Meet Ghazal Vaghedi, online fundraising expert and Business Development Manager at Engaging Networks. Vaghedi discusses with WashingtonExec the most efficient ways to use social media and the common mistakes non-profit’s make when establishing and marketing an online brand. Along with some universal advice, Vaghedi describes her background and what led a career as an entrepreneur in the non-profit world.
WashingtonExec: Can you talk a little bit about your background? Where did you grow up, what did you study in school, and how did you ultimately come to be at Engaging Networks?
Ghazal Vaghedi: I was born in Tehran, Iran. I am a child of the Iranian revolution, born right after the over-throw of the Shah and at the start of the Iran/Iraq war. I moved to Denver, Colorado at the age of 10. Anxious to assimilate, I learned English very quickly. I went on to the University of Colorado at Boulder to study International Affairs and Political Science. After college I moved to Washington to work at Refugees International, while my role was primarily in fundraising, I was fortunate to accompany the RI President, Ken Bacon, on some missions to Africa and Southeast Asia. I was so inspired by Ken Bacon (former RI President) it motivated me to go on and study human rights law.
I then studied human rights law at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. While I was finishing my dissertation and consulting back in DC, I was introduced to Graham Covington—the Founder and CEO of Engaging Networks. He was looking to grow his company in North America and hired me on as a part-time consultant. While I was conflicted initially about whether to pursue a human rights career or to sign up full time at Engaging Networks, the decision became easier to make as I realized the amazing opportunity I would have with Engaging Networks. My position at Engaging Networks is multi-faceted and at the core of it I get to tap into my entrepreneur spirit—a spirit that lives in many of my family members.
WashingtonExec: How would you describe Engaging Networks? Where do you see it fitting in, niche-wise?
Ghazal Vaghedi: Engaging Networks is an online eCRM used by global, national, and local organizations. We deliver sophisticated, reliable internet software to help nonprofits with online advocacy, fundraising, email, social networking, and data management. We believe what sets us apart from our competitors are three key differentiators: customer support, customization, and innovation in technology.
As far as our niche, we tend to work with a lot of international organizations. Organizations that operate in several different countries enjoy using our tools as there are absolutely no language dependencies anywhere on the platform. We have clients such as PETA that deploy campaigns in Hindi and Chinese!
WashingtonExec: What are your thoughts on social media apps like facebook? What roles do you see them fulfilling, and how have you used them in your own marketing work? How would you suggest others use them?
Ghazal Vaghedi: Where I see the challenge with Facebook is converting your “fans” or your “likes” to actually integrate with the rest of your marketing efforts. Organizations that have moved to collecting emails directly on their pages are definitely on the right track. Otherwise you just have your FB fan base and they may not become as fully integrated into the rest of your marketing efforts. Having said that, we are also noticing major declines in supporters actually interacting with organizations on their websites.
Our company noticed this increasing trend and felt that it was important to allow our clients to effectively share their campaigns as widgets easily embeddable in social networking sites such as Facebook. Our clients are now deploying campaigns on Facebook that allows them to collect valuable supporter data as well actual participation of a Facebook supporter in a campaign. All of this without ever leaving Facebook. With shifting trends in online marketing, organizations will have to go to supporters and prospective supporters where they are spending most of their online time instead of asking people to come to them.
WashingtonExec: Do you see marketing a non-profit as different from marketing something like a for-profit corporate group? What different skills or approaches are needed?
Ghazal Vaghedi: I see this question really in a different way as our tools are used by non-profits to market their causes and thus grow their supporter/donor base. In this sense I think for profit companies and non-profit organizations share the same challenge as they are both at the end of the day competing for customers and donors respectively. In many cases, non-profits have to use their marketing efforts to get people to emotionally connect with their cause. And then they have to worry about the next step of engagement.
The biggest mistake non-profits tend to make is having very generic communication for all segments of their supporters. For instance, they’ll send the same low dollar donation ask to everyone, instead of effectively thinking how to market their ask in a different way to someone that has given at a certain level consistently versus someone that has never given. We are constantly encouraging our clients to use profiling tools on the platform so that they can customize content for specific segments of their database (profile=lapsed donors versus profile=major donors).
For non-profits to be effective marketers with the end goal of increased participation on all fronts, they should think about segmenting and profiling their database, creating conditional content to match those specific profiles, testing campaigns based on benchmarks, and being proactive about learning to use technology to effectively market their campaigns across multiple online channels.
WashingtonExec: Any guiding principles for your work or career?
Ghazal Vaghedi: Never expect anyone to create success for you. You have to take charge, create structure when you need to, and be creative in your day to day work in terms of creating opportunities and thinking about staying competitive. And always keep your ego in check: You will make mistakes and some mistakes will devastate you but the good news is there is always room to learn and not repeat—but just as long as you don’t let your ego get in the way.