We’ve talked about ways to bring people in from the outside like advocacy programs and content marketing efforts.  But while both are good ways to get people on your file, they may not always convert to donors.

So what if it turns out that, like the Scarecrow’s brains and the True Meaning of Christmas*, the answer to acquisition was inside us, inside our organization (specifically our donor file) the whole time?

What if we could better convert the people who are stuck in the middle of the conversion funnel (e.g., newsletter subscribers, advocacy participants, content consumers, alumni) and the ones who give at a distance (event participants, emergency donors, P2P donors giving to their friend more than the organization)?

The first step is speed.  This was a vital element that came up in our discussion with Randy Paynter, CEO of Care2: connecting/speaking with advocacy participants right after their action (whether for a donation or for further engagement) is a key practice.

This was backed up by a recent study looking at how long it takes reciprocity and gratitude to decay.  A nonprofit hospital batched its asks to former patients every 2-4 months.  As a result, there was a natural experiment in timing – did you get your ask right after your hospital stay or months later?  Should you give someone time to process or ask immediately?

The answer, as you can see, is to ask immediately:

Every 30 days that passed before a solicitation went out after the patient’s first visit dropped response rate by 30%.  Every 30 days that passed before a solicitation went out after the patient’s final visit cut response rates in half.  The authors noted that changing their schedule so that asks went out every month would increase response rates by as much as a one-to-one match campaign.  Compelling evidence for switching from batched to triggered communications.

This is for hospital patients, but the idea applies to pet adopters, museum/park/library visitors, event attendees (for a good event), content consumers, etc.  Speed gets people while they remember you and remember you fondly.

Speaking of… you probably want to make sure they do remember you fondly by asking commitment and satisfaction.  We’ve talked about how Amnesty Belgium increased their six-month retention rate from 60% to 80% by doing this and how these were the most predictive variables in their modeling.  If you also have distinct donor identities, put that in as well, so you know how to address the potential donor.

Asking these questions doesn’t just increase your upside; it also decreases your downside by violating rule #1: speed.  If someone has an experience that turns them off to you, it’s counterproductive to ask them immediately – you could kill any chance of a relationship. Rather, you want to find the problem, fix the problem, then ask.

I think of this every time I’m asked to share whatever action I’ve just taken on social media.  Wouldn’t it make more sense if the experience you are asking someone to share is a good one?

This process is made much easier if you know your interactions are adding to commitment.  There’s a good example of Catholic Relief Services doing this from the 2017 Chicago DMA here.  Using DonorVoice’s Commitment Study, they looked at which communications were important and worked (keep), which were important but didn’t work (change), and which weren’t important (drop).

For example, if you are like most organizations, you have an email newsletter.  Is that an effective tool for increasing your donors’ and potential donors’ commitment and lifetime value?  Is it telling the right types of stories?  Asking for the right types of engagement?

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, think about all the time and treasure that goes into creating and sending that newsletter, not to mention the effort to acquire people to read it.

We have a natural tendency to think of a communication as a “conversion email for advocacy participants” and look at its success or failure to convert some self-contained ‘system’.  In reality, conversion and retention begin at the point of acquisition (whether donor acquisition or general constituent acquisition).  Every communication to and fro builds or detracts from a well of goodwill and commitment.  Conversion communications only draw from that well.

So saying “this was a bad conversion email” may be like saying I’m a bad driver because my car is out of gas – it may or may not be true, because there are problems upstream.

Finally, remember the air war.  With smart, identity-based targeting like you can do on Facebook or Google (as we described here.), you can target your prospective donors with advertising based on what you know about them. Making these ads about your donors, rather than about you, can have a substantial increase in response rate, as this NextAfter study shows.

These ads don’t just convert folks (although they do and they should).  If well crafted, they also often provide a lift to other communications your prospective donors are receiving.  With the ability to upload prospects and advertise to them specifically, you can increase they convert, through any channel.

As I’ve said before and will say again, we are seeing diminishing returns on getting people who donate to care about additional organizations.  So we need to build our muscles at converting people who care about you to donate, even if they’ve never done so before.  Marrying a strategic focus on turning part of your job as a nonprofit into being a media organization to ever increasing your conversion rates is one of the best ways to accomplish this.

Nick

* And the spirit of Mufasa, The Neverending Story, the Schwartz, the final Horcrux, the Elements of Harmony, the ruby slippers…