January 20, 2015 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Tailor techniques to the donor.
Steve MacLaughlin, director of analytics at Blackbaud, the fundraising-software company, says one reason many nonprofits raised more money during the holidays is that they created different appeals for each type of donor.
“The email blast is thankfully on the decline,” Mr. MacLaughlin says. “Nonprofits are getting much better at segmenting their emails because it produces results.” An email to someone who has contributed just once, he adds, should be different from one to donors who’ve made multiple gifts or someone whose giving has lapsed.
Spread out appeals.
Steve Cox, associate director of marketing at Room to Read, sent appeals throughout the holiday season rather than focusing on a single day like Giving Tuesday. “Our strategy concentrated on a number of key dates so we were not competing with thousands of nonprofits,” he says.
Enlist Facebook and Google to help.
Habitat for Humanity and other charities are searching for new donors online by paying social networks to promote their causes. Habitat paid Facebook $91,000 to place ads on pages of people who resemble its most typical donors.
While charities usually lose money when recruiting new supporters, Habitat had $44,000 in hand after paying those expenses. The average gift among people who gave was $240, higher than the charity receives from new direct-mail donors.
Habitat also had good results with Google. During the year-end giving season, it paid Google $23,800 to place ads for the charity, each containing a donation button, near search results people saw after looking for Habitat’s name. Donations in response to the ads raised nearly $1.4-million after expenses.
Tim Daugherty, Habitat’s deputy director, says he saw a big difference in the two social networks. About 70 percent of people who gave after seeing Google ads were previous donors and only about a third were new supporters, he says. But the reverse was true with Facebook.
Mix direct mail, email, and other techniques.
Jeff Patrick, a San Francisco fundraising consultant, says that one health organization he worked with found that following a direct-mail appeal with an email message resulted in direct-mail gifts that totaled 20 percent more than donations from people who got no emails.
Put passion and urgency in every email message.
“The emotional way of talking to people has become more important,” says Madeline Stanionis, creative director at M+R, a company that advises nonprofits on digital fundraising strategies. “Organizations need to watch their use of gimmicks and inauthentic language.”
Ms. Stanionis says last year she and her colleagues read online messages from clients aloud, and “We have a checklist: Did something in this copy make me want to cry? If I took off the logo, would I know who this is from their passion and urgency? Did you grab me from the first second and make me want to read more?”
Too many groups start their seasonal online appeals with something like “Year end is approaching,” Ms. Stanionis says, “but everybody knows that, so you don’t want to read more.”
