(Find the original article on Minecraft Marketing)

If you recently took the dive and upgraded your server, you're going to want to know how to encourage people to donate, unless you have a large Minecraft budget (come on, we all have one!). The methods of increasing donations is a big topic, so I'll be covering those over a series of posts, which will include ways to increase Minecraft server donations, effective calls-to-action and so on.

In this article, I'll be covering the management of the players that are donating to your server. In the business world, this falls under Customer Relationship Management, which as I'm sure you can guess, means managing the relationship that a business or organisation has with its customers, whether they are past, current or potential customers - they're all important.

In the context of Minecraft, I like to call it Donor Relationship Management (genius, I know). I'm actually working on an online system that will allow server owners and their staff to effectively manage their donors and thereby encourage repeat donations, however that's something I'll cover in the near future.

Basic Principles of
Donor Relationship Management

The following are four key things you should remember when managing your donors, both past and potential.

1 Stop Asking

If a player sees that the server is going to give them entertainment for the forseeable future, and they have made friends on that server, they'll be more likely to donate. Constantly asking players (especially past donors) to donate with server announcements and direct requests is needy, and no one likes to be backed into a corner when talking about money. It's just rude.

2 Learn about your players

Keep a basic record of every regular member on your server, preferably on a collaborative document like Google Docs, so that your senior staff can add notes. Make notes about player-staff relationships, identify potential donors and then get to know them personally by playing with them, offering your help on a big project they're working on, or even just offering to go exploring with them.

3 Say thank you

Whenever someone does donate, go and personally thank them in-game, and hand-deliver any perk items if possible. If you're personally unable to (e.g. you're offline), get one of your senior staff to do it. It'll make them feel appreciated, and they'll know that you're truly grateful.

DO NOT just send the player the items without thanking them - it'll just look like you don't care.

4 Include them in the decision-making process

Although it is wise to keep all of your players aware of any developments (e.g. new projects), make sure you actually include players who have donated in the decision-making process. A lot of servers actually give donors ranks and privileges, even going as far as making them Admins or Mods (depending on how much they give) - if you already have this system in place, then fine. However, if you run a tight ship and hand-picked your staff like you should have done, you won't necessarily want any old Joe buying themselves into power - if that's the case, just make sure you let them know what's going on, and get their opinions. I'll be elaborating on the "Donor = Staff?" debate in a future post, where I'll discuss the pros and cons of letting players buy rank/power.

These Principles are very much a work in progress, so let me know what you think of them, and if you have any suggestions or talking points, let me know in the comments section below.

I will be writing more articles in the future, so make sure you visit Minecraft Marketing and subscribe to new post notifications.

-Red

Bio

My in-game name is RedJaguar, but my real name is Tristan, and I'm from Liverpool in the UK.

I'm an online marketer by profession, and I decided to start my blog to help Minecraft server owners improve their marketing and community management, and to hopefully increase their donations.

If you want to learn more about marketing for Minecraft, visit Minecraft Marketing and make sure you subscribe!

Make sure you follow me on Twitter as well! @RedJaguar