Boost Donor Acquisition With These 5 Salesforce Tools

This is a guest blog contribution from iATS Payments

As a hard-working nonprofit professional, you’re well aware of how important the right software solutions can be to the success of your fundraising initiatives, marketing campaigns, and other operations. But with so many different kinds of software on the market, finding the right approach to build your nonprofit techstack can be incredibly challenging.

This is where Salesforce has become an invaluable tool for countless nonprofit organizations. As the world’s leading constituent relationship management (CRM) platform, Salesforce is a vast and immensely powerful cloud-based system that includes thousands of applications to help teams achieve their goals by creating their own customized, integrated suite of tools. 

To help you make the most of Salesforce’s tools, we’ll narrow down your search and take a look at five powerful applications that can not only improve fundraising and engage donors, but increase donor acquisition. They include: 

• Brickwork by iATS
• Salsa Engage
• OneCause
• Mailchimp
• HootSuite

For even more Salesforce solutions, the iATS Payments guide to Salesforce apps for nonprofits offers over 15 Salesforce solutions, from donation apps to prospect research tools, that can help your nonprofit improve its outreach, enhance data management, and streamline operations.

Ready to enhance your nonprofit techstack and attract new donors to your cause? Let’s dive in with our top choice for donation and payment processing.  

Brickwork by iATS

Made especially for nonprofit donation and payment processing, Brickwork by iATS Payments is the only Salesforce-native nonprofit payment processing solution.

Brickwork integrates seamlessly with tools both in and beyond Salesforce CRM to organize and transfer critical donor data from the donation page to your donor database. The collection and organization of this data is essential to the creation of more effective donor outreach and, of course, more powerful donor acquisition strategies.

Additionally, Brickwork can also improve both acquisition and retention by engaging donors and streamlining data management through: 

• Customizable and embeddable donation forms. This not only maintains the style and design of your donation pages, but it also keeps donors from being redirected to third-party payment platforms, which is a major factor in donation form abandonment.
• Level 1 PCI Compliance credit card security. With powerful anti-fraud and data protection tools in place, your nonprofit can increase public trust in your cause, reaffirm your nonprofit’s legitimacy and professionalism, and attract greater support.
• Acceptance of various payment methods. Don’t let new and current donors slip away simply because you don’t accept their preferred payment method. iATS Payments supports everything from credit and debit cards to ACH and international processing.

From facilitating greater donations to streamlining e-commerce, increasing donor acquisition and reducing donation form abandonment rates is just the beginning of what this powerful donation software can do.

Salsa Engage

Considered to be one of the top fundraising CRMs by Getting Attention and dozens of other nonprofit leaders, SalsaLabs includes the Salsa Engage platform, a Salesforce-compatible app that helps to make the most of these two powerful CRM solutions. 

Described as nonprofit marketing, fundraising, and advocacy software, one of the standout features of Salsa Engage app is its digital marketing toolkit. This robust selection of promotional tools can help you to supercharge your donor acquisition strategies and more effectively get the word out about your mission. 

In particular, Salsa Engage includes: 

• Sophisticated email marketing and marketing automation
• Robust social media marketing capabilities
• Easily customizable drag-and-drop sign-up forms
• Intuitive dashboards for marketing data and analytics 

Along with online fundraising and advocacy capabilities, these digital marketing features make Salsa Engage a valuable addition to your growing nonprofit technology stack.

OneCause

Through the OneCause Connect—available through the Salesforce AppExchange—Salesforce users can now take full advantage of this multipurpose software’s auction, text-to-give, and online fundraising features.

And for your organization’s acquisition-specific goals, you will find OneCause’s peer-to-peer fundraising software to be an especially effective tool to expose vast new audiences to your mission. With six optimized campaign types to choose from, such as a-thon style fitness fundraisers or DIY supporter-driven campaigns, there is already a system in place to help your unique campaign achieve the greatest possible success.

On top of that, OneCause’s collection of peer-to-peer fundraising tools also harnesses these powerful features to maximize acquisition and revenue:

• Social media marketing integrations and social media listening features
• The customization and automation of messaging to potential prospects, ongoing supporters, and volunteers
• Gamification features including point systems, leader boards, milestone badges, and more
• Maximum capacity registration, increasing the number of possible participants in your campaigns

Whether you’re a longtime Salesforce user or your team is just now moving to Salesforce and customizing its Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack, OneCause is a powerful tool to consider for any team with aspirations to enhance their peer-to-peer campaigns.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is already an incredibly popular and accessible email marketing platform in its own right, and its vast integration capabilities in and beyond the Salesforce AppExchange is the cherry on top for this app’s users. Free for Salesforce users, this easy-to-use software is one of the most convenient additions to your Salesforce-driven donor acquisition toolkit. 

For example, we’ve found marketing automation to be an essential strategy for nonprofits to streamline their outreach strategies both for current and prospective donors. And with Mailchimp, you will be able to roll out personalized, automated new donor welcome emails, prospective donor outreach messages, and targeted fundraising appeals that will grow and nurture your supporter base.

Furthermore, Mailchimp also allows your nonprofit team to: 

• Leverage its AI-powered Creative Assistant to create unique, custom email designs
• Use insight and analytics tools to track key performance indicators throughout your email marketing strategies
• Enliven your email messaging with fresh and engaging content and interactive widgets

If your team is already using Salesforce, consider trying out this free, low-risk tool and seeing for yourself how it can help to bring new life to your nonprofit email marketing initiatives.

HootSuite

As we move forward in the age of digital transformation, social media continues to be an invaluable tool for nonprofit organizations to better engage with, inspire, and acquire supporters. This is what makes HootSuite such a fresh and impactful choice for nonprofits hoping to expand their base of support. 

A fan-favorite social media marketing solution for businesses and nonprofits alike, Hootsuite integrates with Salesforce CRM to offer niche, specialized solutions for users to cultivate their social media followings and brainstorm new content strategies. 

For example, through HootSuite’s intuitive social media marketing software, you can:

• Easily create branded, aesthetically-pleasing content across a broad range of social media platforms.
• Save time and consolidate your marketing strategies by scheduling and automating posts in advance.
• Effortlessly monitor and track your social networks and campaigns through one centralized interface. 

We recommend HootSuite for nonprofits who currently or are planning to host complex social media campaigns, as this Salesforce app can be a remarkably effective solution to both simplify and supercharge your social media marketing efforts.

From Salesforce donation software to peer-to-peer platforms, these powerful tools make up just a few of the best and brightest applications available for Salesforce users.

And with some (or all) of these solutions added to your nonprofit’s donor acquisition arsenal, you should be far better equipped to build up your donor base through everything from glamorous social media posts to tools as innocuous as your payment processor.

About the Author

Peggah is a passionate Sales Executive with 10 years’ experience providing payment solution support and guidance to nonprofits.