A presentation Chip Grizzard and I gave at the 2016 annual Missions Getaway conference. The topic of the presentation was reconnecting with donors and constituents and optimizing communications for effectiveness.
5. Percent of Responders Who Pay Monthly Bills by
CHECK
0 10 20 30 40 50
45-54
55-64
65+
Source: Google Consumer Surveys
6. Giving is Changing
Source: Grizzard’s DonorGraphicsTM media usage study, 2014. Base: US Donors (online adults who are 12-month active donors) n=1,531.
7. 2015 HOLIDAY ACQUISITION MATCHBACK REVENUE
Includes prospects solicited in the 2015CHDDFG acquisition package. Direct Mail gifts are those specifically attributed to the package code mentioned. Digital, White Mail, and Other revenue were attributed through a matchback.
The direct mail acquisition package
raised $117,800 through 12/31.
However, including attributed
matchback revenue increases the
total revenue raised to $219,032 –
an incremental gain of 86%!
8. 2015 HOLIDAY RENEWAL MATCHBACK
REVENUE
Includes donors solicited in the 2015CHDDC9, 2015CHDDCH, and 2015CHDLCA packages. Direct Mail gifts are those specifically attributed to the package codes mentioned. Digital, White Mail, and Other revenue were attributed through a matchback.
The direct mail renewal packages
raised $1,615,901 through 12/31.
However, including attributed
matchback revenue increases the
total revenue raised to $2,833,860–
an incremental gain of 75%!
15. Steve Nardizzi
CEO of Wounded Warrior Project
• 10 years ago this charity was a startup
• Today it has revenue of $450 million+
Source: Geoff Peters
36. • Every field eliminated from the donation experience increases conversion by 2%
• Follow large donors on twitter
• Social Shares – Do you respond to posts?
• Identify your Influencers
52. Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process
of optimizing your landing pages and overall
website design to raise your conversion rate. In
other words, the goal is for the highest possible
percentage of visitors to your site to convert, or
complete your desired action. CRO is quickly
gaining in popularity because it's seen as a way to
increase profits from sales without raising your
advertising spend.
64. Email Metrics – Unsubscribe Rate
0.25%
Average
Unsubscribe
Rate in 2015
0.00%
0.05%
0.10%
0.15%
0.20%
0.25%
0.30%
0.35%
0.40%
0.45%
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
65. Email Metrics – Conversion Rate
50.96%
Average
Conversion
Rate in 2015
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
66. Email Metrics – Average Email Gift
$119.73
Average
Email Gift in
2015
$-
$20
$40
$60
$80
$100
$120
$140
$160
$180
$200
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
67. Email Metrics – Average Overall Online Gift
$137.66
Average
Overall
Online Gift in
2015
$-
$50
$100
$150
$200
$250
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
73. Returns on Digital Media Spend
October-15 November-15 December-15 AGGREGATE R/C
0.17 0.76 1.66 1.12
Option A Option B Option C
Campaign Pages 82% 49% 34%
Other Pages 15% 36% 33%
View-Through 3% 15% 33%
76. IP Targeting
Type Group Response Rate Lift in Response Average Gift R/C
Cultivation Targets 32.50% 8.48% $58.64 17.10
Cultivation Non-Targets 24.02% $59.47
Type Group Response Rate Lift in Response Average Gift R/C
Acquisition Targets 0.99% 0.19% $38.41 0.15
Acquisition Non-Targets 0.80% $38.10
77. Month Revenue
14-Sep
14-Oct
14-Nov $17,886
14-Dec $113,381
15-Jan
15-Feb
15-Mar $9,406
15-Apr
15-May $17,286
15-Jun $20,607
15-Jul $200
15-Aug $3,165
Total $181,931
Lightboxes
For a Mission with just
over $1 million per year in
online donations, 18%
came in through
lightboxes.
78. BUILD THE MOST EFFECTIVE DIGITAL FUNDRAISING
MACHINE
What Should You Be Doing?
79. Big Picture Takeaways
• Giving is increasingly moving online.
• Donors expect to hear about the impact they are helping you have.
• And promptly.
• Legacy Giving results from strong donor cultivation.
• The biggest digital fundraising hurdles result from lack of planning and investment.
Integrate your marketing, communications, and development efforts to increase the
opportunity for finding existing in-house resources, and focus on digital fundraising.
80. Website Takeaways
• Ease of use, speed, and mobile adaptiveness have big impacts on giving.
• Test and optimize.
81. Email Takeaways
• Email affects a lot of online and offline giving. Make sure your communications follow
best practices and are impactful.
• Clean and grow your list.
82. Digital Media and List Building Takeaways
• Make sure you’re tracking all online giving back to the source. Many people will claim
gifts that are not reasonably theirs.
• Integrate IP Targeting into your programs.
• Use lightboxes.
We are at a turning point. Donors today want to be more than silent partners. They want to stay apprised of their investment. If you don’t offer these benefits, they won’t stick around.
Boomers are changing HOW they donate to charity. But DM is the #1 driver of online gifts
We are in a very different time yet there is a way to thrive.
There are things you can do better than we can. But we know they are absolutely critical to the success of our plan. That is why we are going to fund this position with a performance guarantee.
RIGHT NOW, pull a list of long term donors.
RIGHT NOW, schedule an annual “estate/bequest” letter to them. Put it on the calendar.
RIGHT NOW, create two lines about estate gifts to add to all your communications.
According to Blackbaud 2015 Charitable Giving report, overall giving was up 1.6% while online giving was up 9.2%.
According to Blackbaud 2015 Charitable Giving report, giving trends by sector.
According to Blackbaud 2015 Charitable Giving report, online giving trends by sector.
According to Blackbaud 2015 Charitable Giving report, giving by sector by month.
According to Blackbaud 2015 Charitable Giving report, online giving by sector by month.
According to Blackbaud 2015 Charitable Giving report, the percentage of fundraising that is online by sector.
According to NTEN’s 2015 Digital Outlook report, only 43% of nonprofits had dedicated digital staff.
According to NTEN’s 2015 Digital Outlook report, fundraising is the most siloed marketing/communications department.
According to NTEN’s 2015 Digital Outlook report, this is what respondents to this report said they would do in 2015.
According to NTEN’s 2015 Digital Outlook report, this is what respondents to this report said they would do in 2015.
According to NTEN’s 2015 Digital Outlook report, these are the channels for which nonprofits had unique plans.
According to NTEN’s 2015 Digital Outlook report, these are the primary challenges to digital fundraising success nonprofits identified.
According to NTEN’s 2015 Digital Outlook report, these were the primary restrictions that stopped digital planning.
According to Blackbauds 2015 Diversity in Giving report, Place of Worship was the most likely choice for a person’s donations. Local Social Services, Children’s Charities, and Health Charities all ranked similarly.
Modern websites make strong use of photos and enticing the individual to scroll.
They have white space and offer the opportunity to interact.
They have strong and memorable designs.
They are easy to use on mobile.
The majority of them are built on Wordpress.
Sites like this see huge increases in traffic.
They use campaign integration on donation pages in order to tie the initial motivation to give all the way through the process eventually to the thank you.
They make it easy to give by being mobile responsive.
They see huge gains in revenue.
At this point, I’ll explain that I’d like a few folks to answer some questions in order to win a few small prizes.
These are 2 very different donation processes. I will walk through them and ask 2 people to guess whose sites they think they are.
And another donation process.
How did those websites settle on those donation processes? Through testing like Conversion Rate Optimization. Will the hundreds of millions on the line, you can bet that they test into the best process for them.
Another round of guessing.
The KPI for the experiment was the evergreen donation page conversion rate. The test version resulted in a 171% higher conversion rate in one experiment. It was re-run and resulted in a 180% higher conversion rate the second time.
The KPI for the experiment was the evergreen donation page conversion rate. The experiment resulted in an 440.68% higher conversion rate for the test version.
The KPI for the experiment was the evergreen donation page conversion rate. The experiment resulted in an 11.57% lower conversion rate for the test version. Why is this important? Because we ended up with the winner of the 3rd experiment being the loser from the first experiment. This can happen for a lot of reasons – poorly designed experiments, measuring the wrong things, and more – but most importantly, it can happen when you make assumptions and don’t test the right things. If you just take results from another Mission and apply them to your program, you might get a big winner, but you could also get a big loser. You have to test.
The KPI for the experiment was conversion rate. The control lightbox had a 7.43% conversion rate while the test lightbox had a 4.32% conversion rate.
The man, girl, and woman were all statistically valid winners with a 99.3%, 96.7%, and 94.5% probability of outperforming the boy at a 95% confidence threshold.
The KPI for this test was the evergreen donation page conversion rate. The results were:
Control – Boy – Conversion rate 11% – Average gift of X
Test 1 – Family – Conversion rate 3% – Average gift of X.1
Test 2 – Girl – Conversion rate 19% – Average gift of X.3
Test 3 – Man – Conversion rate 23% – Average gift of X.3
Test 4 – Woman – Conversion rate of 18% – Average gift of X.4
RESULTS – The evergreen page won.
The KPI for this experiment was clicks to a donation page. The results were:
Control – 5.63% conversion rate
Test – 2.60% conversion rate
Performance we’re seeing in the Giving Engine.
Performance we’re seeing in the Giving Engine.
Performance we’re seeing in the Giving Engine. The bad bounce rates are due to bad email lists. In almost every case that a Mission has said their list was clean, it has not actually been.
Performance we’re seeing in the Giving Engine.
Performance we’re seeing in the Giving Engine.
Performance we’re seeing in the Giving Engine.
Performance we’re seeing in the Giving Engine.
Another round of guessing.
28.23% of gifts we tracked in the Giving Engine in 2015 were attributable to email clicks.
Which had the higher average gift? The Hunger Fund email had an average gift just over $300. The Thanksgiving email had an average gift just over $200.
Examples of banners and paid search.
Another round of guessing.
Another round of guessing.
An explanation of IP Targeting.
This is a roll up of IP Targeting performance.
With 100% confidence, the lift in cultivation response rate is statistically valid. This increased revenue over a half million dollars for our Missions.
With 99.3% confidence, the lift in acquisition response rate is statistically valid.
This is a common example of lightbox performance for a Mission.
Remember to use the app to give feedback on this presentation.