Tag Archive for 'm+r'

Online fundraising’s little tricks

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on April 25, 2008
in fundraising and reports
. 1 Comment

As I started discussing yesterday, M+R and NTEN released the2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study and there is quite a bit of data to get through.  Today, I want to share some of my thoughts about the fundraising benchmarks highlighted in the report and one of the case studies discussed in the report’s launch presentation.

Fundraising Response Rates
It was mentioned in the previous post as well that messaging response rates, including those of fundraising messages, were down last year compared to 2006.  There is a bit of trickiness to that data though:  even though the response rates declined, the overall amount raised online continues to go up partly because of the fact that the average email list has grown by a factor that is larger than the decline in response rates.

The declining open rates still convince me to look for ways to integrate calls into one message so that you have actions/advocacy, fundraising opportunities, and news/information in every email so it isn’t a one shot or nothing deal.

Online Giving
On average, organizations raised 40% of the online giving in Q4 (October-December).  This trend is true as well for gift size.  The study found that gift size dramatically increased at the end of the year (same was true in 2006).  So, the obvious lesson here is to cultivate as many donations as possible at the end of the year.

It seems to me, though, that just as much as you should cultivate donors/donations at year-end, you should find new ways of engaging them in your fundraising needs in other times of the year.  Remember that tying fundraising appeals to current events and other communication campaigns as another option for support (it’s really just another call to action) can bring in new donors and help you identify what issues the supporters care most about.

Case Studies
#1.  Humane Society of the United States

One of the profiles included in the study focuses on the HSUS’ fundraising success.  There are a few things they did to improve their fundraising response rates, one of them was that:

They recruited new advocates on high profile advocacy campaigns, and then converted the new advocates to donors by sending fundraising appeals on the same issue.  This strategy has proved so successful for HSUS that the organization has decided to customize its rolling welcome appeal for new advocates so that new advocates hear from HSUS on the same issue they joined the email list on.  HSUS has extended this segmentation strategy to other appeals, too, by targeting list members with appeals based on those advocates’ and donors’ past online actions.

I think it is incredibly important to note that they didn’t take frequent or high impact DONORS to target in a more direct way with fundraising, but frequent and high impact ACTION-TAKERS.  Fundraising is often not very low on the ladder of engagement with new members.  It makes sense to cultivate other involvement with the organization and then approach with donation opportunities.

#2.  Amnesty International USA

During the report release conference call/webinar/live event, a representative from AI explained some interesting learning they went through with their website and online giving.  Here are some of the areas they made changes and saw results:

  • Changing the web confirmation to donation form raised $46,000+ since December and indicates which issue inspires the donor (this is a confirmation when taking action, filling out a form, etc.)
  • Changing the standard gray “submit” (or “donate” and so on) button on the donation form to a large red “submit” button, they saw a 29% lift in conversion rate.
  • Adding some right-pointing arrows to a “donate” graphic on the home page provided a 5% lift in overall traffic to the donation form and a 55% lift in total dollars raised

It is incredible to think what tiny changes can be made on your website, especially ones like these that take very little time to implement, that can drastically improve your online fundraising success.

There is one more section to the benchmarks study that I’m going to cover tomorrow (the section on Advocacy).  The fundraising section really creates just as many questions as the email data from yesterday.

Where do you find out the most information about a donor right now and how is that reflected on your website?  How are you currently designing ways to cultivate donors outside of the October-December high season?

How do your benchmarks compare?

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on April 24, 2008
in reports
. 0 Comments

Today, M+R Strategic Services and NTEN released the 2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study.

This “analysis of online messaging, fundraising and advocacy metrics for nonprofit organization” comes with some surprises and some data that shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention to their online benchmarks. The NonProfit Times has a piece on the report here.

I read it this morning and participated in a webinar/conference call with the producers of the report this afternoon. Some of my thoughts are below, and many more will follow in additional posts. If you want to download the report, you can do so right here.

Data and thoughts…

Email Open Rates
One of the first pieces of information most of us look at when considering our effectiveness online is the open rate for email campaigns. As the report indicates, open rates have continued to trend down—2007’s rate was 17.6% with 2006 being at 21.3%. One important factor to remember, though, that really messes with the validity of these numbers, is the the way opens are indicated. Usually there is a one pixel size image that is embedded in the email so that when it loads on the viewer’s screen, the sender’s server is indicated and a open is registered. Many email applications have a preview window that loads an email even if the viewer doesn’t read it. Alternatively, most email clients viewed in a web browser are set by default not to load images. So, a viewer could read an email and even click through to take action or donate, with an open never being registered on the sender’s server.

People have so many emails to get through every day and it is only increasing. My question to consider then, is how do you become a resource or include value in every email without overwhelming the reader? You still want them to click on the donate or take action links, but by increasing the value of the content of your emails (value doesn’t necessarily only mean information, but options for action, etc.), you can increase your open rate and the number of clickthroughs for donations or action because of the visibility.

Message Type
The report measures the success of emails (open rate, clickthroughs, page completion, and response rate) by the three main message types: fundraising, news, advocacy. Rates have declined for each type from 2006 to 2007 but advocacy actions generated slightly higher open rates and significantly higher clickthrough, page completion and response rates. This says to me: provide options for advocacy and fundraising and news in every message! Diversifying your email lists is important, and there is certainly a lot to the impact those more tailored emails get - but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have tailored and appropriate messages for all three areas in an email.

Clickthrough Rates
In this area, the rates vary by issue sector. The environmental organizations that participated (you can find out which organizations were included in the survey here), had the highest clickthrough rates of all participants. What do their email newsletters have that yours don’t? Are they offering/linking to compelling videos and photos? Maybe including compelling stories and reports that require the reader to click through to the website to continue reading or download. Or, maybe there is a link to community features that require leaving the email.

Message Frequency & Subscribers
The report’s findings indicate a correlation between the number of emails sent and the open rate: “when an organization sent five or more emails per subscriber in a month, the open rate dropped by 1%.” Likewise, “the more messages an organization sends, the higher its unsubscribe rate for that month.” This doesn’t mean that you should be wary of emailing your lists. On the contrary. Focus on key questions though, like: What is pertinent, relates to current events, contributes to a campaign, creates positive actions for members? Or, how can we combine some of these smaller messages into a compelling story or segmented email? Don’t let data that could seem negative, cause fear. It’s good to question what you are doing though so that you can really be sure to send the best messages you have to your members.

There are really so many questions that this report brings to mind that should be discussed and not hidden. I encourage you to ask a hard question about some of your data, and get excited for positive places you can go with the answers.

What benchmarks have you seen your organization’s email campaigns hitting or missing? What do you want to be with your data - and are those goals realistic based on these benchmarks?

I’m going to follow this up with some posts on the fundraising data from the report and discussion of some case studies used to flesh out the numbers.