Tip #1: Design a conversion-optimized donation page.

The most important function of any fundraising event is to secure donations to fuel your nonprofit’s work. Without a conversion-optimized donation page, you’ll risk losing prospective donations due to a clunky process.

Whether you’re sharing promotional materials leading up to your event or encouraging donations during the event activities, ensuring your donation form is conversion-optimized is a must. To design a donation page that drives donations to completion, try out these three key tips:

• Ensure it’s mobile-responsive. Mobile giving accounts for 25% of all donations, which is why it’s important that your donation form should adjust to the user’s screen size. Test your giving page. Are there any parts that are inaccessible via smartphone? Work with your form provider to fix this issue before the event. Then, at the event, share and promote the page with your attendees for easy donation collection!
• Include suggested donation amounts. Consider including suggested donation amounts on your giving page, so donors can simply click the amount they want to donate and quickly move ahead in the process. Plus, donors tend to use these as a guide when determining how much to contribute, which makes it a prime opportunity to encourage larger gifts.
• Limit the number of fields. With every additional step, you provide another opportunity for donors to drop out of the donation process. Instead, limit the number of fields to only capture essential information (like each donor’s name, contact information, and payment method). It can be tempting to ask for excessive information so that you can learn more about your supporters, but sticking to the essentials will streamline the process and better hold the attention of your donors.

Take a look at this example, which exemplifies the characteristics of a well-designed donation form:

Remember, you want attendees to enjoy the event, and you want attendees to donate, but both can’t happen at the same time if donating takes a significant amount of time. Put thought into the construction of your giving page, quickening the process as much as possible.

Keep in mind that most of your digital fundraising methods will depend on a high-functioning giving page, so don’t neglect this resource. Continue researching with Donately’s top donation page best practices, which goes into detail about several options for optimizing your donation form. By implementing these tips, you’ll streamline the process altogether and make giving to your cause a breeze.

Tip #2: Optimize your digital marketing strategies.

Half the battle of organizing an event is marketing it and creating enough hype to maximize registration numbers. The digital space your supporters encounter each day is full of organizations and individuals fighting for your donors’ attention. Commercial advertisements, petition requests, and even event invitations create greater competition among organizations due to the sheer volume of information.

For your fundraising event to be successful, it needs to stand out, and this all starts with a great digital marketing strategy.

There are several platforms that make up your digital marketing strategy, but we’ll walk through three platforms that are easily leveraged regardless of budget size:

1. Your website. Your website is the core of your digital strategy, so start here. When creating your fundraising event pages, include all relevant details, such as date/time, the specific project it will benefit, and your registration form. With data insights, this also simplifies the lead tracking process.
2. Social media. Post frequently leading up to your event to encourage more registrations. Share your cause, testimonials of past impact, and a link to your registration form. Once your virtual event launches, share a link to the video stream that attendees can access. Then, continuously post progress updates throughout the event itself. Take a look at these suggestions to make the most of your posts.
3. Email. With all the buzz surrounding social media, it can be easy to overlook a tried-and-true promotion strategy: email marketing. For the best results, feature impactful text and a clear call to action in your emails to guide readers to your registration page. To streamline the process altogether, make use of responsive, conversion-optimized email templates, so you can focus on the message itself, not perfecting the design.

While each of these platforms works on its own, it’s best to employ a handful and find a combination that effectively reaches your supporters. According to this article on multichannel fundraising, effectively coordinating your marketing outlets requires you to choose the outlets with the most potential for viewership. In other words, determine which platforms your supporters are most active on.

With email open rates averaging at 25.96% and social media only reaching 4% of nonprofit supporters, only using one of these channels means you’re missing out on event registrations and donation dollars.

As you get started with your digital marketing strategy, remember to take a look at engagement metrics for the event messages on each platform. For your website, this would mean traffic and conversion rates. For social media, this would include metrics like mentions, shares, and likes. For email, this would include open rates, click-through rates, forward rates, and so on.

Determine what works and what isn’t quite making a large enough impact on your registration rate. This way, you’ll be able to refine your strategies as you go and maximize your reach.

Tip #3: Research trends in event technology.

One major consideration when planning any fundraising event (whether in person or online) is deciding which event technology you want to employ during the event. Event technology can ease the planning process, improve the attendee experience, and even provide you with valuable insights after the event has wrapped up.

However, there are a ton of options on the event tech market, and not every solution will be the right fit for your organization. There are two staple technology solutions that are useful in a wide range of fundraising events:

1. An online donation tool. An online donation tool empowers your supporters to conveniently give via digital means, most often by using a credit or debit card. These tools can be made mobile-accessible so donors can give digitally during your event.
2. A mobile event app. A mobile event app handles the logistics of your fundraising event for you, by providing all the necessary information to donors via their smartphones. From posting event news to sharing information regarding your cause, a mobile event app easily facilitates this transfer of information.

There are also a few trendier event technologies that are currently taking the event planning world by storm. If you’re looking for a more tech-forward event, consider including the following solutions:

• Smartphone-fueled VR and AR experiences, adding a new dimension to attendees’ digital event experience.
• Beacons, for efficient distribution of information to attendees via a Bluetooth connection.
• Gamification elements, to engage attendees with healthy competition.
• Online auction apps, which significantly streamline the fundraising auction process.

Keep in mind that these solutions can be more resource-intensive, and might not be a great fit for every type of event. Conduct research when planning your event to decide exactly which modern fundraising technology would best enhance your team’s and attendees’ experiences. Using new technology at your event management is often an investment, so choose carefully to make sure any solution is worth it in the overall picture.

Although virtual auctions might be a brand new undertaking for your organization, a comprehensive planning process will significantly boost your likelihood of success. This is more important now than ever, as nonprofits of all sizes have to ensure a positive return in terms of both revenue and donor engagement while simultaneously venturing into uncharted waters.

By giving your team plenty of time to set guidelines, build a toolkit, procure items, and fit them all together into an engaging event, you’ll be raising more online in no time. Best of luck!