How to make your next charity campaign your most successful yet

A charity I worked with recently poured months into their public campaigns each quarter, only to see a reduced amount of donations over time.

This is a really common pattern – a successful campaign one time often creates a copy and paste effect for the next time – the same number of emails, at the same frequency, sent to the same groups. But the outcome? Different. Why? Simply, people change.

Considering audiences in email campaigns

If we start by looking at audiences, we might group our donors into categories by age. Naturally, this is a constantly moving goal post, and when we target someone in the under 60s group one time, the next campaign might be addressing new retirees, without even knowing it. The same goes for the younger generation. Often the group that rises up the career ladder the fastest, the 30-45s will see their income grow at the fastest rate, and possibly see the biggest changes in disposable income. And that’s purely looking at age groups. We can study audience groups further by donation history, location and more factors, and pay close attention to changes over time which can influence who gets what message.

Reading the data that has the answers

 

How often do you do a deep dive into your post-campaign data? Can you say at which point the highest, or most donations were made? Has your team made a decision whether higher or more is more important this time? Clue: It might not be the same answer as previous campaigns.

Let’s say an email campaign sends out three emails across six weeks. The first generates 40% of the overall donations, the next 35% and the final one 25%. Can you say why the split looked like this? What were the messages in each email, and how did the urgency change? There might be opportunities to tweak the tone of the content next time to get an even split each time.

Backing up your campaign with additional platforms

Is your campaign email based? Or direct mail? How coordinated is the delivery with all of your comms channels? Ideally, audiences will receive the same message across four platforms within a short space of time (e.g. direct mail, email newsletter, social ad, organic social). Every time you reach them, you’re reminding them of your key message: donate, donate, donate. And if you have a different priority, let’s make it memorable and easy for them to execute.

The crucial thing here is obviously timing. So, is one team responsible for coordinating all platforms, or is there a considerable amount of logistics involved? Having a simple schedules meeting can make a campaign doubly effective, so make time for that quick team session now.

Stay safe with similar messages, or dare to be bold?

You miss 100% of the potential supporter donations for your charity if you don’t ask for them. The thing is, so many marketing conversations go like this:

‘We’ve had this great idea, but it’s a little different to what we usually do.'

‘Let’s scale it back a bit.'

And repeat…until you have a marketing idea that looks an awful lot like everything you normally do. But what if you could execute that idea with confidence? What if you had the backup of someone who’s seen what the industry is doing, and what’s working?

How many time should you say thank you to a charity donor?

Seven times. Seven! Yes, it might sound excessive, but spread those thank yous out over time and what your audience sees is high quality communication that makes them feel valued, informed and ready to donate again (and again). Seven communications to say thank you to existing donors will always feel excessive, but the cost of not doing so is infinitely more expensive when it comes to recruiting fresh donors.  

I work with charities to deliver marketing campaigns. Everything from email sequences and direct mail to getting the most out of your annual report.

I come in as a comms consultant, but I deliver your content too. I’m a copywriter with 15 years' experience, and have a dedicated team of designers to bring a complete approach.

If your comms needs some support, but you’re not sure what that needs to look like yet, that’s OK too. My intro calls help you work through where you are and where you could be, and bridge the gap with the right services.

Right now I’m offering a completely free 60 minute workshop for you and your team to dive into your key messaging and a mini audit. No need to sign up for anything additional, just get to know me, my methods and see what ideas we spark together.

Let’s bring those ideas to life

Get in touch today at laura@ellastcommunications.com