Learn
How
we want to:
Retain our donors and supporters
It's simple: keeping donors year after year means more committed supporters and less time and money spent on new acquisition. These tips will help you build a donor retention program to be proud of.
SIMPLIFY YOUR WORK
Rather than create extra work for yourself, here are a few ways to simplify, without sacrificing results.
Create key triggered series
Personalize your audience's experience by automating messages to reach them at pre-designated moments in their journey. Welcome series and thank you messages are popular forms of this, but triggers can be set up to re-engage, upsell, and celebrate your people according to their individual milestones.
Email
SMS
Keep the conversation going
Automated post-action messages can be a short and quick way to engage with less effort on internal teams.
Email
SMS
Define your brand
Struggling to find creative inspiration? Create guidelines that are unified and true to the brand identity, but have flexibility to meet each moment and each audience.
Brand
Prioritize your audience segments
Not every email needs to go to every person. Use your data to narrow it down to the supporters most likely to engage. This group can serve as a test gauge before sending to the full list.
Email
SMS
Pinpoint your audiences
Use your data to target specific audiences so you can more effectively reach those most likely to engage and during your most important moments.
Display
Paid Search
Website
Email
Put your tools to work
Here’s how to get the most out of the resources at your disposal.
Leverage user data
With the loss of 3rd party cookies, your organization has to gather and operationalize its 1st party data on your audience. “Always on” tactics like 1-click surveys at key decision points, website browsing data, can email clicks can help do this over time.
Technology
Solve for your specific problem
Before looking for a martech solution, clearly define the problem that needs to be solved and make sure you can connect the problem to the martech solution in real terms. In the case of technology, more complex rarely means better.
Technology
Widen what you measure
Click-through stats may not be enough to accurately measure effectiveness of display ads. Tracking metrics like view-through rate give a more complete picture of the impact of your display ads.
Display
Look for cross-channel trends
Keep a close eye on the trend line and what's influencing it. Data from one channel can tell you when is the right time to activate an email campaign or scale up paid media spend on specific topics.
Paid search
Social
Display
Know your supporters
Use SMS to have a two-way conversation. People are used to texting so you can ask them questions to learn more about them without creating work for you or your supporter.
SMS
Work with purpose
Speaking decisively and clearly about your mission will allow audiences to more easily understand and identify the ways that they can contribute.
Show respect for supporters
Reach your users more personally with messages addressing their individual actions. Adding specificity to thank you’s and following up on the impact of actions taken can help illustrate how much you value your people.
Email
SMS
Website
Social
Speak to their values
Clearly articulating your mission allows people to identify with your messages and better understand the impact of taking action. Your strongest supporters will be the ones who know what you stand for and share your values.
Email
SMS
Website
Social
Leverage design
The power of display is in its ability to show (not tell) a compelling story about your organization. Use strong photography and test what graphics and short copy audiences find most clickable.
Display
Email
Social
Website
Tell a bigger story
Your creative should convey your organization's theory of change. That theory of change should include the donor and their interests.
Brand
Email
Website
There are more opportunities ahead. Ready for the next piece of the puzzle?
Next I want to learn how to…