Let’s face it, traditional practices are not working like they used to for nonprofits. Meanwhile, in the past decade or so, the commercial world has made lengthy strides in modernizing marketing practices.
It’s time for fundraising to catch up.
Coming from a long tenure at one the largest agencies in the world, I witnessed and supported the shift and refinement of practices and tools for how globally recognized brands transformed their marketing efforts through the use of data and technology. And the results were consistently resounding.
In my new role as Executive Creative Director at RKD Group, I am now putting my expertise to good use, helping our fundraising partners acquire more donors, retain them and grow their revenue using these same advanced creative approaches that drive performance.
The development of high-performing creative is much more than just crafting engaging imagery or compelling copy for fundraising campaigns. All aspects of this multi-stage, performance-based creative approach must be rooted in data.
This modernized, data-led creative approach is most successfully accomplished when all sequential components are practiced, as follows:
First, we start with a wealth of data-proven testing as the baseline to our creative development.
RKD has been compiling years of testing, across each vertical and channel, to build a comprehensive list of creative design and content tactics that drives the best response when leveraged. This proprietary documentation is continually updated, and all our creative starts with these "foundational rules."
Some of these rules include surprising updates to longstanding fundraising tactics and new visual enhancements to tried-and-true channel layouts. If you let us audit your creative against our data-proven copy and design practices, our creative will likely always outperform your current controls.
The next strategic step to driving performance is transforming to an audience-led approach.
The reality is that every prospective donor is overwhelmed with content. When they look at their phone, computer or mailbox, they are inundated with messaging from brands.
You have only fractions of a second to make an impact before all of your marketing efforts end up getting quickly scrolled past or tossed into the recycle bin. Our results prove that if you better relate to the donor with something that is meaningful to them as an individual, you stand an increased chance of getting engagement from that donor.
Unfortunately, most nonprofit creative today is developed for a one-size-fits-all audience.
Moving to audience personalization is the second place where data comes into play—and you don't need some fancy-named, custom tech solution that some agencies tout.
Moving to audience personalization is the second place where data comes into play—and you don't need some fancy-named, custom tech solution that some agencies tout. It’s accomplished by strategically defining specific audiences that you want to reach and using all of the data that is available to personalize content toward those specific audiences.
Let’s break down the next steps to illustrate how we accomplish this:
Data is then the driver of how, when and where each audience receives their personalized content through dynamic delivery in each channel. While we have preferred industry-leading tech partners, each tech is just an enabler of our comprehensive, strategic audience approach.
First- and third-party data will drive the specific hyper-personalized content each donor receives throughout their lifecycle. Data triggers—such as weather, location, past actions, etc.—can also be leveraged.
Delivery of this content is accomplished through the strategic design and use of templates. While many think templates are taboo and limiting, every aspect of each channel’s layout can be highly personalized and flexible.
Delivery of this content is accomplished through the strategic design and use of templates. While many think templates are taboo and limiting, every aspect of each channel’s layout can be highly personalized and flexible.
This not only makes each creative and messaging unique, it also effectively enables speed to market and delivers cost efficiencies through automation. When these templates are paired with data, we eliminate the need to manually build each ad unit version and size.
While we’re talking about technology, let’s quickly address AI. While AI is a capability in our toolbelt to empower creatives and enhance the work we do for our clients, it’s not yet the solution that people feared would replace everyone’s role in creative.
We tactfully leverage AI to help develop alternate wording ideas and to help speed up some artwork development, but the reality is 1) Most nonprofits have their own stories to share and have a specific tone that they want to be sure is reflected, and 2) With our tactical messaging approaches, human intervention is required to finalize content for those needs.
We’ll continue to educate AI to our needs and bring truly useful new solutions as they become available.
What is available today is the ability to take dynamic automation further to optimize content, bringing us to the next use of data within creative: Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO).
Using DCO in digital media channels (display, social, CTV, etc.), we have the ability to test multitudes of creative versions―against each audience―and have the DCO solution auto-remove any underperforming creative. This rapid-testing capability helps eliminate months of traditional A/B testing and maximizes your media spend by always having the highest-performing creative in market so that you can continually optimize onward.
It’s important to note that these advanced testing capabilities do require larger media budgets to gain data-testing significance, but even smaller nonprofits have larger campaigns in their year and can achieve some of these benefits in smaller testing scopes.
Whether using advanced technologies to deliver rapid testing results or performing A/B tests throughout the year, a strategic test-and-learn plan should be set forward for at least each year.
Many nonprofits test, but not tactfully. Random testing may gather a learning, but a test-and-learn plan should be strategically based on defined business objectives (such as optimizing channels, increasing donation size, etc.).
Then, within each objective, you should work from big to small test initiatives. In digital media, testing might look like:
You can fine tune each optimization goal and apply your bigger learnings as you move forward.
When looking to refresh tired creative or even looking for a new agency to help increase your creative’s performance, the answer is not to come up with the next big idea or to use some clever tactic. You must modernize the holistic way creative is being developed from start to finish, and every aspect should leverage the strategic use of data.
That is how your creative will yield better results in fundraising. We challenge you to let the data of our results prove it you!