management campaigns that all too often leave them with empty pockets. But with billions of people entering the digital world, inbound marketing is not only cheaper but a faster way to reach out to the right audience with the right tools.
Inbound marketing enables charities and nonprofits to reach out to potential donors who are already looking for reliable and most trusted charities online. These best thing about these strategies is that, they do not use up charity funds nor resources reserved for running the organisation.
Writing on a laptop lottery

2. Benefits of Inbound Marketing for Charities

Why Should Charities and Nonprofits Choose Inbound Marketing Over Traditional Charity Marketing?

There are over 1.1 million nonprofits today in the United States and 195,289 charities in the UK alone. With a majority of them using traditional marketing methods to reach out to their donors through emails and direct mailing. Your charity needs a far more effective way to engage and stand out from your competition. You must be able draw donors towards your creative selling proposition. Inbound marketing empowers charities and nonprofits to increase awareness about their causes and initiatives and their services to humanity in a cost effective manner. Inbound marketing also enables them to build a robust online community of active people who are passionate and supportive about their mission.

How Do Charities and Nonprofits Benefit from Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a comparative low cost and efficient method to promote charities rather than sinking money into outbound marketing campaigns that may not always help them reach their target market. An effective campaign run by an experienced Inbound Marketing agency lets charities drive qualified and organic traffic to their website. For instance, inbound marketing attracts supporters to your cause and charity rather than you searching for them but running advertising campaigns. Moreover, with inbound marketing you can connect with people who seek a reliable organisation to donate funds to.
Benefits of Inbound Marketing

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3. Effective Inbound Marketing Strategies

Following are some of the most common and effective inbound marketing strategies and the best way to utilise them for your charity organisations.

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation gives charities the power to rise to the top of search engines and grab attention of their prospects faster than their competitors. By implementing and effective SEO service on your website, you optimise your content using targeted keywords and phrases that can draw potential donors onto your site and get more information about you and possibly how to donate funds online as well. An SEO strategy also helps ensure that when potential donors and interested supporters search charities using those keywords, your charity organisation will show up on the search engine in the top results. This way you are able to increase the likelihood that prospective donors will click on your website link and would be interested in finding more information about you.
Reference: Read more on Search Engine Optimisation here: SEO London

2. Content Marketing

Charities need to have relevant, engaging and humanising content, which would provide potential donors a reason to show their support and  really care about your cause. Your charity’s content strategy must be able to entertain and inform your potential donors simultaneously. Start by considering what your potential donors would want to know about your charity organisation and then curate compelling content that would help you gain their trust, support and encouragement and invite them to get involved in your initiative as well.
Content Marketing

Inbound marketing is an efficient and effective way to to ensure that individuals who are searching online for volunteer opportunities can seek out your charity organisation and join you in your cause. A good content strategy also will provide your target audience and prospective volunteers to take the necessary steps and get involved in your cause.
Charities must constantly publish fresh, engaging and quality content that provides value to their target audience, charity organisations can efficiently position themselves online as industry leaders and gain trust of potential donors by projecting a positive image through inbound marketing.

Videos

In addition to that, charity organisations can publish content that empower donors to tell their stories and the initiatives that have helped change hundreds of lives. Many charity organisations produce videos since they are powerful pieces of content, and can easily go viral if they carry a powerful message, within a matter of minutes. Using videos as part of your content strategy where you tell stories of donor impact will attract more donors and supporters to your organisation.

Blogs

Charities can also post these same donor impact stories on their blog and make their efforts public to gain more donors and volunteers.
Blogging also helps charities rank higher on search engine results with regards to their mission. Charities can invite their volunteers, donors and supporters to share their stories and how through your organisation they have been able to make a difference in the life of others.
Reference: Blogging for Charities & Non Profits – An Introductory Guide
Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy Blog
 
3. Email Campaigns
Using email campaigns effectively enables charities to convert their donors into loyal advocates. Whenever an individual makes a contribution online, make sure that you send a thank you message along with their donation receipt. In the next few days, send them a follow up email containing additional information about the best way to share the mission values of your charity with others.
You can also send them information regarding how they can volunteer with your charity, become an activist for your organisation or start a fundraiser for you in their community.  Always make sure to follow up with your donors with additional information about your organisation and its latest activities to keep them engaged.

Download The Complete Guide as an eBook

4. How to Make Inbound Marketing Work For You

How Best To Make Inbound Marketing Work For Your Charity?

Many charity organisations are beginning to see the effectiveness of marketing themselves online and using the tools and techniques of inbound marketing to build up their online presence and gain the trust of their donors. But question arises on how to ensure that your charity and its message is being received by your target audience?
How to make Inbound Marketing Work For You
Inbound marketing directs your charity to maintain a strong presence online in order to attract potential donors. When you use target keywords and phrases in your content and meta description, your target audience can automatically reach your site by searching for the same keywords and phrases on the search engine. When your target audience clicks on your website link, they can get more information about your charity organisation, its mission and its latest activities. On your website, you can place multiple calls to action to encourage and persuade your leads to take the next step and become a volunteer or donor.
Inbound marketing helps your charity organisation stand out from other charities and ensures that you are not wasting all your marketing budget and hard earned donations promoting your campaigns to people who are not genuinely interested in your cause or getting involved in your initiatives.

The Role Lottery And Raffle Campaigns Are Playing For Charity organisations

There is an increasing number of charity organisations that are tuning to raffles and lotteries as a way of creating steady money to keep their organisation running. Using this form of incentivised giving, makes lotteries one of the most effective, quickest and outstanding fundraising method in the present times.
Here are a few reasons why you as a charity organisation should start a charity lottery:
Lottery and Raffle Campaigns

Reference: The National Lotteries Commission
How to make Inbound Marketing Work for you

5. Set Up An Online Charity Lottery

How To Set Up An Online Charity Lottery?

As a charity organisation, you are legally free to set up your own online lottery and take the responsibility of marketing your charity lottery to your donors, supporters, volunteers, as well as, corporate supporters and other members from the general public using inbound marketing strategies. There are a number of specialised software packages available that enable charity organisations to import their electronic standing orders and direct debit files. Most charity organisations engage a specialist company to look after the operations and carry out their online lottery efficiently.
As a charity organisation, you can also join a joint online lottery scheme. For your first charity lottery, this could be a good option, especially if you are unsure of how your donors and supporter base will respond to your online lottery venture. Once you have received the response and feedback, you can switch over to running your very own online lottery and gain all the support you need from your target audience with a guaranteed prize fund.
Set Up an Online Charity Lottery
How Beneficial Setting Up A Charity Lottery Really Is?
The biggest advantage of having an online charity lottery is that you can attract a lot of players and you can also predict how many players will help you in generating income in the long run. Most charity lotteries usually cost players £1 to £2 per week to play. But its gives a great incentive to players and enables the charity to earn a lot of money annually. Some large charities as well as hospices have made more than a million pounds a year through online charities and the inbound marketing strategy they use to promote their efforts is by creating and sharing content about winners which makes for good PR and attracts more donors to the lottery.
Charities that have a very strong local supporter base, for example, a hospice often have 20% of their supporters signing up and playing their online lotteries.

The Process of Setting Up and Registering Your Online Lottery

Some feel that the process of setting up and registering a lottery is tedious and extremely difficult and time consuming, but it usually depends on the number of players. Smaller lotteries that involve fewer than 4,000 players who pay £1 a week, only have to register with a local authority in their town. This is a rather easy and quick process and charity organisations can also register themselves for an online lottery by applying online. The application fee for registering and setting up an online charity lottery is £40, with a recurring annual renewal fee of £20.
If the value of lottery draw is to exceed £20,000, or £250,000 in one year, the online charity lottery will have to be registered with the Gambling Commission. The commission will issue a license to the charity to legally run their online lottery.
Process of Setting Up and Registering Your Online Lottery
Using Inbound Marketing Techniques To Market Your Online Charity Lottery
Promoting your online charity lottery should be an integral part of your inbound marketing plan. You should launch your lottery promotional campaign three months before the first lottery draw date; this will allow you to recruit new members to your online lottery and help you reach a break even target as well. If in case, you are not able to reach your desired number or membership levels, you can postpone the draw or launch another aggressive marketing campaign that will help your charity organisation recruit new members and ensure that your only lottery will not run into a loss.
Reference: You can use your Google Grant budget to promote your Lottery.
The most successful and popular promotional tool for online lotteries is a simple leaflet with an enclosed application form for people who are interested in signing up as members. These forms are often mailed to the warmest and kindest supporters of charities. Telemarketing is also a great method that has been adopted by multiple charities of all sizes. There are companies in the UK that specialise in telemarketing for charity organisations, and they can be hired for run and carry out promotional campaigns for online charity lotteries in order to attract new members and also convert existing members.
Charity Events and Campaigns
Charity events and campaigns, such as, summer galas and fundraising balls should also be used as a golden opportunity to promote your online charity lottery. The staff of a charity organisation should be trained in recruiting new members and must be ready to guide them on how the lottery works and will benefit them.
Social media marketing and use of your website to promote your online charity lottery is also a cost effective, efficient and easy way to inform your donors, supporters and volunteers about the upcoming online lottery, but this should not be the only marketing strategy to be used, instead it should work alongside other promotional methods.

6. 5 Ways to Run A Successful Charity Raffle

Raffles are a fantastic way for charity organisations to raise additional income to find their causes or initiatives. Today there are thousands upon thousands of charity organisations in the UK alone, that run raffles every year and make millions for good causes. According to a research, approximately 21% of all the UK donors had bought raffle tickets in the year 2014.
Here is what you need to get started on your first raffle and ensure its success in the long run:

  1. Get Licence For Running A Raffle

You can run raffles as part of your fundraising event or a campaign outside of your fundraising event. If you are running a raffle as part of an event, you do not need a license. However, if you were to launch a stand alone raffle, you will definitely need a license. You can obtain a raffle license from your local authority and you can also use this same license to run a lottery as well, where other players can join your online charity lottery in a weekly or monthly draw and you can award them prizes of up to £25,000.

  1. Always Source Your Raffle Prizes

Donated prizes are always great to win and also very cost effective on the part of the charity organisation. When sourcing raffle prizes, always think about the people who will be buying the tickets to your raffle and also the type of prizes that will instantly attract them. It is often observed that the more unusual the prize is, the better it sounds to the people. You can start by asking your corporate supporters, volunteers, donors or partners regarding the prize. Cash prizes are always effective, but for some charity organisations they might not be so cost-effective.
Plan Ahead Of Your Raffle

  1. Plan Ahead For Your Raffle

Having a clear raffle plan is key to achieving your goals. An effective strategy will not only save you time but it will also improve your raffle and lottery promotional campaigns in the future. You can start by accurately pricing your raffle tickets so that they help you reach your fundraising goals. Research your target market, and know exactly who you want to target with your campaign, what you want to achieve from it and how you are going to achieve that, and you will be on your way to running a successful promotional campaign for your raffle in no time.

  1. Promote Your Raffle Campaign With Efficient Inbound Marketing Strategies

Once you have everything noted down and ready to begin. You should start promoting your raffle three months prior to the first draw as noted above, since it will give a boost to your online marketing campaign. If you are having an online raffle, you should simply put the URL into all your communication, such as, social media, email marketing communications as well as your official charity website.
Make Sure You Have A Valid Legal License To Run A Raffle
Do not forget any legal requirement for running your charity raffle. You must have a license if you plan on running a stand alone raffle for your charity. Following these steps will help you run your online raffle campaign successfully and achieve your target fundraising goals. Using inbound marketing tools and techniques are not only cost effective for charities but they also help them enhance their online presence.
You can download this complete article as a free eBook, here:

Charity Marketing With Lotteries And Raffles
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Author

This guide was written in collaboration with Edwin Raymond, Managing Director of Floodlight New Marketing and Whitehat who are SEO experts at a London based marketing agency. Floodlight, a B2B Inbound Marketing Agency, specialises in the Technology, Manufacturing and Electronics industries. Their goal is the unification of sales and marketing efforts helping growing companies to drive better customer engagement, forge stronger relationships and accelerate sales results with a strong ROI.

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