2016 end-of-year fundraising playbook - beaconfire red · 2016-10-04 · dec. 31, is the super bowl...

2016 End-of-Year Fundraising Playbook

2BEACONFIRE RED | 2016 END OF YEAR FUNDRAISING PLAYBOOK

2016 End-Of-Year Fundraising PlaybookFor most nonprofits, the end-of-year campaign, which encompasses Giving Tuesday to

Dec. 31, is the Super Bowl of fundraising. You need to bring your A game to win the day

with new recruits and high response.

To help you reach your goal line before the clock runs out on Dec. 31., we’ve created this

Playbook of digital fundraising tips that you can use to guide your kick off and end zone

reaching plays for the last quarter’s game.

Follow this game plan on the following pages and you’ll come out on top with

the big win on game day!

# 1EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Start with an Informed End-of-Year Strategy


Don’t write a brand new playbook at end-of-year. Kick off your strategy with a review of

what worked last year at this time. Resist starting the discussion with tactics, including

shiny, new things. Review costs, tactics and results from the prior year. Then look at what

you’ve been doing Jan to date that worked well. Do your donors respond best to person-

al stories? Matches? Impact statements? Are you seeing great results with new tactics

such as retargeting? This is your foundation to build on.

While it can be beneficial to do some testing and try a new tactic or two, don’t go wild.

You won’t be able to compare results year-to-year and if you invest in an all-new untested

plan that doesn’t perform, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do to your boss. Remember,

your end goal is to maximize fundraising revenue.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Use the Power of the Tax-Deductible, Dec. 31 Deadline

# 2


Most deadlines used by organizations throughout the year are arbitrary, used to

create a sense of urgency. But EOY is the real deal. This is your last chance to

get your projects funded for next year - your donors’ last chance to help those in

need – and get a tax-deductible donation.

Don’t forget to liberally use the mention

of “tax-deductible donation” in your ads,

emails, forms and landing pages. And use

countdown language and imagery for

urgency (“only 1 day until,” “only hours

until”) in emails, landing pages, forms, and

ads. And test using dynamic countdown

timers or clocks on lightboxes, on donation

forms, in ads.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Blitz All Your Channels

# 3


When you’re tuning in to your favorite team, whether it be on TV, radio,

computer, tablet or phone, you expect to see and hear the same game. Same

with end-of-year and your channels. Your constituents expect to see consistent

and similar messaging across your emails, website, ads, telemarketing and mail.

This is the one time of year channel staff must work together to present a

cohesive, focused call to action. Plan ahead and create a steering committee

with your channel partners to plan integrated, user-centric campaigns.

One effective, integrated tactic is to target ads to the people

on your email list. We’ve found that when people are seeing

retargeting advertisements that refer to emails that

have hit a user’s inbox, revenue increases.

See more on retargeting in tip #7.

If you already have a telemarketing program,

another effective way to drive up revenue

is to phone your best or select donors at

end-of-year. One large, animal welfare

organization phones those prospects who

abandon the donation form without giving

and sees great results. Of course, you would

need to have phone information for your donors

in your database. If you aren’t currently collecting

phone information, you may want to begin making

this optional so you can be in a position to

include this tactic in the future.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Remove All Obstacles to a Donation Touchdown

# 4


The time for optimizing your online donation process is Jan-Oct. Then, you are

primed and ready for that conversion rate to hit the ceiling. If you missed the

boat on this, pick one test that you think could have the biggest impact on con-

version rate and revenue for end-of-year and get it up and running in Oct-Nov.

Even a simple gift ask string test can make a huge difference.

Beaconfire RED tested a new gift string on the American Diabetes

Association’s donation form prior to end-of-year. The control gift string was

$50, $75, $100, $200, $250. We removed the $75 and added $125 for a test gift

string of $50, $100, $125, $200, $250.

We found the increase in gift amount didn’t hurt the conversion

rate at all, but yielded a 55% higher average gift and 13% more

revenue. This set us up for a winning year-end season!

Here are other tips to make it easy for your donors and prospects

to get across the donation line:


Don’t make potential donors search your site to donate. Have an EOY donation ask front and center on the homepage (on a lightbox

AND on the homepage for an all-out blitz) and a DONATE button on your global

navigation is fundamental to victory. You want the donate button to be a

esthetically pleasing, but also to stand out enough that a potential donor will

easily notice it. (How? Use a high-contrast color for the donation button).

Make it easy to donate anywhere on your site The homepage isn’t your website’s only entry point. Look at your top-trafficked

content pages and entry pages in your web analytics and ensure that you have a

donation ask on all of them, whether it’s a donation bar at the top and bottom of

the page or a lightbox. You can contextualize your donation ask based upon the

content of the page or website sections.

Human Rights Watch redesigned their website and saw a decrease in traffic to

donation pages. Beaconfire RED created these new fundraising headers, with

imagery at top and a call to give to drive more visitors to the donation pages. In a

test, this treatment beat the control by 13%.

Human Rights Watch Website Header

Human Rights Watch Website Footer


Use a branded donation page

Your donation page should have the same look and feel as the rest of your web-

site regardless of whether the donation form is hosted by your organization.

Branding your donation page builds trust and confidence with the donor and

increases the chances of a completed donation. The donation page should also

be consistent with any campaigns (email, ads) that are running, with the same

imagery and donation asks.

Limit the donation form to only the fields you need

People don’t like to give away too much personal information or spend a lot of

time filling out a form. If you are able to pre-populate any information on your

form using your eCRM data, that makes it easier for a prospect to focus only on

selecting an amount and completing their payment information. Also, only ask

for information that is absolutely necessary.


Pre-select a donation amount

Offering giving levels or pre-selecting the amount you would like most donors to

choose can increase average gift and is one less click or decision the donor has to

make. The goal is to suggest a larger amount than the donor would typically give.

Analyze your eCRM transaction reports to look at the distribution and volume

of gift amounts on your donation forms to confirm you’re not asking too little or

too much. This is a good exercise to do annually. You also then have the data you

need to create a hypothesis for a gift ask string test.

Inspire TrustGive your donors the confidence that their donation is

not going to go to waste. Show your ratings from any

charity rating orgs to prove that you are responsible and

trustworthy (especially important for new donors) on

your donation pages and forms. Also be sure to include

a line that mentions you are a “nonprofit, 501(c)3

organization” to allay any concerns of potential new

donors. In December, you’ll see a lot of media coverage

about giving to “fraudulent” nonprofits, so prospects are

on the lookout to make sure you are a legit,

tax-deductible nonprofit. Even though you are, show

them quickly and easily that you are on the donation

form.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Creative Testing: Bring Your Strongest Game!

# 5


You want to make sure you are promoting your strongest offer at the end of the

year and the only way to do that is to test. Create tests during the rest of the

year and continue to optimize until your year-end campaigns go live.

Before testing, take a look at your past campaigns to determine which creative

assets were the most successful and try to figure out why. Typically, a successful

ad has a strong and clear call to action, an image that evokes emotion and

minimal but attention grabbing ad copy. What are the similarities and

differences between the creatives that drove the most donation and the

creatives that drove the least donations? When testing creatives, there

are many different aspects of the ad you can test.

You can test:• Ad image

• Background color

• Call to action text in headline and on button

• Size of call to action button and color

• Ad copy

• Ad type (static vs. animated, FB carousel vs. FB ad)


Testing by channel is also important as your Facebook audience might react

differently than your search audience towards an ad. We recommend only

testing one ad feature at a time in order to be able to determine a clear winner.

Start by creating 3-4 similar ads and evenly rotate them to begin collecting data.

After you have collected enough data and start to get significant results, start to

optimize each creative that is performing well and keep testing small changes

against each other.

For example, working with CARE, Beaconfire RED was able to test creative

across search and display. The girl holding the cup was the clear winner for both

channels. The girl with the cup generated 74% more revenue.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Run Your Strongest Matchup Offers

# 6


People are always looking to get more for their money

and donors are no exception. Offering donors and

prospective donors the ability to double their impact,

by offering a matching gift, is a great step to maximize

contributions Matching gifts typically generate a higher

response rate than other fundraising campaigns and

result in donors increasing their donations

and donation amounts.

It’s powerful to offer the same matching gift across all

your channels – digital, mail and telemarketing, so think

ahead and secure a large enough match for all. Donors

will be confused and turned off when they are offered

a match in the mail, but it’s not offered on your website.

Using fuel from the tensions in the 2016 political race, Beaconfire RED created

an email campaign and homepage lightbox speaking to the ‘bigotry and racism

that has entered the political process’. Taking advantage of current events and a

$10K match, HRW was quickly able to raise $25,000.


Another trick is to double and triple your matching gift for a day (such as Giving Tuesday) or limited time to sweeten the offer (promote via email, search, social and website). Working with the American Diabetes Association, Beaconfire RED launched a one-day triple match campaign that generated 16 times more revenue for Giving Tuesday than the previous year.

You can also divide the match up into different campaigns and run multiple matching gift offers throughout the holiday season. Just make sure to set a deadline for each matching gift campaign to give your donors and potential donors a sense of urgency.

Use dynamic or static match goal graphics to track your campaign goals in your creative, along with an end date. You can also create challenge campaigns with specific numbers (“We only need 46 more gifts to meet our goal”) to increase urgency and persuasiveness. This can be especially successful with your most engaged donors.

Matching gift offers should be promoted:• On donation forms• On lightboxes• Social Media – paid and

organic posts• In email • In paid Search

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Recruit Your Best Players Off the Field

# 7


We would like to think that everyone that visits a website, and especially the donation

page, will actually donate, but sadly, that is not the case. According to AdRoll, only 2% of

shoppers convert on their first visit, but retargeting those shoppers on other websites

and social platforms with ads allows us to reach and persuade the 98% that didn’t

convert.

If your organization is not currently running retargeting ads, start immediately! It takes

at least 30 days to build an audience (also called a cookie pool) that can be retargeted

with ads. You will want to start early to get prospects and donors to come back to your

site month after month for different offers and information leading up to end-of-year.

Retargeting is a great way to keep your organization top of mind, especially during

year-end when you are competing with other organizations for your donor’s money.

There are a few different ways to retarget your various audiences with ads:

Page retargeting: Place a retargeting pixel on key web pages to retarget users that you

want to complete a desired action. If a user lands on the donation page, but leaves the

site without donating, you can retarget them with a donation ask ad.

CRM retargeting: Upload your CRM list (donors, lapsed donors or non-donors) and

target the list online with display and mobile ads. Those with an email address are

matched at a much higher rate, as you would expect. Typically, 40-60% of names are

matched for retargeting, depending on which retargeting platform you use.

Facebook / Twitter retargeting: Place a Facebook and/or Twitter retargeting pixel on

your website to retarget users on the social platform with a social ad.


You want to make sure to be very strategic in whom you retarget. Don’t retarget

everyone that visits your site. Instead, group people into segments and retarget

them based on specific pages they visit or specific offers they may be interest-

ed in. For example, if a user reaches a page about local events you may want to

start by retargeting them with an ad about the next upcoming, local event. And if

a visitor donates a one-time gift, you may want to retarget them with a monthly

donation ask after a certain time period

For Q4 2015, Special Olympics targeted their direct mail file to drive monthly

and one-time donations and achieved a 3:1 return on ad spend (ROAS).

We helped the Human Rights Watch achieve a 7:1 return on ad spend (ROAS)

using retargeting advertising. We retargeted those who visited the donation

form but did not give with ads that gently reminded these people that HRW

needed their donation to help refugees in crisis.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Draft New Donors

# 8


End-of-year is a great time to acquire new donors. If you have a well-segmented

and active email list, this tip is for you. Beaconfire RED has found strong value

in using the “lookalike” functions of ad networks like Facebook to target new

audiences for lead generation and donations. If you have a large, up-to-date list

of active donors, try building a lookalike audience to target in Facebook and/or

Google to target with an EOY donation ask. Your match rate (the people each

platform is able to to match to your data and target) will be much higher with an

email address.

Here’s how to do it:

In Facebook Business Manager or Ads Account:

Create a Custom Donors Audience1. Go to your Audiences (via top-left dropdown menu)

2. Click Create Audience > Custom Audience > Customer List.

3. Choose to create your Custom Audience from a customer list

4. Upload your donor list (direct mail, email list, other). Must be a .CSV Excel file

with a single column of data (e.g. emails or phone numbers).


Create Lookalike Audience1. Go to your Audiences (via top-left dropdown menu)2. Click Create Audiences in the top left and then select Create a Lookalike Au-

dience from the dropdown3. Choose your source (any Custom Audience - including those based on an app,

conversion pixel or Facebook Page).4. Choose the country where you’d like to find a similar set of people5. Choose your desired audience size with the slider (smaller audiences = more

highly targeted/similar to selected list)6. Click Create Audience

When targeting a campaign to this lookalike audience, you can further narrow your target with these steps:• Exclude current CRM list from campaign targeting (to target new-to-file

donors only)• Layer other Facebook targeting over your lookalike audience to refine

targeted group (e.g. “charity/donation” interests or minimum household income)

Google AdWords

Create Customer Audience from emails1. Click Shared library (left-hand rail)2. Click Audiences3. Select “Customer Emails”4. Upload CSV file

Target Lookalike Audience:1. Under the Campaigns tab, click the Display Network tab.2. Below, click the + Targeting button.3. Select ad group, click the “Add targeting” drop-down menu and select “Inter-

ests & remarketing.”4. Select “Similar to customer email lists” from the drop-down menu, and

choose the relevant list. (Not all lists will be eligible for similar audiences’ functionality.)

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Mobilize Your Forms for Conversions

# 9


In 2015, 18% of donors gave a gift to a nonprofit

using a mobile device. Expect more this year!

Make sure your forms are thoroughly optimized

for an easy, mobile donor journey. Your forms

should employ mobile friendly big buttons,

scrolling menus and more. Be sure to look at

your forms on various devices, especially phones,

to shorten headlines or copy on a form, for

example, when viewed on a mobile device.

Don’t make them scroll too much before they

can start completing their gift.

Another tip: If you’re using a lightbox during

end-of-year, make sure your lightbox is mobile

optimized or consider taking out of the mobile

experience.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Reactivate Your Fans

# 10


End-of-year may be the one time you get a gift from those who haven’t given

at all or in a while. Segment your email file to identify those who gave a small

gift, have not given ever and haven’t given in the last year.

For those who gave a small gift or haven’t given

at all, createa dynamic email and donation form

with a different and lower gift string. Also,

consider adding a premium into the mix.

For the American Diabetes Association, we

tested a variety of premiums to reactivate or

activate donors. The fleece blanket (already in

inventory for their online store) won big in

getting lapsed donors and some inactives to

give a gift of $60 or more. The lower ask string

and the fleece premium brought in 58% more

revenue and a 20% increase in number of

gifts vs. the control.

EOY PLAYBOOK TIP

Game Stats Reporting

# 11


If we leave you with one thought, it’s this: Think and do ahead!

There are always moving targets with end-of-year

fundraising. Christmas is on a different day of the week

or Giving Tuesday is in an entirely different month

depending on the year. These change the way people

read and respond to email, ads, etc. And you need to

factor these differences into your planning and note

them in your reports.

For example, this year Giving Tuesday is in November vs. December last year. If

you compared your revenue to date in November 2016 to last year, you’d be way

ahead (assuming a bang-up Giving Tuesday this year) and you’d look great! But,

your early December revenue may go down. Think about that as you set up your

reports.

Advance report planning can save the day. There are standard metrics and data

sources and there are possibly new ones to factor in, whether it’s progress

year-to-date or measuring key dates against one another. If you take the time to

model your report deliverables in October and run it by your stakeholders, then

you’ve made it through half the game. No one wants to waste time arguing about

how to display metrics or a dashboard when that isn’t the key takeaway you

need from them as a stakeholder.

Document data sources and the optimal reporting cadence from different sys-

tems ahead of time, especially if certain types of reports have to be handled

manually versus scheduled or automated. Test out your end-of-year reports

early to work out any kinks. You might have a formatting issue between your

donation systems vs a data point that can come in via API.

Also, annotate daily efforts like emails sent, social posts or display ad campaigns

in your analytics platform and in your overall game plan. This will help you assess

progress and performance in the years to come.


How can we help you get over the goal line? Shoot an email or phone Rosa at the contact info below:

Get more great tips with our free Webinars on Demand at beaconfire-red.com/webinars and on our blog at beaconfire-red.com/blog.

Rosa Del AngelVP, Digital [email protected]

2016 end-of-year fundraising playbook - beaconfire red · 2016-10-04 · dec. 31, is the super bowl...

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