With the pandemic still ongoing, digital marketing remains often the only strategy to acquire new and engage with existing donors reaching your organization’s fundraising objectives.
Conceiving a digital Marketing Strategy starts with a deep knowledge of your target audience, which in Marketing is often translated into persona. Personas are fictional persons who represent the human characteristics of a particular segment of your audience.
A donor persona defines the characteristics, likes and dislikes, needs, expectations, motivations, demographics, attitudes and behaviors of a segmented group of donors. Donor personas are always based on real people and real donors that engage with your organization.
Hereafter an example of what a donor persona could look like.
Source: kindful.com
Once you have identified your different donor personas, we would recommend taking into account the following 2022 digital marketing and fundraising trends to help you conceive an effective donor-centered fundraising strategy.
1. EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
Email messaging resulted in 19% of all online revenue in 2020 (up from 14% in 2019). For every 1,000 fundraising messages sent, nonprofits raised $78. This marks a 35% increase over 2019. Source: https://mrbenchmarks.com/
We recommend you keep growing your distribution lists by adding “sign up to your newsletter” into your website, blog and social media.
Most importantly, invest in creating highly relevant content, ideally segmented according to your donor personas, and appealing “subject lines” for your emailings. Your donors will love it!
2. QUARTERLY IMPACT REPORTS
According to the Fidelity Charitable Overcoming Barriers to Giving Report, 65% of donors would give more if they knew the impact of their donations.
Writing, publishing and distributing your quarterly impact results will not only strengthen your engagement with existing donors, but also motivate new ones to donate.
Your quarterly impact report should be available via a landing page on your website and distributed via emailings, social media and print media. Donors will appreciate seeing the impact of their donations in a shorter timeframe than in the yearly report.
3. TECH-DRIVEN EVENTS Between 2020 and 2021, live streaming platforms became valuable tools to virtually connect with donors when in-person events weren’t possible. In 2022 hybrid events will benefit both in-person and virtual attendees with advanced, tech-driven experiences; here are several examples nonprofits should be exploring this year:
Native streaming to host live or existing content through Zoom, YouTube, or Vimeo as part of an engaging speaker experience during event..Text communication to chat, poll or update attendees throughout the event.
Instant engagement through push notifications before, during, and after an in-person event to capture every moment
4. SOCIAL MEDIA & STORYTELLING
Storytelling through videos is a hot trend that is here to stay. A whole new generation of donors – Millennials and Gen Z - wants to be entertained and they love videos. Create videos of volunteers sharing stories, produce videos of how your organisation impacted your community, design videos of people working together to make an impact. Videos shared on social media, email marketing and your website will establish a connection with donors, build lasting relationships and create emotional connections.
5. FLEXIBLE GIVING OPTIONS
Donors are completing more donations on their mobile devices than ever before. There’s also growing enthusiasm around giving through QR codes, smartwatches, and wearables.
Donors will respond well to flexible donation options including:
Convenient digital wallets, like Google Pay and ApplePay
Cryptocurrency donations
Trusted payment apps, like PayPal
Nonprofits will ultimately need to be adaptive, flexible, and fluid to use technology to shape enhanced experiences. Generosity is unlocked when donors feel fulfilled, understood, and connected before, during, and after the donation journey. To do this, nonprofits need to give donors the choice of how they want to donate and how they want to be engaged with.
Our new "Social Media and Storytelling" course together with NMA's "Strategic Communication for Non-Profit Organisations" class will provide you with the theoretical knowledge as well as the practical know-how to make positive impacts to your organisation's objectives from the get-go. Furthermore our unique individual coaching at the end of the courses will help you making your strategies and tactics even more effective and impactful. Contact us if you want to know more.