Direct to Digital – Monthly Donor Acquisition
In the last couple of months I’ve noticed several charities asking me to make a monthly donation online, via an ad or email. This is a very cool thing indeed. I’ve seen Greenpeace, the Climate Council and ACF each ask me in email if I will give monthly. This is an important shift because as you will see if you read to the bottom of this blog, donors that you acquire online (especially monthly donors) have a MUCH higher ROI. We have case studies from ACF, Fred Hollows, ASRC and more showing digital donors are stickier, they’re more reliable, they give higher monthly donations and in general, they are excellent donors.
The Climate Council laid out their whole strategy in an email asking subscribers to sign up to become a Member of the climate council, by donating monthly.
Greenpeace keeps the ask very practical – they do say where the money will go – but its not to the same level of detail as the Climate Council.
Remarketing to acquire new donors online
I’ve also been followed around the internet by the Smith Family, MSF Australia, Fred Hollows Foundation, Mission Australia and the Cancer Council, reminding me that I visited their websites and asking me to support their cause. As Mamta has told you at Digi.Raise this year, Remarketing is one of the biggest missed opportunities for charities to raise more money online and acquire new donors.
An increase in effort to acquire donors directly through digital
In the last year or two there has been a steady, but small, uptick in charities and non-profit organisations investing more time and effort (and budget) into digital fundraising as a channel to acquire new donors directly online. And then COVID-19, the coronavirus happened. And organisations who have done very little in the digital space, either shifted their focus to digital, or at least stopped ignoring the channel altogether.
Mamta and I are presenting a webinar tomorrow where we will showcase a wide variety of charity organisations that are having success acquiring new donors online. ACF, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, The Starship Hospital Foundation, the Australian Marine Conservation Society and Fred Hollows.
Digital donors have a better ROI
What we can clearly articulate from all of these organisations is that digital is a viable acquisition channel for fundraising and acquiring new donors to an organisation. Did you know that ACF are getting an 86% year 1 retention rate from the RG donors who sign up online.
Fred Hollows say their online RG donors give 4x more than their F2F acquired regular givers.
ASRC get a 25% higher average gift from their online acquired monthly donors.
This is what we can see across all organisations investing in digital donor acquisition:
- Higher average monthly donations (than Telephone and in some cases, f2f as well)
- Much better retention – like 50% higher retention than f2f
- Digital donors give more money over time – better monthly donation fulfilment rates and longer tenure
- Which leads to a higher ROI
It’s that simple – digital donor acquisition delivers much better quality donors than both f2f and digital to telephone acquisition.
