Sean Littman: Google Ad Grants & Your Digital Marketing
Sean Littman has advice for leveraging Google’s generosity and pairing it with your own marketing to grow your email list; encourage giving; revive and cultivate your lists to expand sustainer giving; and, put the right systems in place. He also shares his favorite apps to help you along. Sean is the founder of Catch22 Nonprofit Digital.
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And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day and happy Saint Patrick’s week. And I’m very glad that uh it didn’t take me until next week to remember this, so that I’d be wishing it a week late. Not the case, not the case on time. Hope you did something special for Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of kiloscasis if I had to stomach the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to tell us what’s coming. Hey Tony, I’ll be happy to. Google ad grants and your digital marketing. Sean Lippman has advice for leveraging Google’s generosity and pairing it with your own marketing to grow your email list, encourage giving, revive and cultivate your list to expand sustainer giving, and put the right systems in place. He also shares his favorite apps to help you along. Sean is the founder of Catch 22 non-profit digital. On Tony’s take two. Tales from the gym revisiting Missus blood and soil. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is Google Ad grants and your digital marketing. What a pleasure to welcome Shawn Littman to nonprofit Radio. He is the founder of Catch 22 nonprofit digital, a leader in digital impact within the nonprofit sector. He has over a decade of experience in digital marketing, focusing on Google grants, email marketing and retention marketing tactics. Sean’s company is at catch22 nonprofit.com. And he’s on LinkedIn. Sean Lipman, welcome to nonprofit Radio. Tony, thank you for having me. I mean, it’s an absolute pleasure and I enjoyed having you on my show, and it’s always fun to be on the other side of the the microphone for a change and and having the conversations and everything like that. So really it’s an absolute pleasure to be here and I just loved how you your intro, where you’re just like so enthusiastic about it. I couldn’t get myself smiling. Listeners don’t get to see the part where I throw my arms up, but I, I do that. Yes, hello and welcome. um, yeah, I’m glad. Well, thank you, create some energy. And that’s it, that’s the key is you start off, you start off with a bang and you and you roll with it from there. You’re a big advocate of the, the Google ad grants. I know that’s a big part of your, the strategy that we’re gonna talk about. Why don’t you just acquaint folks with what that program is so everybody has a common understanding before we. Get to your advice around around using it. Sure, so Google ad grants is part of the larger program of Google for nonprofits, and Google what Google does is they offer $10,000 a month in search ad credits to nonprofits, and it’s really easy to apply and you just have to um make sure you have a website that’s verified by Google and you have, you have to have all your documentation. And you get, you can apply, it takes about 2 to 14 business days, and you get this grant that enables you to do search ads and better marketing. And we kind of stumbled upon this um by default. I’ve been in the digital space for nearly 10 years. I’ve done everything from lead generation to e-commerce and, you know, we and we kind of stumbled into this by default because we saw a hole in the nonprofit space and with Google grants. And as I mentioned, and I preface, and people always mess this up, it’s search ads. It’s not anything else within Google’s ad networks, you’re only dealing with search ads. And so search ads. are are great because the way you went at Google is being the answer to the problem that people are searching for on the internet. And when you’re creating search campaigns, people are actually in actively searching for stuff on the internet and they’re searching. Well, we’re gonna get to the details. We’re gonna get, I wanna, I wanna have a conversation with you, um. So in in terms of the documentation, I mean just applying for the program, is it, is it just essentially that you need to prove that you’re a bona fide basically, is that, is that what the application is? Yeah, basically, and it’s in any country really, um, you, you just have to show your proof of documentation. OK, OK, so in the US it would be your just your IRS, yeah, your determination letter, OK, but whatever country you’re in needs to prove that you’re a bona fide. Nonprofit and then you qualify for the $10,000 per month. But but it doesn’t stop there also because you also get Google Workspace for free for your organization so you can you can get free branded emails, so you can have your organization at your organization.org free so you’re not paying for workspace and and it’s not limited to however many people in your organization. You can have a as many people as you want on those branded emails. You also get you get a terabyte of Google Drive storage for free per user. You get Google, you get Google Maps, you get enhanced Google Maps and Google My Business, YouTube, um, YouTube, uh, Creator studio, and YouTube fundraising as well. All right. So, so we go a little deeper. Excellent. Well, Google Workspace, what is that? Is that, is that just uh your, your domain or uh emails with your domain or what, what, what, what’s the suite of Google Workspace? It’s Gmail, it’s, it’s Google Drive, it’s Google Sheets, Google, you know, Google, you know, everything within your Google that you currently are paying for, whether it’s 12 $13 a month, you also get Gemini, so you get their AI attached to that as well. Um, so pretty much anything that you’re actively using and paying for within your Gmail, within your Google, you don’t have to pay for it anymore. OK, OK, and this is all part of the, the, the, the, the program that so Google, the ad grants is just is one part of it. I didn’t realize that. I didn’t realize it was different than that. OK, yeah, but, um, right, there’s a lot there. Uh, so the, the, the Google grant, the ad grant is $10,000 per month, is that right? OK. Can we, can we use that much? Uh, I mean, when we’re getting started. Are we just kind of ramping up, you know, getting to that point because that, it sounds like that’s a lot to, that’s a lot to manage. It’s really not if you break it down and if you do it the smart way, and I, I let’s let’s go, let’s go into the smart way for because we’re we’re gonna be using this to grow our email list. So I I I’ll kind of preface a little bit um that we, you know, like I said, we got into this by default because we noticed people were doing this the wrong way. And a lot of people were getting the Google grants and they were just using it to throw throw ads at the wall and see what sticks, and they’re trying to use it for direct donation campaigns. But as I always like to tell people, nobody on the internet is looking for your organization on Google to give you money. It’s just not happening, not in a million years. So how do you use the Google grant effectively, and how do you get to that 10 spend out $10,000 a month? Very simple, you have to have a good funnel, a good offer, the right audience, and a strong follow up. And in order to what I call elevate and accelerate, elevate your communities and accelerate your your monthly giving in your lists. And so the way it works is you set your you set your Google, you set your budget, your daily budget at about $360 to $365 a day, and you create campaigns with within Google Ads based on key search terms that people are looking for. And so, for example, I like to use an example when I deal with a lot of Jewish organizations, right? Um, so it’s when is Rosh Hashanah 2025? When is Hanukkah 2025? When is Passover 2025? Because people are searching for these things. And what we do is we create a couple different adsets based around these with a download that’s connected to that key keyword that keyword and to what they’re searching for. So for example, like for Rosh Hashanah, we give like a Rosh Hashanah cart or something like a down like something like that. But the the landing page that they get to is answering the question. So it says at the top of the header it says Rosh Hashanah 2025 is X day this day falls out on this day, with a little explanation about what Rosh Hashanah is, when it is, etc. Download our free X. And people come and they download the e-guide, and then they get put into an email sequence to continue the conversation, introducing people to the organization. OK, OK, I want to take a step, step at a time. How do we figure out what are our, our best keywords to be. We’re, we’re essentially, we’re bidding on these words. Is that, is that, isn’t that the process? All right, before we get to the bidding process, what, how do we figure out what, what are the keywords that are best for our small and mid-size nonprofit? So there’s several different tools out there that we like to use. Google actually has their own proprietary tool called, you know, Google Keyword Planner. Um, I don’t recommend using it, um, because it’s very, it’s, it’s not always the greatest. So we like to use tools like SpyFoo, SEMrush, ask the people, different keyword planners that go more in depth and really see what the, you know, what the what people are bidding, what the cost is, but also when we’re talking about costs and bids, the Google Grant operates on a different, like on a different playing field than paid ads, because Google doesn’t, your your your grant ads, this is one of the negatives about the Google grant program. Is that you’re not at the same level as someone who’s bidding paying for one is Rosh Hashanah 2025. You’re, you’re kind of like third rung on the on on Google because they’re not here because you’re bidding. No, because you’re you’re the free, you’re the free account. You’re not gonna put, you know, if, if, if it’s, it’s either, you know, put you on the same playing level on the same playing field as as as the people are paying them or not, they kind of quash you down. So you have to be more creative with your keywords and more creative with your with your adsets. And so, and you can’t just bid on single key phrase keywords like you would with paid ads because here Google is giving you money and just like any other grant, you have, you’re subject to their stipulations and rules. So there are not many rules, but you know, single keywords and and and different and and similar things around that are very prohibited. So part of what we do when we do this keyword research on these tools, is look for these strings of keywords that are relevant and as I said, kind of reverse engineer how people do this, create the campaigns based on what people are looking for, versus what a lot of other people do is they do what’s called brand campaigns where they’re just throwing out building on The organization’s name and things related to the organization, which doesn’t always do so well because people aren’t, again, people aren’t going on the internet to look for you. Well, they’re not, your point is they’re not going to look to you to to give necessarily. They’re, they’re looking, they’re looking for information where and you want to start the relationship with them, so eventually they will become a donor, volunteer or a petition signer, you know, whatever, whatever you may be in a lobbying day, etc. but you wanna. OK, OK, um, do me a favor, shout out the three, platforms, uh, apps that you just named for, do that again for uh identifying keywords. Spy Foo was one, Spy Foo, SCM Rush and Ask the people. OK, those are the ones. Ask the people is actually my favorite. Um, because it, it has like a whole web of, like, it shows you like an entire web of things related to and associated with what you’re searching for and it shows you the rankings, and it shows you, it’s very, very in depth. Spy food is, I’m sorry, Ask the people is your favorite of the three. The other two, deserve mention. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor Box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you, a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges. Helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs. Helping you help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to Google ad grants and your digital marketing. You also advocate having something. You want to be answering the question that the person that the, the people are looking for. Yes, a landing page that go ahead. The whole, the whole, the whole goal is to be the, as I said before, be the answer to the problem people are searching for, then you win. So. When when it comes to ads, you have to have that the continuity. So it has to go from the ad that they clicked on, you know, which was the ques, which was the, you know, you, they start by asking Google a question, they got the answer. The landing page has to continue to con have that continuity where it’s giving them that answer more in depth. Now a lot of people mess this up too is they send them to a landing page that has all sorts of information on it, and you end up losing, you you end up losing the optic. And so I like to say less distraction, more action. This is why when we create our landing pages, we kind of quasi make them like SEO based articles. They’re more article-based, more informative, very straightforward, no images, no like maybe one or two images, but like nothing crazy because the whole goal is to get you to sign up. And and it works really, really well versus going the other route where you have these pretty fancy pages and everyone and and there’s a million different things like flashing you and distracting you, and then you lose. OK, um, getting you to sign up, sign up is what you want just to be low lift, right? Like is it just email and first name or name, name and email. That’s it, right? And do you require last name or? Usually first name, last name, and email. OK, because I’ve seen pages where they start asking for your phone number, you know, distraction, more in the US I’ve seen zip code, you know, it becomes too invasive and, and less distraction, more action, I understand. So low lift, right? Like, could you get away with just first name and email? because we’re just trying to get this is the introductory phase, right? We’re just trying to be able to address you. Hello Sean. That’s, that’s all you need. Sean and Sean’s email. Exactly. This is somebody who has no connection to you whatsoever, um, is, is stumbling upon you by chance, and if you start getting more invasive with them, then you’re gonna lose them. And you know, the whole goal is to put them through your your flow, to put them into your database to then ultimately add more information, build out that profile of them, and then turn them into a donor constituent petition sign or whatever the heck you. want to do with them. OK, right, so incremental, you may end up getting their cell and their address and their or their zip code, you know, whatever it is you want. But you, you don’t ask for that at the landing page when they, they’re, they’re only 2 minutes into the relationship with you. Correct. And I, and I actually, I want to tell you, I actually do something that nobody does, and we’ve actually started doing this cause we saw we were doing this in the ecom space. It, it’s retention marketing is that you’re driving all this traffic to your site and there’s there’s. There’s tools out there that you can grab people’s information, what’s called anonymous lead scraping. It’s all ethical, it’s all legal, completely kosher. And, and what we do is when people go to these sites, and they, because you have a high percentage of people not opting in, because, you know, from this, that and the other, this grabs their information, their first name, their last name, their phone number, and their email and puts them into your, into your CRM. And in what we do is we send them that ebook because they’re anyways or that offer because anyways they’re browsing for that offer because they landed to your page. We send it to them and say, hey, we saw you were looking at looking at our ebook, here you go. And then it’s then we put them through that initial email sequence continuing to introduce them to the organization. And right, right, right, hold on, anonymous lead scraping. Yes, OK. First of all, it sounds uh dark webbish, but you’re saying it’s not, OK, it’s it’s legal. It’s super. OK. It’s even higher than legal. It’s kosher. All right, there you go. Sean, Sean lives with his wife and 5 children in Israel, so it’s. If it’s kosher, it’s even beyond just the mere legality. All right. What, what can you, uh, you wanna, you wanna give us a couple of what you said there are apps that will help you with anonymous lead scraping. So, so now, so someone comes to your site and you’re getting. You’re getting the information like you’re getting an email from them even if they don’t provide it in the in the simple form. Yeah, and I’ll explain to you how it works is you know when you go to a website and it says I consent to this site, this site tracks cookies and I consent to this. So when you click on that, that’s basically giving the the these these programs the OK, this is how your data gets moved around the internet. You know, everybody shares everybody’s data and you’re you’re consenting to it. So you’re this is how these programs are able to do it. And so we’re actually using a program called Lead Post. Um, there are several other companies out there, one of them is retention.com. Um, and most of these platforms are built for e-commerce companies to do for abandoned carts and for, you know, for, you know, abandoned cart emails and newsletter growth, and I saw, I noticed that we’re when we’re doing this with ecom, I said, what’s the difference between e-commerce and donations? What’s the difference between newsletter signups for ecom and for nonprofits? Nothing, because at the end of the day we’re all about getting money, we’re all about cultivation and getting money. So we started testing this, and it’s been, it’s been seeing insane results both on the direct donation campaigns and pages to recoup donations that were lost and for the for the list growth. And we had this, yeah, so, so, so these are, so these are folks who they, they’ve gone to your landing page. But they don’t want the, they, they’re not giving their first name and their email for the offer, or they haven’t or they or something happened, they want to, but you know, life happens and they well maybe they didn’t like it but but you’re capturing but as long as they’re consenting to the To the cookies, you’re we’ll, we’ll be able to capture their email anyway. Is that, is that what is that that’s the case? Basically, so even if they don’t provide it, we can get it correct? OK, through these apps that you named, uh, do anonymous lead scraping. OK, lead retention is one, and what’s the other one? Le Post is one of them and retention.com is another very popular one. Great, I conflated the two of them into one. OK, you just clarified it. Thank you. All right, so we, and uh, interesting, so I think we’re all accustomed to the, uh, the abandoned shopping cart emails. Yeah, you know, I leave something cause I, I, I just, I changed my mind or as you said, you know, life moved on, I got distracted, kids were crying, you know, whatever it was, my OK, so we’re applying the, the e-commerce. To the nonprofit side, which I love because there I think there are a lot of lessons we can learn, uh, well, I think there are lessons both ways, uh, but we’re, we’re, we’re OK, so we’re applying some e-commerce lessons here. Alright, so now we can, we can open the relationship even with the people who haven’t provided us their name and email. Yeah, here’s the thing. Here’s the, here’s the, here’s the Rosh Hashanah card. Here’s the, here’s the, the download that talks more about the what you originally queried on in Google. Here because we saw you were browsing and we, you left, so here it is. We want you to have it, right? Yeah, basically. OK. All right, so now we’ve opened the door. Um, assuming they don’t unsubscribe because we’ve, we’ve done them a favor. I mean, some folks will unsubscribe, right? That, that’s the nature of the game. Yeah, yeah, right. I’m not, I’m not being negative. I’m just saying, you know, realistic. Some people won’t, don’t want that free. They, they left maybe intentionally. They didn’t want it. But for the other, I don’t know what, what’s our, what’s our retention rate? Like from these, from this anonymous lead scraping, what kind of, what kind of retention rate could we expect after the 1st, 1st message to them? We see a pretty high retention rate because people, like I said, people, they, they were coming anyways from Google search, so they’re already high intent. When they’re when they’re already high intent, but something happens, this is why I love Google versus meta in a lot of different places when it comes to running ads, because Google, you have much more high intent um buyers, much more high intent opt-ins, much more high intent everything, because like I said, people go to Google to to get an answer to the problem, to learn something. People go to meta to space out. OK. OK. Uh, like, take us, take us down the path. Are we, so now we’re just opening an, a standard email relationship with them. Yeah, I mean, I, in my, in my format system, I like to I like to put them on a 10 part email drip, and the first half of these emails is genuine genuine and general like conversation talking introducing the organization, who we are, what we’re all about with Mild call to actions to check out our social channels, check out our website, learn more about what we do. And then each email is another story with a testimonial or with a, you know, with a, a, you know, some sort of like social proof um message. And then as we go down the funnel, as we go down the drip. I start to push them to make a donation, you know, would partner with us, you know, you tell more even more compelling stories, because if you’re an organization doesn’t have compelling stories and content, then you’re doing something completely wrong. Certainly, right, right, 10 part. Yes, 1010, 10 emails over what period? Over the course of of of like two weeks or so. OK. And it’s, it’s all about consistency and people always blocking me. They’re like, why are you sending out so many emails? I said, because if you’re not sending out so many emails and you’re not top of mind, then. And you’re, you’re, you’re lost in the dust. And you’re not concerned that 1010 messages in a two week period is too much. No, I’ve seen, I’ve seen great successes, but again, the whole goal is to be top of mind, because how many emails do you get from people? How many emails do you get, especially like you, for example, how many emails do you get from organizations all the time? Oh yeah, dozens, uh, and, and, and e-commerce also, you know, the, the places I buy from, I hear from, I do hear from several times a week. I’m thinking of like container stores, uh, you know, you say top of mind. Yeah, container store in Lands End are probably top of mind for me most most recently. That’s funny. So when, when you’re when you’re when you’re top of mind. I’m I’m don’t be too surprised, you know, not at all. That’s right, that’s why I left. Alright, so 10, so 10 steps. And when, when are you starting to like roughly what, what, what, what drip of number 1 through 10 are you starting to ask for? A serious ass like a volunteer or or donate. I, I usually do that. I usually do that towards the end, like 89 and 10, 89, 10. OK, because, because again, you’re still in, and part of what we do while we’re with this email sequence, it we also gauge the how how people are how people are interacting with it. So what we’ll do is we’ll we’ll the people who are not opening and clicking we segment those people out into. Infrequent um email list that will send more infrequent content to, and the people that are engaging and opening in every single one and clicking and we can track this. Um, we we put them on a higher frequency like drip after this initial intro sequence. Because these are the people who are going to be your, your doers. These are the people who are going to be your your donors and your partners and your whatever you want them to be, because you see the the level of engagement they’re giving and interaction. OK, so the metrics are important during this introductory 10 drip series, yes. This is why I selected at 10, because it gives you a nice healthy gauge of what type of how people are interacting and what they’re interacting with, because it’s all about communication. Marketing is all everything in life is all about communication, and if you don’t, if you’re not watching the numbers and you’re not watching the the interactions, engagement, how people are commun like engaging with the communicate the the messaging. Then you’re just wasting your time because everybody interacts and and engages with something different. Every message hits somebody different. This is what I love about the nonprofit world, is this is also why I’m taking the ecom stuff over into nonprofit space because you can’t like donations, you can’t, you, you don’t really know what’s in somebody’s, what somebody wants to give, how much they’re they’re gonna pull out the credit card, they can give anywhere between $1 and a million dollars, you know, you never know, you can’t predict owner habits. But you can create messaging that’s going to increase their likelihood of giving you more money, or turning them into a monthly giver for more money. So this is why in this initial 10 part sequence, we like to showcase what you guys are doing, who you’re all who you’re all about, what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, pushing them to the different channels to give them a bigger picture of what the the organization is doing. So that way we can see who’s engaging with what, how they want to be communicated to, and how you speak to them on their level, because this way with smart marketing and communication and copy and storytelling, you’re gonna be enable these you’re gonna be able to turn these people into good money and big money and monthly money cause the goal is monthly money. I like to do monthly giving. I, I’m a big proponent of recurring giving and monthly donations because that’s your cash flow. That’s your cash flow, and if you build that up, you you’re golden. You might be interested in a book uh written by someone who either was just a guest or is soon to be a guest, because I don’t know what sequence the two of you are gonna come in, but his book is. The rise of sustainable giving, and his name is Dave Raley, R A L E Y. Um, all right, let me, uh, let me ask something that, uh, I just came to my attention absolutely yesterday, very timely. Uh, about is involved in this sequence in the, in the early part of this, the, the, um, the Google search results, that Google search AI summaries that we’re all now seeing. are hurting the, the click throughs from search results because I, I, I, I believe it was something like 60% of now recent Google searches don’t result in a click through because people are getting the answer from the, the, the Google AI search, you know, summary. And so that’s it, you know, they, they found the answer to their question and they bail out. There’s no, there’s no click through. Are you concerned about this? Can we overcome it? You’re shaking your head. No, very confidently. I’m not, I’m not concerned about it at all because if, if, if Google wants to do away with search ads on both the page and the grant. Side of things and replace it with with Gemini, they would. But clearly there’s a reason why Google has not replaced search ads because search ads play a huge role in Google in and and a in a major chunk of Google’s revenue because people are still doing search ads and it’s all about creating smart search campaigns. And smart and smart funnels built around the search campaigns that take you further than just answering your question because you and, and so part of what we do, as I said, we, we create smarter campaigns that are really solving the problem and driving them to the page with the offer connected to it. And so, but Google, Google likes to try to push this stuff on people, um, but at the same time, if they were to completely get rid of certain things within their ad networks, they’d be losing a massive chunk of revenue, and search ads make up a massive chunk of Google’s revenue. OK, so they’re not gonna replace that revenue with, uh, with their, their bunch of things. Gemini search summaries. OK, OK, right, I just, I’d like to hear from the experts on this. Um, all right, so is there anything else before we move on to your advice about reviving lists that, uh, may have become dormant or, you know, a little sleepy. Anything else on the, on this, on this search side building the list? Um, it’s really just about again, creating the right campaigns that are going to get people to opt in and then keeping up with the engagement. Once you, once they finish that main sequence, then you put them on a, on a general sequence, continuing the conversation, talking about what’s going on in the organization, whether it’s a weekly newsletter or whether it’s, you know, a couple two email, you know, another like I, I like to do weekly newsletters. Um, and also, you know, anything new that’s going on just to keep up the conversation, because again, it’s all about continuous, you know, engagement. One of the things that we also do with these email sequences, and I’ll talk about this, it kind of overlaps with your next question, but one of the things that we do is we like to create engaging content pieces that turn into email sequences, and one of my favorite ones that we did was called Meet the Heroes. Um, and we, we, we go through and we interview people within the organization cause I always like to say everybody from the janitor all the way to the CEO and and the executive director has a reason why they’re working in the organization, and they like it. And you get everybody’s stories and everybody’s perspectives, and you turn this into email marketing, meeting everybody in the organization, sharing that to to the list, and we rip these out, you know, once a week, you know, to people, and they get a new hero in their inbox, and it turns into a lot of money. It’s time for Tony’s Take-Two. Thank you, Kate. We’re revisiting Mrs. Blood and soil. You’ll remember her, uh, in my very first aerobics class that I went to, probably 18 months now. It’s been, uh, that I go to these Tuesday classes. I wanted to position myself next to her and I didn’t know that, you know, she had her set spot because it was my first time in the, in the room. And uh she was uh a little difficult, a little difficult, you may recall, so uh I dubbed her Mrs. Blood and Soil. Well, I had occasion. a couple of weeks ago to uh be next to Mrs. Blood and Soil again. I got there a little late, there was a space. So I went up, went over, it’s the last row. She likes to be this is her last, she’s in the last row against the wall of mirrors there. 2nd, 2nd from the left, that’s her spot, as we, as we all know. So I tried to be 3rd from the left in the back row against the mirrors. So I said, uh, you know, uh, I, I think I can uh fit in here. What do you, what do you think? Well, as long as you’re not too active. OK, uh, Mrs. Mutton soil, this is an aerobics class. I’m not gonna be able to confine myself to a 12 square inch little piece of ground over here next to you in an aerobics class. We’re jumping, we’re moving up, we’re moving back, we’re doing jumping jacks, we’re gonna do steps sometimes. We do weights, so lighten up, this is blood and soil, but I didn’t say any of that. I didn’t say any of that. I said, I think we’ll be OK. And then I introduced myself. I’m Tony, she said, so now she’s no longer needs to be Mrs. Blood and soil. She’s Val, Val. Which I, uh, which I realized could be either a man or a woman, Val, but she’s, she’s a woman, and she’s in very good shape. I think I’ve said that before. I have to give her, she’s very fit and does very well in the class. So, all right, so she gives me a little trouble with, well, as long as you’re not too active. Through the class I’m thinking like it’s as if she has a deed to this second from the left spot in the back against the mirror walls. You know, I’m applying to the board of adjustment for an easement, a right of way through her deeded land. Well, as long as you don’t use it too often, we can let you walk on it, but don’t ever bring a bicycle on your easement, no. So, that’s Mrs. Buttonsoy, Val, Val, uh, at the end of the class, I said, uh, nice to meet you, Val. She said, nice to meet you. OK, clearly, she forgot my name. That’s right. I guess I’m, I’m very forgettable, but Val is not. Val will, my memories of Val, I see her every Tuesday morning. She is not at all forgettable. This is Blood and soil, thou. That is Tony’s take too. OK. Look at you for being the better person and introducing yourself. I took the high road. It’s very, very good of you. And what did I get? As long as you’re not too active in an aerobics class aerobics don’t move around too much in this aerobics class, and, and if you don’t, then, then you could be next to me. The entitlement exactly. We’ve got Bou but loads more time. Here’s the rest of Google Ad grants and your digital marketing with Shawn Lipman. So this is going into your advice about reviving. Correct uh uh sort of a lackluster list. These are your, your lapsed folks who, who are these, who are these folks that we’re trying to revive? What’s this population look like? So these are all people that, you know, you deal with enough organizations to know that everyone has don donor lists and email and databases of people that they’ve engaged with at some point and these people have had something to do with the organization at some point or another. And most organizations because for lack of better, you know, terms, they just suck at marketing. And they don’t have the bandwidth to have people dealing with their email coms. And so when you don’t have people can keeping up the conversation with your with your list, you know, you could grow a ton of people, but you gotta stay, you gotta stay top of mind. So a part of it and so they, they just kind of neglect the email list because they’re like, you know what, we’ll just deal with them when we need money, but then when you do, when they, when they come in for money like who the hell are you? Like, why should I talk to you? It’s just, you know. It it’s relationship building, communication relationship building. And so what we do is we go in, this is actually the first thing we do before we launch any Google campaigns. I call, I like to get these as quick wins, you know, we go in and we create, we create a wake up email sequence, just talking, saying, hey, what’s going on? It’s, it’s, um, you know, save the whales. We’ve been out here in the beachfront saving the whales for a while. It’s our it’s our bad, we haven’t talked to you in a bit, but check out what we’ve been doing. Look at that. Shamu is all clean. You know, just like quick little like punchy emails that started off the conversation, so you can see who’s actually engaging, who’s actually a wake up, wake up, you got it. And then, and then you slowly drip them into um more in-depth stuff, and then you, you segment out the people who didn’t, because then you can see who’s actually engaging and who’s actually not even a valid email anymore. So that you can clean up your list and then you start dripping out content like Meet the Heroes and other content series, um, emails, um, that can be that people can engage with. And let me ask you uh what kind of parameters are we looking at? Like how long lapsed would you, would you go back? I suppose, suppose we haven’t had any communication with the person for a year. Is that, is that in your opinion, is that too long to try to wake them up a year too long? No, you can do anything because again, what I’ve noticed and I’ve studied this is just by doing this a million times, is that all people want is just to feel like, feel like you care about them. So it doesn’t, you know, sometimes, you know, you, you stopped caring about me. Like I, I’ve heard from you for a year now. Where you been? Well, that, well, that, that’s, that’s why, that’s why a little like, hey, what’s going on? Just wanted to show you that we’re alive kind of type of thing. We didn’t, we didn’t really forget about you. We’ve just been so busy saving the whales and the planet that we forgot to talk to you, and most people are very receptive about it. that’s what they want, you’ll get, you’ll get some folks back. You’re saying lots of folks. You’ll get, you’ll get some folks back and then of course you’re gonna segment. Some folks are not gonna respond. They’re not, they’re not gonna wake up, uh, of course, of course you’ve got your, your bad emails, you know, that’s a different category, but some folks, they’re getting the message they’re not gonna, all right, they’re not gonna reply, but for the ones who do, you’re trying to reinvigorate now. Exactly. Exactly. OK. Um, any other advice about, uh, reviving? What else are you doing? You don’t hold back on nonprofit radio listeners now. You have, uh, you know, you, you do this, you said a million times, but what else, what else around the? What’s, it’s really all about just sitting down and understanding what your organization does and how we can create engaging content stories to to share with them. And email marketing is a lot like a serial, you know, you, you always want to, you gotta, you people, you wanna keep up the engagement. It’s not, you know, you wanna build like a series. Of of content that’s going to engage with people. That’s why the Meet the Heroes is something that we found replicates really well amongst organizations, um, you know, we have, you know, all all sorts of other different things again, it’s really organization specific, but like highlighting different different things within the organization that they’re doing. And really showing people, making the the whole goal with emails with these email campaigns, and then you can transpose this into social media too, is getting making people feel and getting them to feel live vicariously through the organization without having to be on the ground scrubbing the oil off the the fish, you know. Of Shamu. All right. OK. When you said er, you said it’s like cereal, I was expecting you were saying like a sugar rush or so, but I had the wrong side on the serial uh metaphor in mind. OK, S E R I A L. Yeah, it’s, it’s continuous conversation and then that’s also part of like the whole strategy to when you get to that big campaign, cause everybody, you know, and when you know, people are already ready to jump. You tell them because you’ve been in contact with them, they see that you’re engaging with them, they see that you care about them, you know, you’ve showcased what’s going on, you’ve engaged, you’ve you’ve invited them in. So now when it comes to the campaign, you say jump, they they say how high. OK, that’s the ideal. Um, what’s your advice around storytelling? Sounds like you, you write a lot of, you write a lot of emails for clients, you write a lot of newsletters, weekly, what, what, what tips do you have around storytelling digitally? Storytelling, digital storytelling, you know, everybody’s got, everybody, everybody’s got a story. Everyone’s got something to share and you gotta, you gotta you gotta sit down and understand. Um, who your audience is and how you talk to them and understand, you know, how to communicate that with them, your message to them, because just, you know, not everybody is gonna relate to one specific thing, and you have to be able to um extract the information out of the like the founder’s head or somebody who’s, you know, one of the volunteers’ heads, you have to be able to take that and and really put it into compelling marketing. And it’s all about showing when you’re doing when you’re doing a storytelling, it’s not tell no one no one cares what you’re telling them. You have to show them like saying I I learned this actually a long time ago when I was creating a resume, which I’d never use anymore, thank God, but someone was telling me you don’t say, you know, you, you know, it’s about showing people what you’re doing in numbers, not telling them I do this, this and this, cause no one cares what you do. So give an example. I wanna pick your brain here, give an example of what showing instead of telling. So, like, I’ll go back to, to meet the heroes, right? You, you know, let’s say I, I work for an EMS, a volunteer EMS organization, and I got 10 kids and I’m volunteer, but I still go out there and take EMS calls. And so you’re asking me how, why, why do I love doing this? So I’m gonna, I, so we asking the right questions to get the right answers out of people’s like being a podcast host. So I’m gonna show you through my answers. Like, you know, I love being, you know, a mass volunteer because it gives me such uh uh the ability to go out there and help people and and and take care of them and transport them to the hospital, and being able to make sure that they’re they’re OK, and I just genuinely like helping people. And I got into this because I do I love doing X, Y and Z and painting that picture and that story around. The person and showing people how, you know, this person is impacting so many lives, and he’s just one guy, you know, just going out there doing volunteer shifts. You know, it’s about painting that bigger picture, the broader strokes of what’s going on within these people’s stories and this or the the organization. You know, another another organization, you know, let’s say for example, they, you know, I’m trying to think off the top of my head, something I did recently. Um, I can’t think off the top of my head on the spot. I apologize. That’s all right, um. Let’s pick, uh, let’s pick an arts organization, hypothetical, I don’t have any particular one in mind, but let’s say it’s a theater group. So would you, what would go through, uh, like I’m gonna, I’m gonna follow the processes of, of Sean’s brain. What do you think? All this theater group, look, it’s a nonprofit now, $2 million annual revenue. They’ve got 5 or 6 full-time employees. They put on 2 shows a year. So, so let’s sit down, let’s sit down and meet with the, the company director. You know, we’re dealing with theater, right? I, I, I, I know these words. Let’s, let’s sit down and meet with the company director and why she, why she decided to open this organization? What was her passion? What inspired her to be, what, how is she a hero to the millions of people who are coming to watch her shows, and what’s the, what’s the, what’s the outcome that she wants to bring about with this, with the with this with this organization? Who’s she trying to inspire? And let’s sit down and craft a story about, you know, Who she is, what she’s all about, and the organization to show people how taking the act of of of dance and music in a play and bringing it to the bigger stage is going to empower people to do X, Y, and Z. It’s about taking that story and painting the bigger picture with it. So for example, a theater organization, so I, let’s say I run a theater company. I started this. Why let’s meet the hero. Why did I start this? I started this organization because I have a strong passion for music and dance and art, and I wanted to be able to empower people who are not who don’t have the means to go to Juilliard, who don’t have the means to go to the New York Academy of Dance or whatever, and I want to give them the same abilities that I that I did and show them that the Through the through arts and music, it can be very empowering. It can also be life changing. And so my, my whole aim of the organization is to give people the tools they need to succeed by doing through the outlet. I put you on the spot. That was very excellent. I’ll let you off the hook, but I can also I can also see some fun like telling. Backstage stories. Exactly, exactly. Backstage stuff that nobody sees. This is also why I used to produce podcasts for nonprofits because I used to, I found I I I would, I would show them how creating a podcast create gets you multiple forms of content for the organization, but also creates a narrative, and people can go out, you can have people on your show talking to them about different things. Like I said, I created a podcast that was so popular it was for a volunteer EMS organization. Um, a Jewish one where we interviewed all these different directors from all the different branches all over the world, getting to understand their stories, who they are, what they’re all about, why they got involved in this, and hearing their perspective, you know, one guy from Baltimore, one guy from New York, one guy from Chicago, Detroit, you know, getting their perspective on it, and, you know, you have questions that can remain constant questions, but everybody is gonna have a different answer. When I lived in New York City, I used to see uh Hao Ambulances. Is that the organization? Yep, we created a podcast for them called the Hatzola Cast. Oh, that’s that’s a worldwide. It’s worldwide. I didn’t I created it for the local one here in my city in Israel. And the whole goal was, was a branding campaign because they’re all connected in some way, but was interviewing all the different executive directors of each different branch and hearing their stories and these guys had crazy stories because, you know, they’re all, you know, they’re all in the back of the bus, you know, doing, you know, you know, taking saving lives. Yeah, and people loved it because it was real people talking about real things and it worked as a as a as a tool for donations and and growth and, you know, branding. And storytelling pod what’s a podcast? It is a storyteller, yeah, yeah. All right, Hatzola. I, I always thought, you know, being a, a geocentric uh New Yorker at the time, and I just figured New York City was the, it was the only site of Hatzola, but uh it was, it was, it’s worldwide, it’s worldwide, right, all right. OK, awesome, um. Let’s move to uh a third topic, you have advice around. The right technology, uh, sort of your tech stack around this, this process that we’ve, we’ve been talking about these first two steps, you gotta have technology supporting you, you know, we’re not, well, we all know the value of technology. So what are we, what are we looking for? What kind of considerations, how do we know we’ve got the right stuff? What’s your order in the spot here. So I’ll tell you, you know, not to, not to toot my own horn, but I do actually have a software company called GivSuite, and it was an answer to a problem that we were experiencing, and this is, and I also, and I put on a webinar called Not All Systems are Created Equal because software is all about strategy. It’s not about people like to look at SAS software. A solution. I look at SASSA software as a strategy, because at the end of the day, the right tools for your organization are going to be the right tools for your organization to enable you to grow and scale, because nobody wants to sit around working with technology that’s going to send them back a couple of years instead of propelling them. So you want to have the right software and the right tools for the job. And so when it comes to looking at software as a strategy, you have to understand what how big is my organization? What am I looking to do? What are my what problems am I currently having with what I’m currently using? Is it costing me too much money? Are, are, are we, are we being charged every time we’re trying to grow? Are we being, are, are there limitations to certain functionalities within our system? Do we, is, is our data a mess? Like, you know, there’s all different types of questions and answers that you have to sit down and really understand before you make the right to choose a product that’s gonna be for you. Like there’s a lot of in the nonprofit world, there’s a range of products, there’s free there’s free platforms, there’s freemium platforms, there’s super expensive platforms that nobody knows how to use, but for some reason, everybody loves them, but they don’t know how to use them. And then there’s there’s there’s diff there’s, you know, us, we’re we’re we’re an all inclusive platform that, you know, doesn’t charge you an arm and a leg. And but again, it’s all what’s ideal for you. And so you have to you have to know, you have to sit down and understand what your what what your wants are versus your needs. That’s really the key, because everybody always wants, you know, it’s it’s the wants versus needs, you know, everybody always wants everything under the sun, but do you know how do you use everything under? do you know how to use everything? What do you, you have to understand what your needs are in order to scale. What, what about, uh, say for instance, integration with your CR right? So shouldn’t all these, all these contacts that these uh are, are 10 or 10 drip series, these shouldn’t these be? Ideally noted in each person’s record who gets one as a as a as an outbound contact. So talk about uh integration with your, your CRM database. So integration is a really big thing and a lot of the, you know, a lot of these platforms do have integrations with your CRMs, but it’s also very frustrating because you still have to download the data and you have to upload the data or you have to set up the automation, like the connecting tools that work with it, and those tend to get pricey. Because, you know, it’s going based on on what, you know, using Zapier. It’s a connecting app that goes based on Zap. So the more the more records you’re bringing over, the more the more expensive your plan is. But when you have, for example, again, using my system as an example, not a plug for it at all, I promise you, is that when you have something, everything all encompassing all in one, you’re not relying on outside data and third party tools to push everything because everything is already in the system. And so you have to figure out way out the cost too. Some of these other platforms are gonna charge you um for for integrations. Some of them are gonna charge you, you know, different fees based on the integrations, and some of them are also gonna charge you different fees based on how many people are using the system. So you also, you have to weigh out all these different, these different things in order to figure out what the best tool is gonna be for you. For you. All right. All right, Sean, why don’t you leave us with uh some inspiring words to uh to close around. Around all of us, around the digital marketing, digital relationships. Well, OK, I, I mean, I always like to say there’s nothing new under the sun, and it’s all a matter of how you take it, package it, and, and repurpose it, and how you and how you make it your own. In the marketing space, especially in nonprofit space, the whole goal is you want everyone’s doing the same thing. Everyone’s going after the same thing. Everyone wants everybody’s money. There’s not that much money, you know, you, you know, floating around. You know, there’s not that many big big checks floating around so much anymore. You know, you have to focus on the micro donation. So the goal is how do you raise your hand higher than everybody else? And in the nonprofit space, you have to really sit down and understand who you are, what you’re all about, what makes you so special, why should I care about you? Because you’re competing with everybody else who wants those same donations. So in order, so you gotta take a step back before you start any marketing campaign, before you start anything with your organization, say. What makes me so special, and how do I raise my hand higher than everybody else? And once you figure that out, then you’re gonna win. And, and once you once that that’s how you’re gonna win. So I hope that I hope that was a solid piece of advice. Um, I, I tell it to a lot of people and the ones who take me seriously are actually successful, and the ones who don’t take me seriously, then they call me complaining and I say tough nuggies. Let’s not leave you with tough. Let’s not have too many of the tough noogies. All right, Sean. Catch-22 nonprofit digital. The company is at catch 22 nonprofit.com. You can connect with Sean on LinkedIn. Thank you very much, Sean. Appreciate you sharing all this. You know, thank you very much, Tony, for having me on the show. It’s been a pleasure. Next week, great value in sustainable giving. That was supposed to be this week, but the host messed up. If you missed any part of this week’s show. Actually, I did not mess up. This is not a mess up. Uh, this is a more logical flow to have Sean this week and then expand on sustainable giving next week. And by the way, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.
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