Six Digital Tactics Your Nonprofit Must Test This Holiday Season

#1: Segment Your Donor List Into Three Categories

Take a look at your past donor list and organize the donors into three main categories: One-Time Givers, Monthly or Multiple-Times-A-Year Givers, and Big Time Givers. By segmenting your donor list, your email efforts will be much more effective. You want to communicate with the people who make up each of these groups of donors very differently, especially the ones who are your large capacity donors. You should be approaching your Big Time Givers with a different type of outreach. Give them a call instead of sending them an email. These people are donating generously to your nonprofit, so personally reaching out and putting in the work is what is going to yield results.

To recap, make sure to get your lists organized and segment your donors into three categories. Doing this now will be highly beneficial to your nonprofit down the road.

#2: Warm Up Your List With Impact Results

People love to know exactly where their money goes. Be transparent about how their donation pushed forward your nonprofit and its greater cause at hand. Sharing the impact you have had in the past year will warm up your donor lists to the idea of donating during your year-end fundraising efforts. When people are aware of the impact their donations make, no matter how big or small, they see how important it is to continue to donate.

Ramp up your year-end donations. Share the financial impact results with your donor lists now so that your ask down the line will be more effective.

#3: Utilize Paid Google Remarketing Ads

The holiday season, Giving Tuesday, and year-end fundraising in general is a busy time for your donors. It’s likely that your nonprofit is not the only organization trying to get their money and their donations. Everyone is asking for their money. Utilize Google’s paid remarketing ads to keep your brand at the top of their mind. Before you push the idea aside, think about how many times you have online shopped and added items to your cart, but never actually checked out. Then, you had ads for those exact items that you didn’t purchase follow you around. You constantly reminded of the items and likely went back to purchase.

Think of your nonprofit’s donation page as the item in your cart that was never checked out.

Use Google’s display ads to retarget all the people who might have hit your donate page but didn’t actually give. Have ads really prompting them to finish their gift while they’re online shopping, surfing the internet, or heck, just browsing Facebook! Keep their dollar$ coming to you rather than a different organization.

#4: Run Facebook and Instagram Ads

During the 2017 holiday season, on average the Community Boost team generated upwards of a 9.8X Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) for our nonprofit partners that were running Facebook and Instagram ads. That means for every $100 invested in Facebook and Instagram advertising, nonprofits saw a $980 in donation revenue.

Facebook and Instagram are great social platforms that your nonprofit should utilize to hyper-target your donors. Being a space that juxtaposes storytelling and hyper-targeting naturally makes it an effective way to market to your donors with more than just a few sentences. This invaluable pairing of creative and targeting is something that should be overlooked. Ultimately, it boils down to having unmatched targeting on the platforms, which is a major game-changer when you have an agenda. There are three different ways we really recommend targeting, however: increasing lifetime value, remarketing, and lookalike audiences.

Increase lifetime value by securely adding your donor list to Facebook and Instagram. Stay on top of targeting your donor lists in order to keep your nonprofit at the top of your donors’ minds.

Similar to what you would want to do with Google, build remarketing lists on Facebook and Instagram for your donors who visited your giving site but did not convert. Again, doing this will help you stay top of mind.

Finally, the most exciting and scalable way to target is through lookalike audiences. You can actually create custom audiences based on people who have donated to your organization in the past. Market to lookalike audiences and promote your exciting year-end fundraisers. Creating lookalikes will help make your ask more effective.

#5: Get Active on Instagram Stories

Constantly populating your Instagram feed with donation asks can, at times, be off-putting. Luckily, Instagram stories offer a versatile space to make a hard ask more often. If your organization has a ton of followers on Instagram, you should definitely be using stories to your advantage. Linking a page directly into the story platform is unique to accounts with 10,000+ followers. You can make your donation page more accessible to people by allowing them to simply swipe up on their screens. Doing this will land them right where they need to be to contribute to your nonprofit’s year-end donation efforts.

Even if you don’t have 10,000 followers, utilizing Instagram stories is something that your nonprofit should be doing because stories receive tons of viewership in general. They don’t fall under an algorithm, as stories appear in chronological order and only show for 24-hours.

Make sure to test out Instagram stories and see how it can benefit your organization’s year-end efforts.

#6: Step Up Digital Donor Stewardship

Acknowledge your benefactors and step up your digital donor stewardship. Regardless of what budget your organization is working with, you can easily show your appreciation in the digital space. Have someone on your staff shoot a short thank you video on their smartphone. Upload the video on YouTube, email it out to donors, or even add it to your nonprofit’s Instagram story. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just doing it will show your appreciation for your donors. Today’s accessibility of social media, technology, and all things digital means there is no reason why your nonprofit shouldn’t be doing this. Going the extra mile will set your organization apart from the rest. Your donors will appreciate the appreciation. It will encourage your donors to contribute to your year-end fundraising efforts.

CONCLUSION: Try Out Different Year-End Tactics!

Collaborate with your team. See what tactics work best. Rock your year-end fundraising goals.

Regan Dishon