PlannedGiving.com - Planned Giving

This article is not for the faint of heart or the fawningly polite!

Your Prospects Don’t Want “Planned Giving” News.

The next time a planned giving vendor tells you they’ll generate repeat traffic on your planned giving website by delivering “exciting” revolving planned giving articles in online reading rooms, stop for a reality check. Your planned giving website is not Time magazine, and your prospects will not re-visit your planned giving pages on a regular basis to read earth shattering planned giving stories. Sorry, but to the average civilian, “planned giving is boring.”

Here’s the fact. Maintaining monthly “fresh and exciting” stories is simply an unnecessary expense. Why? A prospect will visit your website once, twice, maybe three times over just a few days, not months, and then contact you. The site will always look fresh because the visit is short-lived.

Planned Giving is not Fundraising.

It’s mostly marketing.

Your resources should be focused more on marketing and “sales” and less on learning and teaching how gift plans work. What are you selling? The mission and vision of your organization and the excitement and hope it provides. Help your prospects be part of that.

You’re better off with ten prospects and not knowing how a lead trust is taxed, than with zero prospects and a Ph.D. in planned giving. If you have both, the force is with you.

Always focus on getting the prospect in your door, or yourself in the prospect’s door. And if you’re not a PG guru, you can always hire the Ph.D.

Stop Following the Hype.

Laboring over minutiae such as the pros and cons of an online planned giving calculator? Look at the overall picture. Are you binge marketing? Or, do you have proactive, steady marketing systems in place? Are you following media hype about an overblown e-marketing one-in-a-million success story? Or, do you have a balanced blend of print and electronic messages, all benefits-driven, short and to the point? Remember, through all forms of media, your prospect is inundated with over 3000 marketing messages a day.

Stop Promoting Death.

Ferrari, Rolex, and American Express have one thing in common: they promote a lifestyle, and not the features of their products.

If you’re always attending the next seminar on gift annuities or on how a unitrust works, you might as well learn how to sell cemetery plots. (And to increase sales, ask prospects to envision a hearse backed up to the door.)

Your marketing should be benefits- and results-driven and not features-driven. Features of planned gifts mention death. Benefits and long-term results promote immortality. Features slow down your sales process. Benefits sell the sizzle. And the sizzle keeps your prospect’s mind focused on your mission, vision, and on making the gift. It’s that simple.

At the risk of being crude, if you are promoting the features of planned gifts, you might as well design your legacy society ads like this.

Focus on Mission-Driven Marketing.

Consider the following: The big players in the finance industry give investment advice – and turn profits – better than anybody else. So when you send canned investment brochures to your prospects, you’re competing with the mega-financial institutions with their beautiful informationals on their home turf. Does that make sense?

Your institution possesses a unique advantage over financial and investment giants. It’s not just a retail investment-profit generator. Your organization already has a special relationship with its prospects because of the good you do. You can harness the power of this relationship with mission-driven messages.

Copy Those Who Lead.

The successful non-profits and for-profits use mixed media to communicate with their prospects. So don’t always use emails. Use cards, letters, display ads, and (gosh! oh no) even the old-fashioned phone. If you stick to one single medium (like emails), your prospects will tune you out. (Savvy direct marketers in other fields know this well.) The goal of all these tools is getting face-to-face visits – see why the human moment is so important on our website.

And remember, sell the vision (benefits and results), not just the features.

Ready to Quit Your Job?

Don’t. I am not trying to paint a gloomy picture. I’m just suggesting a reality check so you can succeed. Here are some fun facts, figures, answers and solutions you’ll love: virtualgiving.com/answers

[PS: Read why I have an attitude in this article!]