Future Fundraising Now

13 ways to make your donation pages keep donors on task

Want your donate pages to work better? Check out these tips from the Hubspot Marketing Blog, at 13 Simple (But Critical) Tips for Creating Better Landing Pages. They're aimed at commercial landing pages, but can really help you improve your donation pages:

1. Include all critical elements of an effective landing page. Make sure the donor has everything she needs to complete her donation.
2. Remove the main navigation. Seriously. Don't create an encouragement to abandon the donation before it happens.
3. Match the headline of the landing page to its corresponding CTA. There should be no change of topic, mood, or words between whatever got them to the page and what they see on the page.
4. Remember: Less is more. Do one thing: get the donation.
5. Emphasize the offer's value. As always, remember what's in it for the donor.
6. Encourage social sharing. But not until they've completed the transaction.
7. Create more landing pages to generate more leads. More offers mean more donations.
8. Only ask for the information you really need. Don't ask for anything you don't need for the donation at hand. You can ask for other things later -- but not if they abandon before they complete.
9. Consider whether To Submit, or Not to Submit? "DONATE" is the default button for landing pages. Can you mnake it something more targeted and interesting.
10. Reduce anxiety with proof elements. Let them know the donation is secure, and you are a reputable organization.
11. Make the form appear shorter. Simpler is better, and looking simpler is better yet.
12. Include rich media on your landing pages.
13. Pay attention to the copy. This is where you win or lose. Make sure everything is clear and compelling.

Are you over-emailing or under-emailing?

Afraid you're annoying your donors by emailing them too often?

Are you also afraid that you contact them so infrequently they don't know you exist?

Both are potential problems.

But under-emailing is far more common.

There's a "sweet spot" between the extremes, and you can read about it at How to Avoid Being a “Spammer” or Being Forgotten: How Often Should Your Nonprofit Keep In Touch? on the Bloomerang Blog:

... e-mail marketing statistics tell us that between one and two e-mails a week prove to be the most effective. Additionally, good social media practice says to try to post once a day to stay in your audience’s “feed” and top of mind.

Of course, being relevant, interesting, and welcome are part of the job too!

4 ways to keep online donors from leaving before they donate

Are you getting all the online donations you should, or is your website causing donors to lose their way before they can make the donation they mean to give?

Here are some important tips on keeping your online donors on task as they move from thinking about giving, to completing that online donation form, from the Big Duck blog, at Four ways to ensure your online donors don't get lost on their way to giving:

1. Don't be subtle. Make your DONATE button stand out like a beacon. Don't make it blend in with your tasteful brand color palette.
2. Don't bury the ask. Make it easy for any visitor to quickly and easily see why they might give. And don't make them jump through hoops to do so. The donate page should be one click away from everywhere -- at most.
3. Don't overcomplicate it. Make it easy to give. Don't ask for information you don't have to ask for. Don't give them extra decisions to make. You can engage in all those other ways later.
4. Don't give them a reason to walk away. Make your donation pages secure (and tell them so), make sure it's readable and works on smart phones, and accept as many payment methods as possible.

5 ways to connect with those new digital donors

If you've been active and relevant during the pandemic, there's a good chance you have quite a few new donors who gave online for the first time.

These new donors present a real opportunity -- if you can encourage them to keep giving. And that presents a few challenges. Here's a helpful post for handling them right, from the Good Works Blog, at What to do with new digital donors during a pandemic:

1. Focus on email. Email is the best way to cultivate your online donors. Hands down.
2. Find out where new donors came from. Many of these new donors are coming out of the woodwork. Track where they came from, because that knowledge will allow you to get the most from channels that are working best. You may also find you have different messaging in different channels, and you should zero in on what's working in all the channels.
3. Build a plan to convert new donors. Emergency-motivated donors are less likely to keep on giving than typical donors. You can improve their retention rates by showing them lots of love and connecting your subsequent fundraising offers with the crisis messaging that brought them in.
4. Make sure your back-end copy is up-to-date. You might have long-forgotten auto-responders that have becoming embarrassingly irrelevant for the moment we're in. Check out those things right away!

Let me add one more that can make a big difference:

Work to get their postal address and phone numbers (if you don't have those) and cultivate them through those offline channels. Connecting with the both online and offline really improves the relationship.

6 ways to make your fundraising email work better

Let's take a quick look at what commercial emailers are doing to keep response strong, from the 60 Second Marketer, at How to Craft Powerful, High-Converting Email Copy:

1. Make sure your emails are getting delivered. Keep your list clean and up to date, ask readers to add you to their address book, and stay aware of current spam trigger words and phrases.
2. Write better subject lines. Don't be boring. Do you best use urgency, curiosity, personalization, timeliness, and name recognition.
3. Optimize the preview text. (That's the that's visible next to or below the subject in the inbox.) It's another way to get attention.
4. Grab attention immediately. Get to the point quickly in your message.
5. Use conversational copy. Short paragraphs, informal tone. Make it like real email.
6. Don't send so many emails. The blog's idea of not sending so many is to cut down to one a week in many cases. Very few fundraisers (outside of political fundraising) are over-emailing!

Email metrics during the crisis

Are donors getting sick of our emails?

Not according to this bunch of data reported at the THD Blog at What We Learned About Email Marketing During the Pandemic.

The findings, looking at March 2020, showed:

• Highest open rates in 2+ years.
• Lowest unsubscribe rates in 2+ years.
  
• Response rates way up.

(See the post for more details.)

If you've been afraid of some kind of donor rebellions about your emails, stop being afraid!

We are in an unusual time. Donors are more responsive than usual.

Part of the reason is no doubt because so many fundraising are sitting this out, leaving donors fewer choices. But the other part is the nature of the crisis -- everyone is in it together.

It's likely this phase will end. Fundraising will become more difficult. Open rates and response rates will drop, while unsubscribes go back up.

Let your donors decide whether they will give! A lot of them are choosing to give.

Are you ready for the next leap in online fundraising?

From Marketoonist:

On December 26, 2004, digital fundraising became a thing.

It had already been around for several years, growing steadily. But that day it went from something nonprofits dabbled in, wondering if it would ever matter -- and became an important part of any fundraiser's toolbox.

That was the day of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the Disaster Made for YouTube. Because there was so much video of the destruction people were highly aware of it for weeks. They went online to give like never before and sparked massive growth in giving online.

Suddenly online fundraising wasn't only for organizations with extra time and budget on their hands. It became necessary.

We may be in another moment like that.

The pandemic has sparked incredibly successful email fundraising campaigns, and more donors than ever have been responding online to direct mail.

If you're ready, this is a good thing.

If you're not, it's just another moment where you fall farther behind and become less able to serve donors and raise money effectively.

10 must-do tips for your donation pages

Some of your donors are visiting your donation pages, and then not donating. That's so sad!

You can do something about that. Check out this post on the Nonprofit Tech for Good Blog: 10 Donation Page Best Practices for Nonprofits (lots of examples):

1. Ensure that your donation pages have the same branding as your website. Research shows that one in six online donors drop out of the donation process find themselves on a third-party website. Ouch!
2. Add a monthly giving option. The value of a monthly donor is many times that of a one-time donor, and online givers are somewhat more likely to choose monthly giving. Make it easy for them.
3. Add a monthly giving pop-up to your primary donation page. This can really increase monthly donations.
4. Experiment with default donation amounts. Suggested amounts are a fundraising best practice everywhere. Online, what those amounts should be can vary. Learn as much as possible about the right amounts for your page.
5. Add an optional mobile number field. SMS messaging is a powerful way to connect with donors. But make sure the field is optional. Making it required will likely lower completed donations.
6. Add charity rating badges and program vs. operating expense graphics. Donors pay attention to these things. If you've been reviewed by Charity Navigator, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Watch, or any others, and your reviews are good, display your rating. Also, if your program vs. operating expense ratio is good, create a simple pie chart graphic that illustrates it.
7. Add giving impact statements. Tell donors what their giving can specifically do. That's why they give, after all!
8. Add a tribute giving. Many donors want to give in honor or memory of someone. Make it easy.
9. Create a compelling, action-oriented "Thank You for Your donation" page. You have their attention at this point. Use the moment to thank them, encourage them to follow you on social media and otherwise be more involved.
10. Include your phone number and mailing address. Believe it or not, some donors still prefer to give offline. Make sure they can!

5 email "worst practices"

We've been raising funds with email for a lot of years now. We're learning a lot, though you might not see evidence of that learning in you inbox.

Want to raise money by email? Check out this post at the Hubspot Marketing Blog, at Is Email Marketing Dead? No, But These Practices Are:

1. Impersonal subject lines. Generic subject lines like "March E-News" don't get the open rates you want. Make it clear you're connecting with a living person through their inbox. Make it about something. Use their name. Be interesting.
2. Ignoring GDPR standards. That's the law in the European Union for marketing email. It's mostly about having clear permission for emailing someone. We don't have laws like this in the US, so you may think if you don't have donors in Europe you can ignore it. Nope. You should at least act like you are GDPR compliant because it's good for you donors!
3. Using templates that aren't mobile-friendly. A lot of people read your email on their phones. Make sure they can read your emails there!
4. Poor email design. That means your call to action is clear and easy to see. That it's visually interesting. That there aren't pointless distractions. And the load time is fast.
5. Not strategically using metrics. Pay attention to how people are interacting with your emails. Emails give us a lot of metrics. Learn from them.

Ready to discover more fundraising things to do -- and not do? Check out The Fundraisingology Lab? It's top membership for smart fundraisers around the world -- with the best training, best resources, and best community you'll find. Enrollment is open until Wednesday, March 18. Check out The Fundraisingology Lab here!

That "Do Not Reply" email address is killing your fundraising

If you're sending emails to your donors that have a Do Not Reply return address, you are hurting yourself.

They look something like this: no-reply@charity.org or donotreply@charity.org and they're supposed to save time -- the time you'd spend answering emails from your donors.

That has to be just about the dumbest time-saver out there!

But it's even worse than that, according to the Hubspot Marketing Blog at What You Need to Know About Creating a 'Do Not Reply' Email. Here's what it does:

• It negatively influences email deliverability. that's right, if you're using a Do Not Reply email, it's more likely your messages are ending up in spam folders. Ouch!
• It dissuades two-way communication. People actually reply to emails with questions and comments. What are you telling them when they try to do that and nothing happens?
• It isn't compliant. GDPR and CAN-SPAM laws require that customers need to be able to request information about the data collected about them and opt-out of your messages with a reply email. Your Do Not Reply email could get you in trouble!

Don't bring this on yourself!