SUPERCHARGE10Ways to

Your Online Fundraising Campaigns

Presented by:Ghazal Vaghedi – Engaging Networks

Elise Ledsinger – Humane Society InternationalEric Rardin – Care2

@care2team | #c2webinar

about

Citizens use Care2 for:

Starting or signing petitions

Volunteering

Donating $

Spreading news

Commenting on blogs

Starting group (organizing)

Joining nonprofits

Nonprofits use Care2 for:

Recruiting Donors & Supporters

Traffic/Branding/Awareness

Advocacy

Building Facebook fan base

about our speakers

Elise Ledsinger, Manager of Online FundraisingHumane Society International

Ghazal Vaghedi, Head of Market Development (N. America)Engaging Networks

Eric Rardin, Senior Director of Nonprofit ServicesCare2

-overseas business development and overall account mgmt-past work with Hayes & Associates (event fundraising) and Refugees International (fundraising, advocacy, events)

-manages online, new media fundraising, and communications-previously an Online Producer for HSI, creating online content (emails, donation forms, action alerts)

-advises on email acquisition and multichannel conversion-past work on integrated advocacy campaigns for oceans groups and other environmental nonprofits

Lead with a thoughtful strategy, and set goals to measure success

Before the tools, comes strategyDetermine your fundraising goals

Put your content (e.g. story) at the heart of your strategy

Brand your campaign

Determine your marketing plan

Determine your audience segments

Make sure your strategy includes other channels

1 Begin with the end in mind:

HSI goal for seal campaign on Care2: acquire new names and convert them into donors. On Care2, we did a petition, Next Action Page and a blog post. Our approach was based off what performed well for us in 2011.

Target countries: Canada (70%), EU (15%), UK (15%)

Rate per name: $1.50 USD

Total Care2 acquisition budget: $6,000 USD for 3,750 names

 

Also spent $375 for 3,750 impressions on Next Action Page (NAP)

4,666 names delivered

Average cost per conversion = $1.29

We had a campaign goal of raising $400k for HSUS + HSI (based off of previous years’ earnings)

1 Begin with the end in mind:

Lead with a thoughtful strategy, and set goals to measure success

Don’t take new supporters for granted, engage and cultivate with a welcome series

Use e-mail triggers to automate an engagement process over a certain span of time – beyond just an automated thank you

Makes sense for new donors / new sign ups

Educate supporters on your mission

Provide options for engagement

Segment your welcome series based on channel

Allows you to build your donor community by adopting “customer service” manners

2 Perfect your welcome series

Plan your online marketing strategy early! We started planning 4 months ahead of the campaign start

Send out welcome series in a timely fashion once they’ve taken action on Care2

We did a 3-part series: welcome/survey, appeal, and thank you

Sometimes we’ll do a welcome email, survey, appeal, and thank you (it all depends on the timing of how long the campaign is running and when we receive the names from Care2

Engage your audienceWe combined welcome email with a survey

Follow up with a donation ask and a thank you emailAlways make sure to thank your donors and action takers!

2 Perfect your welcome series

Who is your audience?

Consider steering away from generic messaging for everyone in your database

Use profiles to automate segmentation based on transactional, historical, or even form data

Donor levels should match specific asks--a historically high level donor should never get an ask that is below their previous giving level

Remember:

Profiling is key to targeting and hence the *channel*:  creating supporter profiles will help you target different audiences in different channels more effectively.  For example, your fundraising email list versus your Facebook page versus your direct mail—three different channels translates to three different communication tactics. 

3 Segment your list(s)

We generally segment our list whether or not someone has taken action, donated, or opened an email

For seals, we segmented by monthly donors, 2012 donors, 2011 donors, non donors, and action takers – by using Profiles in EN

We also segment our lists by country so the constituent will see donation forms/content specific to their currency and country director

HSI Canada emails to Canadians, HSI UK emails to UK residents, HSI Global emails to all other international folks

Be mindful of the emails your new group receives – we keep them separate from the rest of our list so they don’t get overwhelmed with other emails from our organization

Suppress this group from all other email communications until the entire welcome series is complete

3 Segment your list(s)

Conditional content is tied to profiles / segments

Allows you to send one email to all your profiles, but will swap in conditional content based on supporter profile

Allows for more personalization based on the supporter’s historical interactions with you

Leads to higher conversion and engagement

Saves you time!

4 Use conditional content

Personalize emails as much as possibleFirst name (custom salutation), use dynamic campaign links so the donation form/action alert auto-populates with constituent’s information

For HSI -- Canadians get email with HSI Canada logo, signature by HSI Canada director, donation links to Canadian currency

Same for UK and global

4 Use conditional content

Convert site traffic

Distribute content on social networks (widgets!)

Make it easy for others to distribute your content (user friendly share tools)

Permission based name buy

Distribute through partner organizations and blogs

5 Grow your list

Ask people to share your content on social media

5 Grow your list

Hijack your homepage with a windowshade or overlay to get new people to sign up or donate

Use fun, interactive landing pages with imagery

Use widget to create Facebook tabs

Use share links on all donation forms, action alerts and emails

Use multi-channel marketing approach (we grew list by 1,000 using Google/FB ads)

Define a theme

Branding helps create broader awareness

Brand your campaign across channels consistently Email

Landing page

Social networks (brand your widget)

Create mobile templates consistent with the rest of campaign

Use display widgets as part of your branding to provide social proof of your campaign

6 Unify your branding across channels

We used the same masthead and image across all channels for this year’s seal campaign

Emails, donation forms, and action alerts all had the same masthead image with the [Protect Seals] campaign logo

We updated our cover photo on Facebook with the same seal image as well

6 Unify your branding across channels

Matching gift

Limit campaign time

Different donation levels tied to different benefits

Certain donation amounts get special access to senior staff

With $1000 donation you will become part of the President’s circle

7 Consider an incentive

We engaged people by telling them we would provide them with breaking news, ‘live from the ice’ tweets, an insider’s look into meetings and the opportunity to make a change, and more if they took action or donated

Monthly donors receive a special monthly newsletter thanking them for their ongoing support

7 Consider an incentive

We also explained what their gift could be used for on donation forms

Easiest to do when donation pages are hosted on the same platform as your e-mail service

Pre-populated landing pages lead to increased rates of conversion

If using dynamic content in the email why not carry it through to the landing page for maximum personalization

Allows you to track from the time email was opened to form completion

Create mobile versions of your email and landing pages

8 Integrate your email and fundraisinglanding pages

We used EN to host all assets – donation, email and advocacy – a fully-integrated campaign

We created a ‘splaction’ landing page, where people could take action, donate, get news and more

8 Integrate your email and fundraisinglanding pages

We created a windowshade/overlay on the website to make donating easy

We also created an infographic, encouraging people to learn more, share on social media, and donate!

The ‘splaction’, infograph, donation forms and action alerts all linked to each other once someone took action.

Test your supporters profiles

Test landing pages

Test subject lines

Test e-mail content

Test your ASK

A/B test

9 TEST EVERYTHING!

We test everything and use findings to improve campaign year to year

We use Care2 often to acquire new names, and have found this series works the best for HSI

An automated welcome email, survey email, appeal (1x if they haven’t donated, monthly ask if they have given a 1x gift), and follow up with a thank you. Then we integrate them into our list so they receive our other communications

9 TEST EVERYTHING!

Over the years, we’ve found incorporating a video on a donation form has the highest conversion rate

Big, red submit button also has highest action rate

Use catchy subject lines

Social media experts say:

"you must measure, listen, and adapt"

Create tracking links for all your pages

Review your reports for email appeals to measure:

Performance (click throughs, what worked in your email?)

Conversions for donation landing pages

Measuring what works will tell you what you will need to adapt

Always listen to what works for you and what works against you

Always clean up your list based on bounces

10 Evaluate and optimize

Use unique tracking/source codes on all links, unique to each email, so that you can get more detailed reports

Pull email, advocacy and donation reports to see which emails performed the best and keep track of how you can optimize for your next campaign

EN is great because when you use dynamic campaign links, you can easily see which links were clicked the most

Our welcome/survey email had a 23% open rate, 22% click thru rate

Monthly ask had a 20% open rate, 2% click thru rate

10 Evaluate and optimize

2012 full campaign report and take-aways for 2013:

2012 HSI Care2 Welcome Series Averages:

22% open rate

6.5% click thru rate

2.5% action rate

35 monthly donors

$810 monthly, $9,720 annually

thank you! questions? contact us!

Ghazal Vaghedighazal@engagingnetworks.net@engagingnetwork

Elise Ledsingereledsinger@hsi.org@humanesociety

Eric Rardinericr@care2team.com@care2team