The Internet offers an almost endless array of fundraising opportunities for nonprofits. From websites and email to videos and social media, there are a lot of great ways to reach people via the digital landscape.
But the sheer vastness of those opportunities can also be overwhelming. Let’s face it, most nonprofits aren’t exactly ahead of the game when it comes to developing digital fundraising best practices. So what should you do if you want to take your nonprofit’s digital efforts to the next level?
Three Smart Methods to Better Engage Donors Through Digital
If you’re looking to make your digital fundraising efforts more effective and efficient, here are three places to start:
- Create an Omni-Channel Experience. Your marketing and fundraising efforts across channels should not exist in separate silos—they should look and feel the same. They should all work together and reinforce one another. You want to create an experience across channels that makes sense to your donors. A couple quick examples: make sure your email has the same look and feel as your donation page; if a direct mail piece links to a landing page, make sure it uses the same colors, imagery and core message.
- Use A/B Split Testing. A/B Testing is a great way to experiment with different versions of your email blasts by sending them to separate subsets of your target supporters. For instance, you could test out two different e-mail newsletter subject lines to see which one generates better open rates. You could use A/B testing to fire two different versions to 5-10% of the newsletter recipients, and then send the better-performing version to the remaining 80-90% of your list. The digital realm is great for testing because you can get results quick and put them to work immediately.
- Gather observation data to recognize and prioritize donors. When you “listen” closely, you’ll discover donors are saying a lot through their digital actions. Tracking the behavioral engagement of your donors is key for identifying key points of interest—and using them to make your donor communication more personal. By observing how donors interact with your fundraising efforts, you can prioritize your donors beyond giving and marketplace analysis to really understand their affinities and interests on an individual level.
Improve Your Digital Results by Focusing on Experience, Testing and Listening
To make the most of all the marketing and fundraising opportunities the digital world offers, you have to:
- Streamline the digital experience for donors
- Constantly test and make adjustments
- Listen to the actions your donors take
These three core efforts will help you take your digital fundraising to the next level.