How To Make Sure Your End-of-Year Campaign Doesn’t Suck

Achieve • September 24, 2014
Admittedly, end-of-year campaigns can be daunting and start to feel repetitive year after year. Does it feel like your campaigns are stale and un-engaging? Are you donors bored with the same messages? How can you make this year’s end-of-year campaign better than last year? Why are your donors not donating online? It doesn’t have to be rocket science – here are a few tips that you can use to boost this year’s fundraising campaign.

THE BEST TIME TO SEND A SOLICITATION IS WHEN IT’S RELEVANT AND READY
Don’t get too hung up on the time of day or day of the week that you send a solicitation. What really matters is your content. If you have a compelling subject line and content that your users want to read, then you will be successful. In particular, think about real-world events that you can tie to your cause. What is happening in the news now? What are people already thinking about that you can connect to? Ensure content is timely, powerful, and ready.

INVEST INTO YOUR DONATION PLATFORM
More and more people are giving online, which means that you should take the time to invest into your donation platform. According to the 2014 M+R Benchmarks Study, the average transaction-completion rate for donation pages is 22%. This means, if your donation platforms meets national averages, you are losing 78% of your potential donors because your donation page sucks. According to the latest data, about 16% of monthly donations came from online giving in 2013, but imagine what that percentage would be if the other 78% of site visitors actually completed their transactions.As online giving continues to increase, you need to be ready for that additional traffic to your donation page.

BUILDING YOUR EMAIL LIST IS KEY
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that email response rates are going down, which means that less people are opening and clicking on your emails. But we do see that email lists are growing – they were up 14% in 2013. And be sure you’re keeping up with list growth to weather the fact that less people are opening and clicking on your emails.

Need help with your end-of-year campaign?

End of year is a crucial time for nonprofits and charitable organizations. We offer consultation, strategy, design, writing and research services to make your fundraising campaign move recipients to donate. Contact us today and see how we can work together to help make an even greater impact.

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