At first glance, this article from the McKinsey Quarterly — We’re all marketers now — might seem too ‘foreign’ to the experience of nonprofits and fundraisers to bother with.

But I urge you to read it. Believe me, it does apply.

First, it argues that marketers need to adjust to a “new era of deep customer engagement” where ‘push’ advertising and promotion no longer work effectively.

It notes that consumers do not separate marketing of the product from the in-store or online experience or from the product itself, concluding … “marketing is the company” and everybody is responsible for marketing.

Says McKinsey: “To engage customers whenever and wherever they interact with a company—in a store; on the phone; responding to an e-mail, a blog post, or an online review—marketing must pervade the entire organization.”

Of course this leads to … if everybody is responsible, who is ultimately accountable?

And that leads to a discussion of breaking down traditional walls that might have some functional purpose but are meaningless to the customer.

So, what does this mean in fundraising terms?

Perhaps mots importantly, break down the division between ‘communications’ and ‘fundraising’. For example, as we’ve looked at donor retention, the path to improvement relates at least as much to what is communicated to donors via newsletters, blogs, websites, social media, etc outside the fundraising stream as it does to the fundraising stream itself.

But who is charged with making sure that ‘communications’ are effectively designed to support ‘fundraising’?

Even just looking at online communications versus direct mail … who holds the mandate to ensure message consistency?

The article notes a phenomenon that I’m sure most nonprofits are experiencing — the enormous demand for fresh, relevant content to fuel the accelerating, proliferating and intensifying digital interaction that consumer/donors expect from their brands/organizations.

Most nonprofits struggle to produce a compelling monthly print newsletter or core website. And yet now they feel obligated to offer Facebook pages and mobile apps in an extremely dynamic technical and usage environment.

As McKinsey notes, companies “have built publishing divisions to feed the ever-increasing demand for content required by company Web sites, social media, internal and external publications, multimedia sites, and coupons and other promotions. Many luxury-goods companies, for example, have built editorial teams to ‘socialize’ their brands: they are transforming the customer relationship by producing blogs, digital magazines, and other content that can dramatically intensify both the frequency and depth of interactions.”

Then there’s the issue of customer insight and data. Digital engagement yields customer data by the terabytes per day for some marketers. McKinsey gives this example, talking about data analytics and targeting:

“Some marketing organizations are already making their moves: to send targeted e-mails to customers, retailer Williams-Sonoma, for example, analyzes an integrated database that tracks some 60 million households on metrics including income, housing values, and number of children. These e-mails obtain response rates 10 to 18 times as high as those sent randomly.”

Wouldn’t you like to increase your email fundraising response 10 to 18 times?!

Like it or not, consumer marketers — with far more resources than most nonprofits — wind up ‘training’ consumers (i.e. your donors) to expect more and more content and interaction, faster and faster, slicker and slicker, more and more relevant.

That’s what nonprofit communicators/fundraisers are up against. Good luck!

The McKinsey article makes cogent recommendations about how consumer marketers can meet the demands of “deep customer engagement”. You won’t find everything in the article directly applicable to your nonprofit environment … but the principles surely apply.

Tom