GivingTuesday is the biggest digital fundraising day of the year, and it was created in 2012 to follow the consumer-driven days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Where retail companies incentivize consumers to buy with good deals, nonprofit organizations focus on the generosity of donors to help advance their cause.
CNN Business noted that there was a decline in donations this GivingTuesday compared to previous years. While the article noted the impacts of inflation on charitable giving, consumers were still spending at record numbers on retail goods. More than 60 percent of the population shopped during the Cyber Week period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.
With deals now extending throughout the month of December, getting the attention of donors can be a significant challenge. A constant stream of marketing communications floods our email inboxes, and nonprofit organizations can get lost in the holiday shuffle.
How can nonprofit organizations stand out in the Cyber Month environment and capture donors’ attention? It all begins with preparation, insight and innovation.
Good preparation is an essential element to having a successful year-end season. A well-thought-out strategy must work weeks in advance to prepare donors for the asks in December.
You need to roll out an omnichannel approach that slowly builds in excitement. As my colleague Jenn Thompson notes, paid media is an excellent tool to grow awareness prior to appeals in other channels.
Also, it is imperative during this time to make sure your technology is reliable—you do not want your donation form or landing pages to lag or crash during the critical year-end period.
The key to any successful fundraising campaign is to understand your donors, and this certainly holds true in December. In order to break through the noise, we must understand what motivates and drives them to give.
This is where assessing the previous year’s campaign and messaging can be key.
Reviewing metrics and examining what worked or did not work sets the framework of determining how to improve moving forward. Could you reduce copy and utilize a stronger Call to Action? Could you replace a static image with a GIF to provide a refreshed look?
When examining areas to improve, I strongly recommend assessing the messaging. If the messaging is too wordy, you stand the chance of losing the donor’s attention. The average time for an email to be read is nine seconds. That means brevity and a strong call to action are essential.
Also, assess whether you need to extend your budget to reach a different audience. Do you need to add additional funding for paid media to attract new donors? Could you utilize your social media channels and promote your year-end campaign organically?
As you build your strategy and assess your creative, consider trying something new. The holiday and year-end campaigns provide a fantastic opportunity to implement fresh ideas to attract new and existing donors.
Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) have quickly grown as one of the most charitable generations, as the National Philanthropic Trust noted, with 85 percent giving to charities and volunteering their time to help these organizations. This generation is technically savvy and relies on social media and text messaging as communication mediums.
Nonprofit organizations should meet this generation where they are through using social media and text messaging in their year-end campaigns. We have seen the success of utilizing both at RKD.
On GivingTuesday, one of our animal welfare clients created content and video testimonials to communicate their GivingTuesday campaign on their social media channels. The organization embedded one of the video testimonials on a donation form as well. This client was able to exceed their GivingTuesday goal, and the same tactics can be applied to year-end campaigns.
We also saw great success this year from clients that added text messaging to their GivingTuesday campaigns. The response rate was 1.47%, which exceeds typical email response rates at this time of year.
You may be hesitant to try something new during such a crucial revenue period, but this is the perfect time to expand your message to increase donation potential and attract new donors.
You can’t afford to let your important message get lost in a sea of consumer deals. Using these three tactics can help your organization stand out in the crowd.