holiday fundraising

Holiday Fundraising

Pp availablePass out handout

Hi! I’m Jeanette

Director of Outreachjnet@democracyinaction.org

406-880-jnet

Create a Holiday Plan

1. What is success?2. What’s your story?3. Communication schedule

Success may include

• Increase new donors by x%• Total end of year giving by x%• Increase average gift amount• Use Salsa reports

-what is success? Activists to donors, web visitors, higher dollar amount or better than last year

Because we rock

Member benefits

Free stuff

Unique roleservices Thanks

Victories

- Use November as the month of member appreciation.-- How can you show your appreciate to your members? Have free stuff to offer?-- Consider not sending a list of accomplishments in the typical end of year letter. Instead do this in November, THEN create a fundraising campaign for December.

Example of member benefits from NTEN

1sky offers their end of year report, before the end of the year. A great way to excite folks about your cause.

They included the report in the their Salsa donation page.

-Tell your organization’s story (in Nov). Include photos and emotion when possible.-Put real people behind organization-Think about sending a url with a short video from staff telling about accomplishments in a conversational way

Tell your members why your staff,board or volunteers give to the organization. This is the Executive Director of Wild South telling her story about why she donates.

Example excellent fundraising hook and arc.- A $5 donation perks your interests because its so low AND you get a free magnet- The email subject line “hand sanitizers” is a great hook for their audience because their members are concerned with toxic chemicals.- The next few emails play off this campaign...the subject line and contents changes slightly.

Subject line “safe holiday gifts” continues to perk the interests of their members and is part of the same campaign.

A classic fundraising appeal format. - only include urls that direct folks to make a donation- include 2 donation urls in the the content body- the donation landing page (when they click to donate), should have the same look and feel as the email.

Example of their Salsa landing page

Great example of Oceana’s end of year campaign.- The email format is perfect. They make ask in second paragraph and again at the end.- Simple layout

Example of a donation pop-up splash page

- Pick the creature you can adopt- Used Salsa’s shopping checkout

Q. Example of a hard creature to adopt (Snowflakes represent global warming)You get a cookie cutter of a snowflake for $35 or 4 cutters for $75 or set and oven mit

Framing it as “adoption” = we’re going to send you target communication about what YOU told us you like.

See subject line. Good example of how to continue to market your campaign to folks who havenʼt donated just by changing the subject line and adjusting content a bit.

Continuation of email arc (new subject line and content)

Holiday landing page- 3 ways you can give

Gift membership - The holidays are a great time to ask supporters to become recurring donors, give in honor of, Support a child in someone’s name, etc

Branded with holiday theme (not general donation form)

This the the thank you page after a supporter donations. Notice they ask again for donations. When folks are in the giving/shopping mode, consider striking while the iron is hot.

End of year appeal.Notice the cheetahs

They included an animation in the email which boosted their response rate.

Their holiday campaign landing page on website

Gift with purchase example

You can pre-mark a gift amount in Salsa.

Simple holiday idea

Many people don’t complete formsMake it easy, not too much info.Make finding your address/phone easy - and on donation page

Sending Email

Who? What? When?

Multi-Appeal Series vs Stand Alone

Average Response Rate Average Gift

Series 1.3% $90

Stand Alone 0.3% $55

Typical results (from M+R research) - www.mrss.com

Ask online donors to give offline and viceversa. Multiple opportunities = multiple giftsSend email appeal during last 5 days of the year- most important time to send. Integration – indicate when snail mail goes out.

High Donors

Report using the query builder that pulls up your high donors

Should be donors

Add Dynamic Content

How to drop a donation history in the body of an email

Holiday Subject Lines• More children need your help in 2010• Last chance for tax-deductible donation• Cheetahs will die if you don’t give!

How do you know what’s a good subject line?

You donʼt! Use the A/B tester to find out.

Reporting

Consider using Tags to run reports .... see the far upper left hand corner.

Tags

How to run a report using “tags” in the query builder.

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