While the main focus of many end-of-year campaigns will be direct mail and email, other channels are increasingly driving online donations. Just 27% of online donations now result from email (according to the latest M+R Benchmark report).
No longer does multiple-channel fundraising mean a home page mention and few Facebook posts during online campaigns. Multi-channel fundraising has evolved to include more donations driven from a nonprofit’s home page, digital advertising and social ambassadors.
Since these areas may be new to some nonprofits, here’s a round up of helpful blog posts for your end-of-year campaign.
Home Page Pop Ups
Despite the recent news that Google will penalize pop-ups on mobile devices starting in January, this change has more to do with how pop-ups are designed rather than if you use a pop up. ASC has a good example of an updated pop-up design that’s not intrusive.
Home page pop ups can boost end-of-year donations and help offset declining email conversion rates we’ve seen over the past few years. Here are a couple of related blog posts:
Why Pop-Ups Should Be Part of Your Online Fundraising – To convert more website visitors to donors during campaigns, a strong ask is needed. And that’s what a pop-up delivers—it asks your website visitors, point blank, if they’ll make a donation.
The Nonprofit Website Tweak You’d Be Crazy To Not Try – Includes reasons why pop ups may not have worked for you in the past and outlines when to use pop ups that ask for donations.
Digital Advertising
In 2015, nonprofits spent $0.04 in digital advertising for every dollar raised online (per the latest M+R Benchmark report), with larger nonprofits spending $0.13 and smaller nonprofits spending $0.01 per dollar raised. Digital ads are no longer just being used by the largest nonprofits. Both small and large nonprofits are running and raising money through digital ads. Here are a couple helpful blog posts:
Nonprofits Missing Prime Opportunities for Digital Marketing – Makes the case that as demographics and behaviors shift more towards online and digital, it’s important for nonprofits to shift their marketing strategies along with the trends.
5 Costly Facebook Ad Mistakes You Can Fix With This Checklist – John Haydon outlines five Facebook mistakes nonprofits should avoid. The post also includes links to getting started with Facebook ads and how to target donors and email subscribers with Facebook ads.
Social Ambassadors
Like the for-profit world, nonprofits are adapting to social media’s increasingly limited free reach. In addition to using digital ads – described above – they’re turning to social ambassadors to get the word out for fundraising campaigns. Here are a couple posts on what ambassadors are and how to use them:
The P2P Fundraising Piece Likely Missing from Your Year-End Strategy – Highlights the origin of successful social ambassador campaigns in higher education and describes social ambassadors as “another flavor of peer-to-peer fundraising, minus the fundraising page.”
Amplify #GivingTuesday with Social Ambassadors – Great tips for identifying social ambassadors, securing a commitment, communication strategies and measuring results.