Where to start with your digital donor acquisition

Don’t know where to start to acquire donors online?

We’re told all the time that digital fundraising and online donor acquisition can be quite daunting to a traditional fundraiser, so we want to try and break it down into some bite size places to get started.

Mamta and I just did a webinar for F&P where we broke all their records for most fundraisers registered, and attending – so we figured we need to share a bit more info as people are wanting to know more about digital donor acquisition and digital fundraising.

You can see the recording of the Addicted to Acquisition webinar on Vimeo and if you want to see or download the slides for how to Acquire donors online, you can get them on Slideshare.

But as a jumping off point, here are 3 things we recommend to get you STARTED to test online as a donor acquisition channel.

1. Test the best online donation proposition/ ask/ creative.

We start most of our campaigns with a creative message test. Whether its for an appeal ask or a lead generation concept or for an always on digital acquisition campaign – we need to figure out what call to action is most likely to get a person to give to your org.

Here is an example of a Facebook message test for Anglicare.

Here is an article I wrote for F&P Magazine about bold charity messages, and how this inspired Action Aid to test feminist messages against their usual call to action for action on climate.

2. Create a Digital Test Plan for your website donation page.

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is a fancy word for “test your webpages”.
The website donation pages research we put out in 2016 and then again in 2019 give you all the key elements you need for a good donation page. But there are so many little nuances that result in one donation page getting more donations than another. The colour of the buttons, the dollar amounts, the images, the headline, the number of form fields, if there is a padlock or security icon on the page?

Today, create a topline test plan. I’ll help you. Open up your website donation page now and write down 5 elements that you could vary to measure the impact on the donation conversion rate. If you need a good test plan template, get in touch with me or Mamta and we’ll share an example.

3. Make sure your remarketing audiences are set up to capture visitors.

It’s literally a 3 minute job, but if you don’t have remarketing audiences turned ON in Google Analytics, or in Facebook, then you’re missing a BIG opportunity. The people most likely to convert to donations, are people visiting your website and interested in your cause. So you want to get them BACK to your website and show them why they should give and the impact it’ll make.

I wrote an article in 2016 about remarketing that still holds true. Mamta did a whole presentation at Digi.Raise about remarketing in 2020, with case studies on the better ROI that remarketing audiences deliver for digital fundraising p2p events and appeals.

Create a couple of ads that recognise that the person has already visited your website – and drive them to the next logical step you want them to take > a DONATION. But make sure your donation page clearly states WHY “your donation is important” and and “why your gift today will make a difference”.

Online is a viable channel to acquire new donors. But you have to focus on quality and a good experience. But mostly, you have to invest time and effort and budget into digital fundraising if you want it to work. If you’re actively upskilling or investigating digital fundraising for your org, there is a bunch of free resources and blogs available. If you need any templates or ideas, please just ask.