3 challenges shaping the future of online marketing

Less than a decade ago, commercial enterprises were worried that consumers would be reluctant to use their credit cards to make purchases online. Today, online fundraising brings in 40% of the individual giving revenue for high-achieving nonprofits. So what’s in store for the future? Here are three challenges that are shaping the future of online marketing and fundraising. What other challenges do you see?

1. Cross-channel integrated marketing: High performing organizations are leveraging all their assets in an integrated way, driving users from online emails to offline action and offline invitations to online relationships. There is no one-size-fits-all linear approach to acquisition and conversion. This is putting tremendous pressure on marketing professionals to think more deeply about how to provide meaningful and effective conversion paths for their supporters. Beaconfire is focused on helping clients integrate their promotional and call-to-action efforts to maximize the potential of the online space without losing the “tried and true” methods of yesterday.
2. Push versus pull relationships: Internet users are becoming more and more savvy, increasingly using RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs to stay abreast of information and are less committed and influenced by emails from constituent groups. Because of these new “pull” mechanisms – where users choose what they want, when they want it and through fairly anonymous social media/network sites, “pushing” emails is becoming increasingly less effective. This change in consumption behavior and online relationship formation is requiring organizations to position content, calls to action and donation appeals much more creatively than ever before and distribute to more places than ever before. No longer can you “post on it on your site and they will come.” Now, we must produce it and distribute it where they are, often times without knowing who they are.
3. Monetizing social space: Despite the enormous popularity and rapid growth of social space including networks and the blogosphere, there are yet to emerge proven, repeatable, scalable ways of raising significant funds through these “democratic” networks. Issues of organization or political spam are entering the discourse about how to effectively utilize network growth and user-generated content in a fundraising campaign and also maintain the high quality and trusted relationships with constituents. We are testing various tactics and monitoring emerging best practices, taking the risks with our clients that are required to be the trailblazers.