What is digital marketing?

This domain provides advice and information to help you promote your organisation and fundraise online.

The digital marketing domain covers all aspects of promoting your organisation and fundraising online.

It includes:

Websites – how to take control of your online presence and how to create and manage your website.
Email marketing – how to use and track EDMs (electronic direct mails) and wrap this into your marketing and content strategy.
Social media – create a strategy, build a community and leverage your platforms for campaigns.
Event management systems – streamline your events advertising, communication with attendees and payments.
Fundraising – use digital technologies to increase your donations and access grants.

We’ve summarised our not-for-profit digital capability levels and requirements in the table below so you can understand what we recommend to progress through the levels.

Digital marketing maturity model

	Basic	Intermediate	Advanced
Websites	Your website exists, but needs an update and may not be mobile friendly or well-optimised for search engines.	You have a responsive, engaging website that tells your story, can be easily shared and plays a critical role in attracting supporters and clients to your organisation. You use your not-for-profit Google Ad Grant to promote your work and services.	You actively monitor website engagement and refine what you are doing to improve engagement and search rankings. You appear on the first page of relevant search results and attract a lot of visitors to your site who engage well.
Email marketing	You have an electronic newsletter that is sent to subscribers on a semi-regular basis.	You have identified the purpose of your email marketing efforts, track your outcomes, and use an EDM tool such as MailChimp, Campaign Monitor or similar.	Your communications are planned and integrated, for example your email marketing strategy and content strategy has been developed to align with your website and social media marketing strategies. You track user engagement and content interest to prioritise content development and engage more effectively with your supporters.
Social media	You use one or two social media platforms, but often find it difficult to post engaging content regularly	You have a social media strategy that articulates why you use social media, which platforms you use and your targets. You regularly post engaging content which is shared and liked by a good number of people.	You engage with large, active online communities through social media who actively and measurably help you achieve your mission.
Event management systems	You run some events and may use Facebook along with some manual processes to manage bookings.	When you run events, either online (like webinars or remote fundraisers) or in-person events, you now how to advertise them within your existing networks as well as reach new audiences. You can take bookings and communicate with attendees using event booking systems like Eventbrite or Trybooking. You can take and manage payments.	As well as having a system to manage events effectively including advertising, communicating, tickets and payments, you connect data with other systems.
Fundraising	You take donations through your website and track current and prospective donors through a spreadsheet.	You monitor relevant channels for appropriate grants and are relatively successful when you decide to apply. You have processes in place to foster potential donors and leverage multiple social media platforms as well as email to strengthen your donor pipeline through fundraising systems.	You use a sophisticated system, such as a CRM, to track contacts and engagement across multiple platforms (social, events, email, donations, etc), and have explored mobile fundraising and crowdfunding options. You have a large group of donors who support you regularly and you understand them well. You know how to expand your reach.