Organizations have a lot of digital networks and tools available to them. That’s useful, because your subscribers and followers want to feel personally connected to your mission.
But as new networks seem to pop up all the time and existing networks are constantly changing, you may find yourself with limited resources to manage it all—whether that’s with time, money, or staff.
It can be hard to prioritize what you need to do now, what you can plan for the months to come, and what is coming down the pipeline that you should be aware of.
Digital Foundation Check
A number of technical aspects of your digital assets need to be reviewed before your organization is ready to jump into the cutting-edge, among them:
- Website speed—this is becoming more and more of a priority as mobile traffic and search traffic both require quick page loads.
- System integration—personalization requires ditching the manual processes and doing what you can to get all your technologies to pass data to each other. This way you can establish a single, unified view of your donors.
- Tracking capability—if you cannot measure it you have no idea whether or not your digital efforts are successful. But tracking is possible through tools like Google Analytics, digital advertising pixels, and more.
“Winning Formula” for Digital Fundraising Success
Once you have your foundation set—the next part of your digital program is to review the content you are distributing through these channels. To make digital work well, it’s critical to optimize your creative. That includes your choice of images to use—and remembering to keep your copy short and sweet. It’s essential to balance the types of content you use to communicate effectively—so that you are not only sending appeals, and are communicating a well-rounded look at your organization.
Emerging Channels and You
Even your old digital channels are showing new tricks: both Google and Facebook are releasing new ad sizes. And video which was long thought of as great for engagement, but poor at fundraising, is starting to show some success on the conversion front when it is used to help build and cultivate audiences prior to an ask.
And if your organization is looking towards the future, we recommend keeping an eye on texting and mobile messenger campaigns. Initial results are looking promising for future fundraising growth, but there are hard costs in terms of platforms and staff time that make this more difficult.
This content was taken from our latest webinar: Emerging Trends for Digital Fundraising Growth. We hope you’ll join us for the next webinar that focuses on the data side of donor acquisition on January 15 at 12:00 p.m. CST. Register online today!
