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THE

2 17YEAR-END DIGITAL FUNDRAISINGFIELD GUIDE

How the Latest Trends Will Impact Your Campaign (and How to Prepare)

2The 2017 Year-End Digital Fundraising Field Guide

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 Introduction

5 Trend #1: We are now firmly in a mobile-first world.

6 Trend #2: Online has become the most valuable channel.

7 Trend #3: Digital advertising is a valuable way to invest your advertising budget.

9 Trend #4: Email is still king.

11 Trend #5: December is an increasingly valuable time to engage donors.

13 Trend #6: Millennials are creeping up the generational giving ladder.

14 Trend #7: Donors (and digital channels) prefer video.

15 Trend #8: Facebook is the most valuable social network.

16 Conclusion

17 References

18 About the Author

19 Next Steps


INTRODUCTION

We live in a digital world. And while nonprofits have adapted to the reality that digital matters, the speed at which digital fundraising trends change andevolve can be overwhelming to keep up with. It is easy to get distracted by new social media platforms and trending digital marketing tactics.

I know because I’ve been in your shoes. Before joining Pursuant, I served as the Director of Digital Communications for the National YoungArts Foundation, an arts nonprofit focused on identifying and rewarding the most talented 15-18 year-old artists in the visual, literary, design, and performing arts. As digital fundraisers, we’re responsible for a lot of things.

» Websites and mobile optimized landing pages

» Google AdWords Grants

» Social media storytelling content

» Digital fundraising and awareness campaigns

» Online donor and alumni portals

» Community giving day campaigns

» Managing analytics dashboards

» Email newsletters & nurture campaigns

» SEO keyword and behavioral hyper targeting research

» Paid media and social advertising (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Display Network)

» Leveraging influencers & blogger partnerships

» Social listening

» Integrated marketing campaigns

That’s a lot to manage. And while the timeless principles for reaching donors and inspiring them to give hold true, the way in which you apply them in each of those digital channels is constantly evolving.


So how do you ensure your nonprofit is applying the latest trends in digital fundraising to maximize the potential of your year-end campaign? That is the purpose of this resource.

In this resource, I want to unpack some industry benchmarks to help you know where you stand and how to prioritize your efforts heading into calendar year end.

Are you ready to eliminate the guesswork of your digital year-end fundraising efforts?

Let’s get started.


We are now firmly in a mobile-first world.

Being mobile friendly is no longer optional for nonprofits. Next time you are standing in line waiting for a coffee or waiting for a plane to take off, take a look around. Notice how everyone is looking at their mobile device. Their eyeballs are engaging with video, social media, or their email. Mobile devices are now our go-to for everything from searching to purchasing, staying informed to staying in touch. Donors expect nonprofit websites’ mobile experiences to mirror the UX and technology they’ve grown accustomed to in their everyday mobile lives on Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Uber, AirBnb, and Yelp. Based on data from over 2,000 nonprofits, approximately 17% of online transactions were made using mobile devices in 2016. The sharp increase in mobile transactions shows how consumer behavior and donor behavior are one in the same. Both online giving and giving from mobile devices continues to grow.

In Blackbaud’s Charitable Giving Report 2016, the peak for mobile transactions was in August 2016 at 20.1%. According to a Google study, 53% of mobile users abandon mobile sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.

Think about the easy experience of ordering and paying for an Uber on your mobile phone. With just 3 clicks you are ready to go. Donors, patrons, supporters, and alumni expect the same from their favorite nonprofit institution. Donors want their experience to be as seamless and personalized as their Amazon order. We are now firmly in a mobile-first world. So make sure your organization’s website and giving experience is too.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TAKEAWAY: Invest in a mobile optimized giving experience. If your website donation form is not mobile optimized with the form and buttons appearing above the fold, you need to make that top priority.

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Online has become the most valuable channel for personalization and relevancy.

Donor’s don’t call themselves “donors” and annual giving is not how they think about it. Think about the modern consumer experience from for-profit companies. They surface ads tailored to your specific interests in your Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds or answer your Google search results with exactly what you were actually looking for. If we want to capture the

attention of our constituents, acquire new donors, and increase retention, we need to be equally savvy and arguably more personal to inspire them to show their support.

The M+R 2017 Benchmark Report shows that almost half of all digital advertising dollars were spent trying to acquire new donors, with an additional 14% seeking to convert existing

donors. Some 60% of the ad spending was intended to drive traffic to online donation pages; 18% were spent on lead generation and 23% on branding. So if you haven’t already been dedicating your budget to online fundraising and marketing efforts, as well as investing heavily in paid media (primarily on Facebook) and stellar content creation, now is most certainly the time.

Gifts tend to be higher online. According to Target Analytics donorCentrics Q4 2016, the average gift size was higher online than mail or phone calls. And for most sectors, online gifts accounted for 20% of revenue. But you’ll also receive awareness reach, perception lift, and consideration. So your ROI will include much more than just raising the bottom line.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TAKEAWAY: Invest in online fundraising marketing initiatives. If your mission is International Relief or Societal Benefit, you better be sure to make your online experience a priority, because those areas received the highest percentage of online gifts last year.

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Digital advertising is the most valuable way to invest your advertising budget.

How much of your budgets and efforts are dedicated to digital advertising? It should be about 70%. If you take the budget from print magazines, publications, outdoor banners, mailing postcards, or buying ad space in journals, and spend it more wisely on middle or bottom of the funnel targets

and tactics in digital, you will likely get a better return and faster growth.

A M+R 2017 Benchmark Report shows that nonprofits invested more in digital ads, increasing ad spending (including paid search, display, and social media advertising) by 69%. As a result, web traffic was up 4%, email list sizes grew by 10%, Facebook fans increased 23%, Twitter 50%, Instagram 101%. You can make a big splash with just one email, a few stellar social media posts,

and some beautiful display ads, all targeted to people who previously raised their hands (by signing up for email newsletters, making a donation, following the company on social, or visiting the website).

Google is the #1 referrer of traffic for most websites. In many ways, a homepage is really Google.com.

So how a nonprofit appears on search results pages for both organic and paid search results is fundamental to digital success. If it is not there when prospects search for terms like “art museums in Miami“ you won’t even enter their consideration.

Be sure to apply for the Google AdWords grant. In-kind advertising donations of $10,000 per month in ad spend can really help if your budgets are limited. A Google Grant is very important and you should be

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using it to its maximum capacity, but you may also need to supplement it with paid search in key moments.

Enhance your digital advertising tactics and connect to your audiences on digital channels where they are: search, social media advertising, display advertising on mobile, email, and conversations on blogs. Push it out to the people who raised their hands, and they will reward you with engagement and donations. Make your creative asset production a priority with short and punchy videos, great photography, and rich story telling content.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TAKEAWAY: Invest in paid search, display, and social media advertising. With paid ads, it is all about optimizing keywords, ad copy, and day-to-day managing of the Google AdWords account. With the $2 maximum cost per click you can cover certain keywords, but often in competitive time periods and with top of funnel phrases you need to supplement with paid campaigns.


Email is still king.

Email is still the highest driver of ROI for most digital marketers. According to the Blackbaud Luminate Online Benchmark Report 2016, email is still gold, with each address worth $12.30 of online revenue. So focus your efforts on segmented and triggered emails. Healthy email appeal click rates suggest that organizations who are creating strong content and targeting supporters effectively have seen fundraising email click rates increased year-over-year at 2.11% and a positive trend of strong repeat giving performance, up 8.63% year-over-year. Overall open rate average is 14.4% and click-through rate average is 0.6%. Online revenue grew by 14% in 2016, with email revenue growing at a whopping 24%.

But the M+R report suggests that, on average, nonprofits sent 24 fundraising email messages per subscriber in 2016, along with 20 advocacy messages and 11 newsletters. That is a lot! Sending a monthly newsletter combined with 3-4 appeals every month is just too much. Not everyone should get every email. And if they do, you will probably see unsubscribe rates increase dramatically. Highly engaged people can withstand more email messages, but less

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engaged cannot. So make sure that whatever amount of email you are sending is segmented, anticipated, relevant, and personal.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TAKEAWAY: Email still drives the best ROI. Sending constituents a relevant personalized email and shifting focus from quantity to quality will get much better results. Email fatigue is a real thing, so be sure to align your fundraising appeals with your marketing communications.


December is an increasingly valuable time to engage donors.

December remains the largest giving month of the year followed by June. If you’re not already planning for year-end, now is the time to start. Nearly 30% of all giving happens in December. Online giving in December increased for the second consecutive year and represented 21.8% of all online giving.

How did you do last year? That will give you a benchmark to define your goals this year. Evaluate the data and segment out your donors based on priority and giving history. Try not to blast everyone with the same holiday greeting. The strongest year-end campaigns are based on extensive donor analytics (past giving) and segmentation (external data overlays and behavioral preferences). Then develop your communications timeline for October, November, and December for each segment of your donors with key dates for each touchpoint. The more specific you can be in your asks, the better your results will be.

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Build your case for support with individual stories and put a face on your appeal. All the work you do during the year can be highlighted and celebrated. Be sure to recap the work you’ve done over the past year, show impact, and thank your constituents for engaging, volunteering and supporting you. Offer gifts within reach and as tangible as possible. Explain why you need your donor’s help and why the funds are important now. Show how much is needed to reach your goal so they understand the value of supporting your mission. Have meaningful conversations with major donors well in advance.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TAKEAWAY: Send a year-end appeal that really resonates. Make the most of the year-end appeal by using the right data, segmenting your audience, and following up. Reach your audiences where they are - on email, social media, or a mobile device.


Millennials are creeping up the generational giving ladder.

Giving share is still dominated by the Baby Boomers and the Mature Generations. But Gen X is following closely behind and Gen Y is just getting started, and they account for more than 50% of the population. Obviously, Millennials who are starting their careers and families are less likely to have a large giving capacity, but engaging them early is the key. They like to spread information through peers, follow social media ambassadors, and become agents themselves. So while they may not be able to make a large gift, they can motivate others to give online and spread the word through a personalized social media post.

Collecting great donor data, building your segments, and testing them is a never-ending process; but by taking a more strategic approach to segmentation and cultivation, you will open up opportunities to engage larger populations—and grow your annual giving pipeline without exponentially increasing the resources needed or the time and energy spent.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TAKEAWAY: Millennials are catching up, so segment and produce content just for them. Consider creating a targeted campaign specifically designed for Millennials that is highly visual and communicates in a way that resonates with them (transparency, social proof, highlighting real stories of impact).

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Donors (and digital channels) prefer video content.

Short videos, great posts, short online articles, and short emails keep donors the most engaged, informed, and inspired to give. Facebook reports that there is a positive correlation between engagement and giving, which is a measure of constituent affinity. The more socially engaged the constituent, the more likely he or she may be willing to donate.

Today’s internet is built on video and it influences behavior. According to Google, over 50% of internet users look for video related to a product or service before visiting a store. It is much more difficult to create well, but far more impactful when it works.

From a survey from Ipsos Media, 45% of respondents said they think more favorably about a show after seeing a video, and 68% said seeing a video influences a purchase.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TIP: Invest in social storytelling content with video, video, video. Video can drive massive ROI when used in social media campaigns. Prioritize social storytelling and show it through video. Set a goal to produce more than 20 videos a year.

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Facebook is the most valuable social network.

Some 81% of internet users have a Facebook account, and most check it multiple times a day. Fundraisers must invest their time and efforts where the eyes and ears are. One of every five seconds on mobile is spent on Facebook. So the largest amount of a campaign’s money should be invested in creating amazing content for Facebook native and advertising campaigns.

Facebook’s powerful targeting capabilities can get ads delivered to the best prospects based on behavior, interests, and relationship to organizations. It is more powerful than Google. Perhaps more powerful than all ad delivery networks combined. Because it also delivers to Instagram, Messenger, and an Audience Network.

You can also craft affinity audiences and look-alike audiences who resemble buyers and find them at scale. Facebook also allows you to continue to show your ad to people who visit your website but don’t donate, helping you close the deal using re-marketing.

INTELLIGENT FUNDRAISING TAKEAWAY: Don’t try to be on every social network, get Facebook right first. To leverage social advertising correctly, it helps to clearly identify goals for each campaign, to tailor messaging to audiences, behaviors, platforms, and to optimize campaigns based on data insights from performance. Take time to consider all of the elements that go into your social advertising campaigns and create systems for regularly optimizing your efforts.

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CONCLUSION

In summary, a mobile-optimized website, online fundraising marketing initiatives, paid search, display, social media advertising, email, and aligning appeals should be among the top digital marketing priorities for fundraisers and nonprofits for your 2017 year-end fundraising efforts.

However, knowing the trends is only part of the formula for a successful year-end campaign. If you want to experience the benefits that a digital strategy can provide, you need to think through your campaign from beginning to end:

» What fundraising problem are you trying to solve through a digital campaign? Are you using it as a way to support your donor pipeline or generate short-term revenue?

» How does your digital year-end campaign tie into your overall fundraising strategy?

» What is your strategy following the campaign to steward new names and current donors into deeper levels of engagement to your cause the following year?

Digital fundraising isn’t just about “going viral.” It’s about reaching today’s donors where they are with a message that resonates with them. My hope is that this resource will equip you to do just that.


REFERENCES

1. Blackbaud’s Charitable Giving Report Blackbaud’s Charitable Giving Report covers the giving trends of more than

6,000 nonprofit organizations representing $23 billion in yearly giving. The online fundraising findings are based on data from 5,210 nonprofit organizations and more than $2.6 billion in online donations. The report is based on actual revenue statistics from nonprofit organizations of all sizes and a variety of missions.

http://institute.blackbaud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/2016- Charitable-Giving-Report.pdf

2. M+R Benchmarks StudyThe M+R Benchmark Study provides data regarding online fundraising, advocacy, and list building. This year, the M+R Benchmark Study analyzed the data of 133 nonprofits, producing a wide-ranging assortment of online nonprofit metrics and provided in-depth data covering web, email, social media, digital advertising, and more.http://mrbenchmarks.com/

3. Target Analytics donorCentrics Index of Direct Marketing Fundraising: 2016 Fourth Calendar Quarter Results The Target Analytics donorCentrics Index of Direct Marketing Fundraising analyzes direct marketing giving for many of the largest nonprofit organizations in the country. For the twelve months ending Q4 2016, Target Analytics evaluated transactions from 67 organizations, including more than 33 million donors and more than 77 million gifts totaling over $2.8 billion in revenue.https://www.blackbaud.com/files/resources/Target_Index_Results_Summary_Q4_2016.pdf


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mikey Centrella leads digital strategy for Pursuant. He guides everything from engagement campaigns, digital fundraising campaigns, paid media, search and display marketing, email campaigns, and social media storytelling, to website design, mobile platform development, and more.

Mikey is a leader in the field of digital marketing, social media strategy, and consumer-branded communications with more than 15 years of experience of proven results from data-driven digital campaigns in private and nonprofit sectors.

Prior to joining Pursuant, Mikey led digital for nonprofit arts education institution (YoungArts), consulted for startups in wearable technology and PR (I4c Innovations ince, BodenPR), worked for renowned global advertising and communication agencies (Ogilvy, Publicis, AKQA), and was a key player on expanding new media efforts for major TV companies into digital (Discovery Channel, Viacom).

Mikey has led digital and integrated marketing campaigns for some of the world’s largest global brands, such as P&G, Citibank, General Mills, and more. He helped deliver maximum impact and ROI by orchestrating remarkable experiences, storytelling content, advertising, social conversation, paid search, paid social, digital media and blogger outreach, engagement and conversation tactics.


NEXT STEPS

» Check out our entire list of fundraising resources for more content papers, fundraising tools, and webinars: pursuant.com/resources

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» Subscribe to The Intelligent Fundraiser, our weekly blog featuring valuable insights and best practices around today’s most important fundraising topics: pursuant.com/blog

» Call us at 214.866.7700.

» Share your organization’s fundraising needs through our contact page or by emailing us at [email protected].

http://www.pursuant.com/resources

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