With just a couple of months until Giving Tuesday, festive fundraising time and year-end appeals on the horizon, it can be a hectic time for online fundraising. The global economic situation means we’re also pushing against headwinds for this year’s digital donations. Don’t despair! We’re here to enhance your plans so you can achieve the best possible ROI.
There are always new techniques to attract donors: new ways to polish your donation form; enhancements to your welcome journey. We’re sharing a few of the most effective tips we’re using. With the digital and fundraising worlds changing so fast, tips from even 2 years ago are getting rusty and performing less well. Hopefully each of these fresh approaches could help to optimise your online fundraising appeal.
We’ve split them into three posts: this one covers tips related to appeal preparation and ways to attract leads / supporters. The second post focuses on welcoming and converting your leads / supporters, and in the third one, we’ve shared some thoughts on thanking and donor nurture post-appeal.
Let’s start with the basics!
Appeal prep – data, data and data
Segment elegantly with next steps in mind. Even if your DM campaign has a huge level of variations, consider reducing them to ease your online execution practicalities online. Once you have the segments, consider what customisation and personalisation you can add to every step of the donor journey.
Define your appeal aims
We often meet clients running appeals with only minimal fundraising KPIs – overall income / total number of new donors / year-on-year retention. There are so many more aspects of your appeal where data can help you leverage or improve performance in real time. Add elements such as the effectiveness of your ads plus content, traffic by device type, field-by-field donor funnel and payment performance, donor reactivation, social sharing, distribution of gift value plus, ideally, supporter appreciation too.
Brush up your tracking
We can only improve things if we can measure them. With the year-end / festive fundraising season running from November to January there’s plenty of time to observe and influence outcomes.
- Ensure you track the effectiveness of each step of your supporter journey
- Benchmark each step or interaction against past appeals alongside industry standards
- Present the stats in real-time dashboards that are easy for all stakeholders to monitor
- Set up and attend weekly performance meetings where you observe the stats, analyse the insights indicated by them and agree necessary changes to your appeal. (Some online donation forms make it hard to track conversions end-to-end. With so much revenue at stake we strongly recommend working with platforms that embrace testing and optimisation, rather than those which obfuscate your appeal results.)
Reaching out – mix it up!
Integrated acquisition campaigns consistently perform significantly better than single-channel ones. Plan your eDM, DM, site content (such as landing pages), SMS and social media to help reinforce each other. Play to the strengths of each channel with a wider plan to amplify your appeal messages.
We have seen small items of personalised print such as postcards help lift the performance of primarily digital appeals. Likewise a small spend on digital ads, combined with tactical SMS or 3-4 elegant emails has enhanced visibility of, and response to, DM-led appeals by between 13% and 35%.
Personalised links – add personalised QR code donation links / PURLs into your DM packs to speed up response. These enable you to welcome the donor using their first name on your landing page or online form and present them with a custom gift array.
These parallel communications can pay for themselves by increasing consideration and conversion, while creating a positive halo for future appeals or recruiting new leads. We have also seen real value in landing pages optimised for consideration: sharing your story and building the case for support. These can be enhanced further with personalised stories (copy or video), relevant price points and impact updates based upon prior donations.
Reaching a wider audience with Google – SEM, PPC and more!
Google Ads put your appeal directly in front of people actively searching for ways to give back during year-end tax time and the holiday season. Google Ads best practice approaches such as setting the correct Campaign Goal, Conversion Actions (using enhanced conversions to take advantage of the power of Google AI), Campaign Structure and Bidding Strategy lead to strong results when matched with relevant keyword selection and optimised ad content.
On the topic of keywords, make sure you have relevant and optimal content on your site, ideally on dedicated landing pages. Promote your appeal’s timely messages, increase the keyword density while boosting relevance to improve both organic plus paid search.
It doesn’t take a huge spend to learn and shape a great Ad campaign. Even with a small investment of just $5,000 we have seen Google Ads deliver over $20,000 in revenue. The direct value might be measured in lots of new donors. There is also an indirect lift in awareness from those who see you at the top of their search results even if they don’t immediately convert.
Google Grant – and how about a heap of ‘free’ Google power too? Don’t forget to focus your Google Grant on your year-end appeal in November and December! Not spending the full $10,000 a month? We can help increase the spend and deliver more leads or donors like generous Google gifts for your Christmas stocking. (Concerned it’s too late to start? We’ve rocketed clients’ Grant spend from a poorly targeted $200 a month up to an optimised monthly $10,000 in just 3 months, so let’s get cracking!)
Putting the ‘Meta’ into Christmas Appeal
Meta is still one of our highest ROI channels during year-end and Christmas appeals reaching current, lapsed and new donors. The health warning: strategies that worked well last year appear to be performing less well in 2024. Here are a few tips to make Meta more magical.
- Leverage Advantage+ campaigns and Meta’s AI since these tools are central to the approach favoured by Meta and its algorithms
- Prioritise volume AND quality of ad creative. Meta’s research shows 56% of ad outcomes are driven by your creative. Make sure you also use a diversity of formats (images, GIFs, videos and carousels)
- Strengthen your data quality by using Facebook’s Conversions API Gateway. This might require you to amend your Privacy or Data Protection Policy, however the CAPIG direct connection has proven excellent at data matching, when the donor journey dataLayer is set up correctly
- Use your warm eDM lists and tweak the creative to target both these donors as well as lookalike audiences based upon them. This can turn your basic warm eDM appeal into a social media acquisition campaign
Explore new shores
Given the scale of year-end appeals and Christmas giving, it is a great time to test new approaches. The learnings can then be transferred to future appeals in the coming year. Allocate a small budget to try something new, chat with us about newer strategies with services such as Google Performance Max, get creative and try them. We have seen really interesting and positive results. If you spot something with a strong ROI, invest more. If things are looking less favourable, pause and redistribute the spend.
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Not sure where to start or feel you have most of it nailed but want to squeeze the last drops out? We’re here to help! Say hi here or on LinkedIn – we’re always happy to share advice as well as benchmarks to make your coming appeal super-productive.
The holiday season is just around the corner. Let’s get started on your Christmas Appeal now to ensure you make the most significant impact possible!
Our next post will take you through tips to help welcome your leads and convert them to donors – and so drive up your year-end appeal’s ROI.
P.S. Health-check your year-end campaign today by downloading our Festive fundraising framework!