Nonprofit organizations rely heavily on supporters for fundraising and to help spread the word about the important work they’re doing. Many of the most successful nonprofit organizations have incorporated SMS marketing into their communications strategy because SMS marketing outperforms traditional channels like email marketing and social media. SMS marketing also provides nonprofit organizations a direct line of access to supporters, thereby increasing donations, signatures, and volunteers.
In order to use SMS marketing, nonprofit organizations must partner with an SMS marketing platform. SMS marketing platforms provide technology that makes it possible for nonprofit organizations to send mass text messages to subscribers using automation, subscriber segmentation, and analytics. To get the full benefits of SMS marketing, a nonprofit organization should partner with an SMS marketing platform specifically designed to support nonprofit organizations. Below, we cover a few of the most popular SMS marketing platforms for nonprofit organizations.
SMS Marketing Platforms for Nonprofit Organizations
Not all SMS marketing software is created equally. Choosing the right SMS marketing platform for nonprofit organizations will help your organization increase support and advocate for change. In this blog post, we share reviews of some well-known SMS marketing technologies and discuss when your nonprofit organization may want to partner with them.
Tatango
Tatango is an SMS marketing software provider that has been partnering with nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups for over 14 years. Tatango’s platform is designed with security and reliability at the forefront to ensure that nonprofits, advocacy groups, and political clients can safely and securely communicate with supporters.
Tatango is built for marketers, is easy to use, and requires no technology expertise. The Tatango solution gives all controls to the nonprofit organization to build out nonprofit text messaging workflows, segment subscribers, insert merge tags for easy personalization, automate text messages, and analyze data to improve the ROI of every campaign.
As a leader in nonprofit SMS marketing, Tatango follows all nonprofit text messaging best practices, including using only dedicated short codes to ensure compliance and safety. Tatango’s platform is safe, reliable, and incredibly efficient. Tatango SMS marketing software can send 6 million texts per hour, ensuring your nonprofit text messaging program is built to scale as your organization grows.
Additionally, Tatango offers a supportive customer experience by partnering each nonprofit client with a client success manager who has expertise in nonprofit SMS marketing. If you have questions about Tatango’s nonprofit SMS marketing software, we invite you to talk to a nonprofit SMS marketing expert today.
EZ Texting
Up next is EZ Texting. EZ Texting is an SMS marketing software that helps small and midsize businesses to confidently grow and keep their customers through its texting platform. Compared to Tatango, which focuses on text messaging for nonprofit organizations, EZ Texting is designed for small profit-driven businesses.
Another key difference between EZ Texting and Tatango is that EZ Texting allows customers to use shared short codes. A shared short code is used by many organizations running texting campaigns simultaneously. While sharing a short code is cheaper, it can be risky for nonprofit organizations. If another organization or business using a shared short code is noncompliant with CTIA guidelines, the short code can be suspended, disrupting everyone else’s campaigns using that same short code. As of 2020, most wireless carriers no longer provision new shared short codes.
If you want full control of your short code and your nonprofit’s reputation, consider a dedicated short code. A dedicated short code would be used by ONLY your nonprofit organization so you would have total control of the reputation and branding associated with the short code. Tatango provisions more dedicated short codes than any other SMS provider in the United States, so we’re happy to handle the short code provisioning process for you.
Twilio
Twilio is an SMS software that allows organizations to send and receive messages through messaging APIs. Compared to Tatango, which is built for marketers, Twilio is built for developers.
The primary purpose of the Twilio solution is to send automatic notifications such as package alerts, delivery updates, or appointment reminders. This solution isn’t intended for promotional SMS campaigns. Twilio is a great product for automated communications, but it requires a developer or someone with coding skills to build integrations using its API.
If your nonprofit organizations is looking to send automated reminders, Twilio is right for you. If your nonprofit organizations is looking to send text messages about organizational updates, donation reminders, petition signatures, or event attendees, then Tatango could be the SMS platform for you.
Attentive
Attentive is built with the e-commerce client in mind. Attentive focuses heavily on generating e-commerce sales for its retail and restaurant customers, driving 18.5% of the total online revenue for modern e-commerce brands.
Most nonprofit organizations focus less on e-commerce sales and derive their funding from donations or fundraising events. In that case, Tatango could be a better solution. If, however, your aim is e-commerce, then Attentive could be your best bet.
Upland Mobile Messaging
Upland Mobile Messaging is one of more than 20 other products belonging to Upland, the parent company. Upland frequently supports enterprise companies and has many of the same features as Tatango, including text messaging segmentation and personalization. The main difference is that Tatango focuses exclusively on political and nonprofit organizations.
P2P vs. A2P Messaging Partners
Another important aspect of SMS marketing is that there are two main forms: P2P messaging (person-to-person or peer-to-peer) and A2P messaging (application-to-person). Tatango and the SMS marketing platforms mentioned above are A2P messaging platforms, because they use an application to send mass text messages to many people at once.
However, many nonprofit organizations also use P2P messaging platforms as part of their overall SMS marketing strategy. P2P messaging software enables one person to send one text message at a time to individuals on a nonprofit’s phone number list. P2P messaging software is slightly more efficient than texting friends and family, in that if multiple users are accessing P2P messaging software at once, you can typically text up to 13,000 subscribers per hour (compared to Tatango, where you can text 6 million subscribers per hour).
Many nonprofit organizations use P2P messaging platforms like RumbleUp, Opn Sesame, Peerly, and GetThru to add a more personal touch to their A2P mass text messaging campaigns. For example, using P2P software, you can follow-up with subscribers about volunteering at local events, signing petitions, or filling out surveys. P2P messaging platforms complement an A2P mass texting messaging strategy by providing a grassroots connection and reminding subscribers about things you’ve already text messaged them about.
Unlike A2P messaging, with P2P messaging, you aren’t able to add eye-catching multimedia to your texts, such as images, videos, gifs, or audio files. So A2P messaging provides more sophistication and scale, while P2P messaging provides an added layer and a more manual touch for your nonprofit text messaging campaigns.
Choosing Your Nonprofit SMS Marketing Platform
If you’re considering any other nonprofit SMS marketing platform, we’d love to answer your questions and help you choose the right partner for your organization. Talk to a nonprofit SMS marketing expert and learn how Tatango can help you better communicate with your supporters.
