Digital marketing tools

Digital marketing covers all aspects of communicating and promoting your organisation purpose and activities online. This includes your website, email marketing communications, your social media channels, paid advertising, program/event management and digital fundraising. 

There are a range of resources and products available online to support your digital marketing, to make management of these processes simpler. 

Website management

If you are exploring build a new website for the first time, or upgrading an outdated website, there are a range of different ways this can be done, our How to create your own website guide explores this process further. 

There are a range of tools available to support your website functionality and content to improve your organic listings and user experience:

• Google Analytics - is a free web analytics tool offered by Google to help you understand your users, their experience and analyse your website traffic. You can understand where your users are coming from, how they navigate through the site and how long a user stayed on your website. You can access data about your user demographics before they visit your website (e.g. their age, gender, and interests).  
• Google Tag Manager - as part of the Google Analytics suite, this feature allows you to add trackable 'tags' to any web page or app you like, without modifying code. This permits you to track conversion and site analytics to understand how your content is performing, and support remarketing.
• HotJar - this is a program that will create a heat map of your website to understand how users engage with the website, blogs and forms, and identify opportunities to improve the user experience. The heatmap functionality is offered in the HotJar free package. 

Social media management

Social media is a very exciting and ever change environment that when maintained, can communicate with your existing supporters and reach new audiences with engaging content. There are a range of available tools to aid with managing this:

• Canva Pro offer a content planner feature to aid your social media content creation and scheduling. Canva offers eligible not-for-profits their Canva Pro product at no cost. Creating multimedia on a budget explores Canva's features and eligibility further. 
• Hootsuite is designed to be a simple social media management tool for small businesses. It is simple to use and their free package is a great starting out product to make your social media management simpler.
• Loomly is a content creation and social media scheduling tool, to aid you from idea & creation to scheduling and tracking. Loomly has the added feature of building approval workflows prior to publish. Loomly pricing can be found here, and reach out to Loomly if you are eligible for a not-for-profit discount. 
• HubSpot is designed for the advanced marketers. It has a range of social media, website tracking, monitoring posting and comments, and reporting features, to support all your marketing needs. Hubspot at this stage does not offer not-for-profit discounts in Australia, they do offer free tools to trial their products. 
• Zapier is a digital marketing integration application that allows you integrate all other tools and automate that process. This can automate the flow of data between systems that do not support integrations (e.g. Facebook and Campaign Monitor). Zapier start with a basic free package, and additional discounts to eligible not-for-profits.

Email marketing management

Email marketing is the by far the most popular and effective measure to communicate with existing supporters. Email marketing provides the opportunity to share good news stories, and upcoming events that can be personalised to your various audiences. Getting started on email marketing further discusses the power of email marketing. A system to support your email communications will improve inbox delivery and the ability to segment data according to audiences and interests. 

Connecting Up offer a range of exclusive discounted products for not-for-profits: 

• Constant Contact is an online marketing platform. It includes tools to customize emails and track engagement, with additional features to collect donations. 
• Bonjoro is a online messaging and video tool, to aid your development in the creation of personalised content for your supporters. 

We have also seen a number of nor-for-profits use and be satisfied with:

• MailChimp, the most common introductory email marketing system on the market. Although limited with features, many NFPs have found that their free product is a great starting out point. 
• Ortto (previously AutoPilot), a feature rich email marketing system with strong email journey functionality to increase engagement with new or existing subscribers, Autopilot offer not-for-profits a discounted product, see here for eligibility. 
• Campaign Monitor, a strong all-in-one email marketing solution, that can build beautiful email templates and communicate your purpose all within the program. Campaign Monitor offer a discount to eligible not-for-profits on each of their packages. 

Digital advertising 

Traditional advertising, can take a great deal of time, resources and cost. However, digital marketing can be far more responsive and flexible to your audiences and result analysis, and run at a far lower cost, thanks to exclusive not-for-profit discounts. 

Google for not-for-profits offer a series of applications at no cost, this includes:

• Google Ad Grant - as part of the Google not-for-profit program, not-for-profits are eligible to a generous grant of USD $10,000 per month. This provides a opportunity for not-for-profits to access paid advertising opportunities that previously had not been able to afford. Find out more about eligibility and next steps here.
• If you are looking for support to optimise your Google Ads, Google runs a volunteer marketing immersion program, where you can receive hands-on help with your ads. 
• Youtube Nonprofit Program - as part of the Google not-for-profit program, not-for-profits are provided an opportunity to shoot, edit, and publish content within the YouTube environment, to share your stories and create a connection with supporters and donors. 

Facebook advertisement is a fantastic method to attract new supporters to your cause:

• Facebook Ad manager - similar to Google Ads, Facebook Ad manager supports paid advertisement on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network. This includes features to target and schedule ad campaigns to existing supporters and lookalike audiences. At this stage, Facebook does not offer a similar grant to Google. 

Content creation

Each of these tools above, have great benefit to your digital marketing, however the content that is presented via these channels make or break the success of the campaign. There is a great range of discounted tools available to not-for-profits to create engaging and high quality. 

Connecting Up offer a range of exclusive discounted products for not-for-profits: 

• Adobe has powerful range of software to help your not-for-profit get a headstart in designing great newsletters, websites, and publishing; telling your story with digital storytelling tools or engaging your community with fantastic photos. 
• Zoner is a photo editor, with management and sharing capabilities to support all your editing needs. 
• Fiverr is a online community website where you can find vetted freelancers to aid your content creation needs, this might be useful where you do not have the talent or resource internally to create new content. 

We have also seen a number of not-for-profits use and be satisfied with:

• Canva, a simple to use creative suite with a range of templates to aid you in your content creation. Canva offers eligible not-for-profits their Canva Pro product at no cost. Creating multimedia on a budget explores Canva's features and eligibility further. 
• Photopea, a no cost photo editor that supports formats from Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, Sketch App, Adobe XD.
• Pixlr, a photo and animation editor that enables your to use filters and templates to enhances your content
• Typito, a simple to use video editor to advance your video creation needs. Typito offers eligible not for profits a 50% discount on their subscription. Find out more about eligibility and next steps.

If you are looking for stock images or videos to add to your content explore Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels for images that align to your organisation.

There’s also a range of other products available – review the entire Connecting Up product range here.