Stuck at home during the pandemic, Americans have changed the way they engage with the Internet. Staying in touch with grandkids via Zoom. Buying toilet paper online. Making philanthropic decisions.
In the past five months, our clients have seen an 87% increase in online gifts and an 82% increase in online revenue year over year.
But the most exciting stat is a 347% increase in new donors acquired online.
Here’s a sneak peak at lesson number one.
Digital Media Acquisition Success Lesson #1: Don’t Ask for Money
Well, ask for money, of course, just not right away.
Many people who engage with you online aren’t ready to donate. They’re somewhere in the classic marketing funnel that starts with awareness and ends with conversion. Highlighting value propositions based on which stage people are in will increase the performance of your digital media program and lower your overall cost to acquire.
This universal truth of marketing is often represented as a funnel. But a funnel makes the whole thing seem too easy: drop prospects in the top and loyal donors flow out the bottom. With more content vying for people’s attention, your marketing has to work hard to move people to take the next action. So we inverted the funnel and gave it helpful platforms for people to step up to. Like a pyramid but with stairs for each stage in the donor relationship. A ziggurat.
If you really want to acquire donors for life online, don’t walk up to a stranger and ask them to make a donation. First, attract them to your cause and get them to engage with who you are and what you do.
In fact, we see an 84% better conversion rate when we wait to ask for a donation until after someone has engaged with cause- and brand-oriented content. It’s an easy, low-cost way to build the perfect audience for digital media acquisition. On average our Attract and Engage campaigns spend just 13¢ to get someone to engage.
Sign up right now to find out how we use the ziggurat to get more new online donors and the three other lessons we’ve learned — including the breakthrough that changed everything about how we use digital media to acquire donors all year long.
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