Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Year-End Campaign

WEBINAR

Housekeeping:

• This webinar is being recorded and will be emailed to you along with the slides

• All attendees are on mute! If you have a question feel free to submit it in the GoToWebinar console on the right at any time during the webinar for a Q&A afterwards with our presenter and panelists

AGENDA

1. Introductions

2. Tactics for Success

3. Lessons Learned

4. Key Takeaways

Introductions

Meet the organizations you’ll be hearing from:

AddThis connects people to content and enables marketers to develop more personal and effective relationships with their current and future customers.

AFS-USA offers international exchange programs in more than 40 countries around the world through independent, nonprofit AFS Organizations.

Mercy Home provides kids in crisis with the support and guidance they need to realize their own potential and make positive decisions.

Tactics for Success

How do you measure campaign success for your

organization?

• Funds raised• Number of donors• New monthly donors• Increase in website traffic• New leads• Customer retentionWhen planning your organization’s year-end campaign, start with a clear definition of your goals, and how those goals can be measured.

What tactics have you used in the past to increase your campaign success rate?

Successful fundraising strategies:

• Set up matching donations, i.e. “Match Days”• Line up larger donors in advance and stagger

their donations at meaningful intervals throughout the campaign

• Set a modest fundraising goal initially, and then announce the “new”, higher goal in the final days based on “unanticipated success”

• Encourage support staff and board members to reach out to a variety of different level donors

Website optimization tips:• Set up campaign analytics to track visits to your site

/interaction with your content• Create unique campaign tracking (UTM codes) to

monitor which mediums / sources are performing• Make it easy for your visitors to find your site• Simplify your online donation form• Optimize your site for different devices* • Implement website tools (like AddThis!) to help

drive visitors to your site, collect email sign-ups or share on social

• Test different images, suggested donation amounts, landing pages, your conversion funnels, etc.

* Mobile usage has grown 27% since last year and 56% since 2013.

Lessons Learned

What strategies have and haven’t worked well in past

campaigns?

What works well:• Ask staff to donate a small amount and to

promote the campaign among friends and family

• Set up a Match Day, when met, raise the fundraising goal

• Assign existing supporters to become designated campaign advocates

• Use Google AdWords – branded keywords• Push out retargeting campaigns• Reduce steps to in the donation process

What hasn’t worked well:• Facebook/social ads works well if you know

how to target and get in front of your audience

• Being too broad with campaign goals, i.e. support studying abroad

• Display advertising – might not drive direct donations/engagement but does help increase recognition

• Google Adwords – non-branded keywords

What are you planning to do differently this year?

Tactics for 2015 year-end campaigns:• Video advertising• Improve content marketing • Streamline new donor experience • Create an online Media Kit• Ask one-time donors to become monthly

donors• Build optimized gift-giving funnel to

preselected amount • Provide more information on what donation

amounts provide for beneficiaries• More diverse types of “giving days”

Key Takeaways

What should you remember for your year-end campaign?• Plan now / create your calendar to stay on track• Develop powerful campaign messaging that inspires

people to give (supported with imagery and storytelling)

• Segment your messaging – personalize!• Optimize your website and donation form for mobile• Use campaign tracking so you know how different

efforts (email, social, blog) are performing• Establish campaign advocates (internal and external)

and give them guidance on how to promote• Get a matching donation to incentivize giving

Questions?

How to Stay in Touch

www.addthis.com@addthis

www.afsusa.org@AFSUSA

fundraising@afsusa.org

www.mercyhome.org@MercyHome

Thanks for joining us!