Growing your Donors by Growing your List

Transcription

1 + + Overview of Webinar Growing your Donors by Growing your List Webinar June 14, 2012 A Growing Your Donors monthly webinar Ashley Hansen, Care2 ashleyh@care2team.com Director of Nonprofit Services Why and How to Grow a List How to Engage your List Adjust Based on How your Case Studies + Why grow my list? + Why and How to Grow a List! One of the key determinants of grassroots strength is the size of an organization s deliverable list. A larger list allows for greater success in just about every sphere of online engagement, from fundraising to advocacy to viral recruitment. And, since managing a 100,000-person list takes nearly as much effort as managing a 1 million-person list, economies of scale make larger lists even more valuable. Source: The e-nonprofit Benchmark Study by NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Network) and M+R Strategic Services 1

2 + Why grow my list? Ask yourself, What are my Goals? New Donors New people interested & educated about my organization New Activists New Volunteers New Event Attendees Home Page Capture Home Page Capture, second step Interstitial Content/Shadow Box 2

3 Involvement campaign Paid List Growth ex: Care2 Pledges Quizes & Surveys Petitions E-cards Tap into a new community of people who care about causes Viral growth Share on Social Media Tell a Friend Individuals Opt-in much different than buying/renting a list and have taken an action that shows interest in your cause! Cost per Lead More ideas List Swap with an organization that attracts similar individuals Take advantage of a topic in the news Key word search/google Ad Words Be cautious of (and test the results): appends Buying a list Co-registration Banner Ads with capture Can Spam Resource: od/onlinefundraising/a/can spamrules.htm 3

4 + Ways to Build your List Offline Direct Mail/Collateral Events Sign-in Text to join list Every touch point! + You know why and how to grow an list, now how to manage it! Always Get Permission and don t be afraid of people who opt out! (Avg. 18% churn rate source: M+R/NTEN study in 2010) Keep your Data Clean Track Source of as specifically as possible this helps with segmenting! Collect the most information as possible (keep it optional) and collect more later + How to Engage your List! A 2010 study by Network for Good concluded: + How to Engage your List! "The online donor experience seems to have a significant impact on donor loyalty, retention, and gift levels. The more intimate and emotionally coherent the giving experience online, the stronger the relationship between donor and nonprofit appears to be." 4

5 + How to Engage your List! Best Practices Segment your list and them differently! E.g. newly acquired names, historical donors, never given Welcome your new subscribers as quickly and specifically as possible Communicate Regularly (timing is different depending on your org) A/B Testing (subject line, body, landing page, etc.) + How to Engage your List! Best Practices Cont. One step further is to create conditional content for each donor lead. Be sure your s and donation page are mobile friendly! Integrate your communications so that the donation page is prepopulated. + How to Engage your List! Content Be relevant news, current programs, etc. Ask for money, don t be shy. Tell exactly why you need support. Curate some content Get feedback on your content from people outside your organization 5

6 + Adjust Based on How your What data to look for: Deliverable Rate + Adjust Based on How your Open Rate Click through Rate Unsubscribe rate (churn) Website traffic + Adjust Based on How your Industry Benchmarks Median for % of people who visit your website, sign-up for your list. Median average online gift = $93.67 Value of a Usable Address = $12.92 Fundraising Appeal Open rate = 18.4% Click through rate = 1.7% Donation rate = 0.2% + Adjust Based on How your Diagnosing the Problem Low Deliverable Rate Clean your list, be sure you have an opt out and option for subscribers to update their address. Low Open Rate Change subject line, time of day, day of week, might be too much from your organization Low Click through Rate look at message content and call to action High unsubscribe rate Keep this in perspective. List churn is expected, but review it if you are higher than the benchmark 6

7 + Adjust Based on How your Tracking Resources Analytics from your provider + Case Studies Google Analytics Internal Donation Reports + Case Study - Nature Conservancy Canada: New Donors Leads via Pledge Campaign + Case Study - Nature Conservancy Canada cont. Recruited 8,000 donor leads from Care2 at a cost of $2.50/lead = $20,000 A year later, 88,000 people had signed the pledge and hundreds of thousands had seen it Recruitment occurred in February and March of 2011 Used Welcome Series of 4 s. Suppressed new leads from regular flow. Then put into regular stream: bare minimum per month: 1 ask , 1 non-ask (stewardship), 1 newsletter (3 s a month). Put Care2 names into Direct Mail Acquisition Put Care2 names into Telemarking Campaign. 1 st Ask for Monthly donors, 2 nd Ask for Individual Gift 7

8 + Case Study - Nature Conservancy Canada: Results 6.1% conversion rate includes both single & monthly donors. Total costs (DM and TM, not including s): $54, Net revenue to date (1 year out): $28, Net annualized cost per donor gained: $ Case Study: Nature Conservancy Canada Key Points They tested their appeal and learned that a threat performed better than an opportunity. Kept new leads out of regular stream until their Welcome Series was completed. Sent a survey to gather addresses and had high participation rates. They found Care2 names to be stickier than other names and have lower unsubscribe rates. + Case Study on Care2 Performance: Children s Defense Fund and Other Nonprofits Greenpeace always did this... Supporters recruited for nonprofits by Care2 typically take action at rates of nearly 3 to 1 the client s house file Care2-recruited supporters unsubscribe at rates 50% lower than the client s house file (i.e. stay on list for many years) Donor conversion rates of supporters recruited from Care2 often exceed industry benchmarks and client s house file donate link after taking action no data transfer between asks 8

9 Greenpeace tried this... What was different? integrating campaigning and fundraising on Engaging Networks (the new way) allowed Greenpeace to easily share the campaign brand with the donation page the supporter data is pre-processed so fewer form fields need to be completed the donation ask is presented immediately after the campaign action is processed so the supporter is feeling good about having done something positive the donation page still offers social sharing options and a thank-you to the campaigner the new way... 28,468 action takers 1.23% response rate (3-4x increase) average gift 5,736 total raised 0.20 income per action (50% higher) 9

10 + + Next Steps Questions and Thank You! Ashley Hansen, Care2 Director of Nonprofit Services ashleyh@care2team.com 10