Is HubSpot a Good Solution for Nonprofit Organizations?

Many nonprofits are misguided in feeling that "every dollar should go to the mission." Many nonprofits believe, "we can't spare money for technology."

But by employing the right technology and marketing processes, a nonprofit can become more self-sustaining, expand their reach and win new advocates.

Hubspot is an inbound marketing software platform that helps attract, manage and analyze the lifecycle of users and donors. Hubspot can be used for both businesses and nonprofits to help organizations grow, scale and achieve marketing goals.

Technology, when coupled with the right strategy and execution, can be a powerful accelerator for a cause — building supporters, fundraisers, and advocates, and expanding the base users belonging to the cause.

The need for nonprofits to embrace digital marketing and analytics

Digital marketing and analytics are now imperatives for nonprofit organizations, for a few reasons:

• Your donors are now in control. The "fundraising pyramid" has evolved with the advent of the Internet's ubiquity. Both younger and older users have embraced the web as a method for discovery, validation and communications.
• Digital marketing helps improve both advocacy and fundraising. Sure, many nonprofits still rely on large donations prompted in-person or using direct sail mail. The web is expanding the opportunities for both large and small donations. Additionally, advocates can help expand the reach and likelihood of giving within a community. Advocates have more reach than ever before.

How Hubspot works for nonprofits

Hubspot is a powerful "all-in-one" marketing platform. From attracting visitors to closing conversions through the fundraising process, HubSpot brings your entire marketing funnel together and shows what marketing and communications works and which efforts do not. Hubspot helps nonprofits control their content, channels and marketing performance while getting a 360 degree view of the people who matter most to campaigns.

Yes, Hubspot is a powerful tool that helps nonprofits improve their marketing and communications to attract donors, build engagement and build an advocacy base by providing centralized data and analytics, as well as robust publishing tools.

Benefits of using Hubspot for nonprofits

•  360 visibility of marketing campaigns
• Lifecycle tracking of users, donors and advocates
• Track campaign performance
• Email marketing, publishing and analytics - perfect for donation nurturing and appeals
• Content and communications management
• Understand what content leads to an engagement with donors
• Management of website (Hubspot is a powerful CMS)
• Publish and measure marketing communications through social media, blogging, landing pages, email, and calls-to-action
• Powerful web analytics application that reveals the specific behavior of donors, users and supporters in an individual timeline format
• Reports on campaign performance that are easy to create and customize at will
• Track the performance of each significant persona for your nonprofit (for example, large donors vs. volunteers)
• Learn more about your constituency over time using progressive profiling and smart forms
• Track conversion rates for content, campaigns and calls-to-actions
• Improve and build the SEO ranking and outcomes for your organization

Downsides of HubSpot for nonprofits

The major downside we've seen is the lack of integration between HubSpot and platforms used for donations.

However, HubSpot has recently announced integrations with B2C e-commerce platforms like Shopify, which may indicate they will move into this space soon.

More ideas for nonprofits: Attracting micro-donations through nonprofit website fundraising and Defining digital advocacy for nonprofits and nonprofit marketing