Six benefits of integrating your charity’s website with your CRM
The benefits of integrating your charity’s website with your CRM include greater control over your data and a smoother experience for your donors. When you’re organising events, keeping track of supporters and managing donations, a connected system makes it possible to stay on top of it all.
What does it mean for a charity to have an integrated CRM and website?
An integrated website and CRM is made up of two separate systems: the website with its content management system (ideally, a purpose-built charity website) and your organisation’s charity CRM. The website is public and intended to engage donors and potential donors. A CRM is where your donors’ data is stored, and can help with essential activities like fundraising, supporter engagement and gift aid processing.
As separate systems, there is no inherent connection between a website and a CRM, which means that data will need to be managed separately in each. Integrating the two systems allows them to share data. This makes it possible to see how website engagement translates into donations, memberships, event sales and more.
However, integrating a charity CRM and website requires planning. Integration is normally handled as part of a complete solution from one provider (which still consists of a separate website and CRM), like Access Workspace for Charities, or enabled by APIs or a tool like Zapier, which can connect a website to thousands of other systems.
Find out how our integrated software can work for your charity
Top benefits of CRM and website integration for your charity
Stay compliant with GDPR and protect data
Strict rules govern the ways that organisations can gather and store data. If you are operating solely in the UK with UK donors, GDPR will apply, but other regulations may also be relevant if you store data from citizens of other countries.
Integrating your website and CRM doesn’t necessarily eliminate the need to store data in multiple systems, but it does make it much easier to identify where the data is being stored and how it is being used, and streamlines any changes or updates to the supporter data to make sure it is correct on all systems and compliant with the supporters’ wishes.
If you have chosen to integrate your CRM and website by investing in unified solutions from a single provider, it becomes even easier to ensure that every system provides the level of data protection that you require.
Manage users easily and securely
Rather than managing two lists of users with different access levels, integrating your website with your CRM makes it easier to monitor who can access different types of information. Working with one provider for both your website and CRM makes access control even easier by enabling your staff to use a single login for your solutions.
Even with solutions from multiple providers, integrating your CRM with the website makes it easier for users to see relevant data from one platform in the other and ensures that everyone has access to the most up to date information they need to do their jobs effectively.
Match website conversion data to final figures
One of the most difficult things about managing an unconnected website and CRM is understanding how website goal conversions translate into actual donations and other tangible actions. Did that supporter who gave a one off website donation actually become a regular giver after receiving a thank you email? Without some level of integration, it’s difficult to reconcile the data from two sources with complete confidence.
Integration eliminates the problem entirely by pulling information from the website into the CRM. You’ll be able to see a one to one relationship between website conversions and the data your CRM provides for donations, volunteering and other transactions. In this way, a CRM with website integration offers a single source of truth that accurately records interactions with your organisation.
Keep event planning all in one place
Most charity events are sold through the website and managed in the CRM. You can save a lot of time with an integrated CRM that receives data from the website when someone signs up or buys a ticket, and you’ll know that your CRM’s data is accurate and up to date.
More complex CRM integration may allow the CRM to send data to the website as well as the other way around. With this in place, it’s possible to send personalised marketing messages out to website users as they browse, which can help to make them aware of events that they may be interested in joining.
Even without this functionality, a CRM that can use data from the website will enable you to make more informed decisions for future events by giving you access to all the data from previous events.
Streamlined payment processing
Integrating your charity CRM with the website streamlines the payment process for you and your donors. You can enable payments within your website – giving donors the best experience possible – then track all of the information automatically in the CRM. Even better, if your website can handle donations, online shopping sales and event purchases, all of your transactions can be managed and tracked in one interlinked process.
Direct debit processing can also be integrated to your CRM and can be facilitated on your website if the two are linked. Giving your donors the smoothest payment experience possible by keeping them on the website is the best way to keep them engaged, but you need your CRM to stay up to date with any payments so that you have an accurate record of donor activity.
Create a connected, trackable donor journey
Integrating your CRM with your website means that you can engage with and track your donor journeys through one consistent system. From translating website visits to conversions to actual figures, to payment processing and follow-up communications, integrating your CRM with the website will give you full visibility of how your donors are interacting with you at any point.
More advanced charity CRMs can help you go beyond this initial donor journey and continue the cycle of engagement by providing marketing automation tools. Marketing automation, such as emails and website notifications, work best when they use real donor data to send personalised messages, rather than sending the same basic message to everyone.
You don’t need to integrate your website and CRM to make use of marketing automation, but allowing the two systems to share data will give you twice the data to personalise your communications.
What to consider before integrating your charity’s website and CRM
Does your current website and CRM give you the functionality you need?
There are multiple ways to think about integrating your CRM with your website, but the first is to consider whether or not your current systems offer everything you need. If you are considering changing one or the other, it’s important to consider how any new system might impact your ability to integrate the two parts. We have written a complete guide to choosing a charity CRM if you want more advice on this subject.
Is a solution from a single provider right for you?
One integration option to consider is investing in a CRM and website from the same provider, which is the easiest way to ensure that the two systems can be integrated smoothly. This option only makes sense if you are considering changing one or the other, as you will either need to invest in both a new CRM and a new website from one company, or change one of them to match the provider of the other.
What options are there if I don’t want to change my existing software?
Without buying a new website CMS or CRM, your best option is to use APIs to connect the two systems. As we mentioned before, a tool like Zapier can make it possible for different software solutions to share data, but there may be other options available to you depending on your website’s CMS or the CRM you’re using. If you’re unsure what will work for your current systems, start by speaking to your website developers or your CRM provider to see what solutions they offer.
Next steps
Integrating your charity’s CRM with your website is a powerful way to get greater accuracy in your data and to provide a smoother experience for your donors. If you’re considering switching to new systems to implement integrated solutions from the ground up, consider our complete charity solution suite, Access Workspace for Charities, or browse our other guides on types of CRM for different customer requirements and how much you should expect to pay for a Charity CRM.
