Put simply, nonprofit omnichannel marketing is a strategy that involves promoting your ideals or case for support within and between multiple marketing channels. As cited in the Marketing Insider Group roundup of 2025 marketing trends, organizations are consistently using an omnichannel approach to promote their offerings, engage audiences with multimedia content, and create seamless user experiences.
Omnichannel marketing increases the number of touchpoints your nonprofit has with its donors. This added exposure can help you increase awareness of your mission, expand your reach, and boost revenue. Additionally, you’ll establish dedicated audiences across multiple platforms, providing a better donor experience by addressing each supporter’s communication preferences.
Despite these benefits, omnichannel marketing can come with some challenges. We’ll explore a few of the most common obstacles and how to overcome them.
1. Creating Seamless Supporter Journeys
Omnichannel campaigns involve multiple touchpoints across several platforms, but they should still feel cohesive and connected as they guide supporters down the donor funnel. However, this can be a difficult balancing act to master.
Donor journeys look different from cause to cause. Even donors supporting the same cause may follow different journeys (e.g., first-time donors versus monthly donors). However, most journeys can be divided into the same five stages: awareness, consideration, decision, action, and post-donation follow-up.
Allegiance Group + Pursuant illustrates how an omnichannel campaign fits into this structure using Sarah, a mid-level donor to a wildlife conservation organization, as an example:
- Awareness: Sarah already follows the nonprofit on Instagram. She comments on a video about endangered jaguars in the Amazon Rainforest, and the organization notes her affinity for big cats.
- Consideration: 24 hours later, Sarah receives an email that tells the story of a specific jaguar the nonprofit aided using funding from donors like her.
- Decision: The organization sends a personalized follow-up email after another 48 hours. This message solicits a donation amount similar to what Sarah has given in the past, describing the immediate impact of that funding. Sarah decides to click the “Donate” button.
- Action: Sarah is routed to the nonprofit’s donation page, where she makes a one-time, mid-sized donation to the jaguar campaign. Then, she is redirected to a personalized thank-you page that addresses her by name.
- Post-Donation Follow-Up: After donating, Sarah receives another personalized thank-you message and a follow-up survey requesting feedback.
How to Map the Journey
So, how can your nonprofit create a campaign similar to the example above? Here are a few quick tips for mapping your donor journey and bridging marketing strategy to execution:
- Audit existing donor touchpoints by listing all the ways donors currently interact with your organization and identifying places where drop-offs frequently occur.
- Create two to three fictional donor profiles, or donor personas, based on your donor data that detail preferred channels, giving motivations, and other relevant information about your target audiences.
- Map channel preferences to each stage of the journey—for example, social media or video might work best for the awareness stage, while storytelling blog posts are most effective at the consideration stage.
- Build in opportunities for personal outreach, like handwritten notes or phone calls, to develop stronger donor relationships.
2. Maintaining Consistency and Connection Between Channels
Keeping messages consistent and actively integrating communication channels is crucial for omnichannel marketing success. Here are some ways to cultivate a more cohesive, unified campaign:
-
- Maintain visual consistency. To strengthen your branding, each message should use the same color scheme, fonts, and logo. Supporters will be more likely to recognize branded messages from your nonprofit, especially if they’re exposed to them in an unfamiliar format or communication channel.
- Choose a theme or story. Each campaign should have a clear central theme or story that your messages tie back to. For example, a food pantry might use storytelling in its Thanksgiving donation appeal by sharing testimonials from families who benefited from the pantry during past holidays.
- Link digital and traditional platforms. Digital and traditional media channels can feel entirely separate if you don’t intentionally connect them. Consider adding QR codes to printed media that link to your website, donation form, social media pages, and long-form online content. To lead digital viewers to more traditional channels, add a form to your website that they can use to sign up to receive direct mail.
- Test the experience. Test out the experience from your supporters’ perspective by showing several volunteers your marketing materials and asking them to complete various tasks. Have test subjects use different devices, such as desktops, mobile devices, and tablets, to ensure the campaign is optimized for any screen size.
While consistency is the key here, it’s also important to adapt content to the channel it will live on. For instance, 1,000 words of copy is perfectly fine for a blog post, but it’s far too much for a marketing email. For social media content, keep text limited, focus on clarity, and capture users’ attention with eye-catching graphics or videos that align with each platform’s format.
3. Allocating Resources Efficiently
Some organizations struggle to allocate any funding to their marketing efforts, and it can be even more challenging to stretch a tight budget over many channels. If your nonprofit is short-staffed, it can also be difficult to find the time needed to create and manage marketing materials.
Here is how your nonprofit can save itself time, money, and stress while still creating an effective omnichannel campaign:
- Save time by front-loading your marketing efforts (e.g., creating a detailed content calendar for the entire month) and automating messages (e.g., schedule sending the month’s marketing emails). Working with an agency or consultant specialized in nonprofit marketing and fundraising can alleviate the burden on your busy staff members.
- Save money by optimizing free or low-cost marketing channels. Many channels, like email, social media, or the Google Ad Grant, are free or inexpensive, with the main “cost” being your time.
- Limit stress by designating a specific portion of your funding toward marketing when creating your annual budget. Determining these figures in advance can prevent over- and underspending. Consider establishing a cross-functional internal team with representation from marketing, fundraising, communications, and membership or volunteer teams to manage this shared budget line item along with shared objectives and key results (OKR).
There are certain myths about nonprofit finances that contribute to the stress and difficulty associated with budgeting for marketing costs. In particular, some people believe all of your spending should be allocated directly to aiding beneficiaries and overhead costs (including marketing expenses) are inherently bad. However, investing in marketing preserves your organization’s longevity, extends your reach, and drives funding, ultimately helping you serve more individuals in need.
4. Tracking Impact Across Multiple Channels
The more channels you use, the more complicated it can be to track your marketing efforts. Additionally, you’ll want to trace each supporter’s journey throughout the omnichannel campaign so you can identify gaps and improve future efforts. Here are a few quick tips to make tracking these metrics more manageable:
- Create a nonprofit marketing plan before launching the campaign. Set clear goals and include a section that defines which metrics you’ll track, the technology and methodology you’ll use to track them, and key success benchmarks.
- Set UTM parameters by adding UTM codes to all links in emails, social media posts, SMS, etc. These codes will help you attribute outcomes to the specific campaign, channel, and content that triggered the conversion.
- Centralize data from all channels in your CRM, giving you a complete view of all data from the campaign in one place.
- Use consistent naming conventions across platforms, such as “SummerAppeal2025_Email” and “SummerAppeal2025_Facebook.”
Set regular checkpoints throughout the campaign and check in on your progress. For instance, you might set monthly checkpoints for a six-month campaign, ensuring you are on track to meet your goal. This also allows you to make small adjustments along the way as needed.
Launching an omnichannel marketing campaign may seem challenging at first, but it’s well worth the end result. These tips, along with help from a nonprofit marketing and fundraising agency, will help your organization reach new audiences, strengthen bonds with existing supporters, and cultivate a well-rounded digital presence.
