How NGOs can collect donations via SMS and Pages to fight against COVID-19

The COVID-19 outbreak has evolved into a global event impacting companies around the world. These are uncertain times, and we don't have all the answers, but fortunately, this is also a time in which technology allows us to be remotely social by helping us stay engaged with friends, family, and colleagues. Companies as well as individuals are looking for ways in which they can contribute to society and help those in need - technology makes that possible. To help you, we’ve put together some helpful steps on how NGOs and NPOs can collect donations via SMS and Pages during a time in which in-person interaction is non-existent.

Although donations are all about reach, and sharing your initiative via social media channels are important. Reaching out to existing users within your database is just as important.

Fundraising made easy with SMS: Step by step

Step 1: Choose your channel

Campaigns is an intuitive online interface to easily send out personalised WhatsApp Business, Apple Business Chat, RCS and SMS Campaigns to your audience. A solution that is dedicated to non tech-savvy users that want to engage with their customers without using an API.

You can start a new campaign from scratch, but the fastest way in which to collect donations, is by working from a template which you can easily do within our Campaigns tool.

Step 2: Design your mobile landing page via Pages

Pages is a tool to create dedicated campaign landing pages. It enables customers to easily and quickly setup a simple mobile landing page to help drive actions and conversions.

Using SMS Campaigns, you can easily attach a landing page to your text message. Campaigns will automatically generate a unique link for each recipient and track the conversion statistics.

Pages, together with the latest enhancements to Pages Premium allows you to arrange the following features into a landing page.

Pages Basic:

• Add text, images, videos, carousels, buttons, URLs, and QR codes.

Pages Premium:

• Add social links, form fields, dropdown menus, and checkboxes.
• Use Address book with merge tags for unique Pages per recipient.
• Custom branding options.

Step 3: Add payment solutions

In order to collect donations, you can add a link to your payment gateway, whether it be via Payfast, SnapScan or Zapper. Simply add the link or QR code to collect donations.

Step 4: Create a contact group via Address Book

Before being able to send your campaign, you need to add a contact group. Address Book is a database management tool which enables you to import up to 1,000 000 contacts as well as manage your opt-outs. It's fast and easy to navigate.

To set up a proper contact list, make sure you have an excel file ready with all the data you might need - add merge tags / custom fields (beyond first name, last name and mobile number) to add dynamic content. Download an example excel file here.

By using Address book with merge tags - you can load personalised information directly into each Page. For every recipient a unique Page will be generated. This enables us to verify whether pages have been opened and track for customers what the success of their campaign is.

Step 5: Send your campaign

Step 6: Measure the results and optimize

The messaging analytics feature helps you monitor the delivery and conversion rates of your SMS campaign.

Pages automatically collects information about the usage of your landing page and displays this in statistics. Statistics provides a high level view of information at a glance. You can view page visits, form submits, completed payments and more advanced features which you can download for offline processing or re upload into the Address Book for future campaigns.

If you need any assistance in setting up your Campaign, please visit our Help Center, with useful step-by-step videos explaining all the features such as the Address Book, SMS Campaigns and Pages.