The Dotdigital Summit is just every week away and pleasure is within the air. On this weblog, we’re introducing you to Lily and Emma from the Stroke Affiliation. With their experience in digital advertising for a number one not-for-profit group, they’ll be sharing helpful insights into crafting profitable donor engagement methods.
Learn on to get a sneak peek into their Summit speak, the place they’ll talk about the Stroke Affiliation’s revolutionary inventive messaging strategies and the artwork of growing impeccably crafted welcome journeys.
Q: Lily and Emma, may you introduce your self and your roles on the Stroke Affiliation?
Lily: Good day. I’m Lily, one of many Digital Advertising and marketing Managers on the Stroke Affiliation. I work as the e-mail and SMS lead for the charity to develop and ship campaigns and on-line journeys. I’m accountable for delivering digital advertising exercise to drive digital earnings and make sure the retention of our database.
Emma: And I’m Emma, I’m the Supporter Expertise Supervisor on the Stroke Affiliation. My function is accountable for ensuring our donors obtain an important expertise after their first donation. I work actually intently with Lily and her staff to verify all our exercise is partaking and is working throughout a number of channels.
Q: We’re excited on your speak at this yr’s Dotdigital Summit. What are you trying ahead to sharing most on this session?
Lily: I’m most trying ahead to sharing our testing through the years and the way far we’ve come as a company. There’s masses to share, from copy to inventive and viewers segmentation to journey optimizations.
Emma: I joined Stroke Affiliation 4 years in the past and we’ve all labored so arduous to fully remodel this system. Earlier than we used to have a good time if we acquired a handful of items – now we really feel dissatisfied if we don’t go over our targets. There’s been loads of studying in that point, and it’s been nice to work alongside Lily, means loads of our suggestions from exercise to exercise get carried out.
Q: How important do you assume buyer journeys are for profitable donor engagement?
Lily: Extremely important. It’s so vital to thank donors, inform them in regards to the big impression they’re making, and produce them in your journey to additional deepen their connection to the charity. Past welcome journeys, it’s important to maintain donors engaged by way of evergreen exercise, for instance, appeals, newsletters, and asking for suggestions, so you possibly can regularly enhance their expertise.
Emma: Ensuring you could have the fitting journeys is essential. Individuals don’t match within the good little packing containers you may want them to – they take up a number of actions, have plenty of completely different pursuits, and provides to us for all types of causes. Many individuals give as a result of they themselves have wanted our help up to now. That’s why we’re additionally measuring donor engagement additional down the road with our beneficiary viewers after providing stroke help. We wish to see if individuals interact additional, for instance, fundraising, volunteering, or serving to us to marketing campaign for change.
Q: Are you able to give us a sneak peek into the revolutionary messaging techniques that Stroke Affiliation makes use of for deepening donor connections?
Lily: We began just about originally with growing our e mail channel. Through the years we’ve centered on particular audiences, for instance, money donors, common givers, supporters gifting in reminiscence of somebody, Legacy pledgers, and folks receiving our stroke help providers, after which tailor-made messaging to these people.
This has been completed utilizing personalization, segmentation, investigating earlier donor historical past and habits to tailor our copy accordingly, scheduling messages to ship on the proper time, and acknowledging the broader surroundings we discover ourselves residing in at this time.
Emma: I fully agree with Lily, we’ve been studying and constructing on what we had through the years. We’ve tried to verify this system focuses on how wonderful the donors are (not how nice we’re), be sure that we’re at all times signposting to help they’ll entry, and being as human as doable in the best way we write to them. I do actually lengthy for the day after we can cease writing ‘It’s been one other troublesome yr’ – I believe we’re all simply fairly uninterested in issues feeling actually heavy. I’m assured that our Christmas communications this yr could have extra hope than ever and be one thing uplifting this Christmas.
Q: A key subject of your dialogue is strategic testing. How vital is strategic testing in refining donor engagement techniques?
Lily: Strategic testing is essential. I’m actually fortunate to work with our Supporter Expertise Group who’re at all times supportive of attempting one thing new. In case you don’t check, you’ll by no means know what works, what could possibly be developed, and equally vital, what needs to be left up to now.
We’ve A/B examined every little thing from copy type, copy size, CTA’s, contributor tales, donation button placement, scheduling, donation net pages, donation block, and onward journey. From FY 21-22 to FY 22-23 testing has helped enhance our e mail attraction earnings by +32%.
Emma: Testing is massively vital throughout all our channels. Typically if the staff is undecided about one thing or there’s a cut up within the vote, we attempt to check it. We’ve examined our outer inventive, ask matrix, completely different pack inclusions, and even examined an aphasia-friendly abstract in packs. I like this kind of stuff although, It’s so enjoyable studying the outcomes, and seeing which means it went – and also you don’t at all times get it proper both (therefore why it’s so vital to check and problem your pondering).
Q: Might you stroll us by way of the weather that made the Christmas marketing campaign your best-performing marketing campaign and its impression?
Lily: Over the previous three years we’ve been regularly growing and optimizing every attraction within the lead-up to our large Christmas attraction. We’ve carried out customized messaging for our completely different viewers segments, interrogated our knowledge to ship tailor-made present asks dependant on earlier donor historical past, examined copywriting kinds, ensured our emails are visually partaking and aligned with our postal mailing inventive, optimized journeys, and reviewed scheduling so all these components work collectively to realize desired outcomes. Evaluating Christmas 202 to Christmas 2021 fundamental targets elevated by way of donations (+13%), income (+19%), and common present (+5%).
Emma: One other key factor for us has been securing compelling tales to inform. We’re lucky that the Stroke Affiliation has invested on this space, and we now have a beautiful Storytelling Supervisor. They’ve discovered us an important story this Christmas, a younger household whose father had a stroke final yr. They overcame loads of obstacles throughout restoration, not least being overseas when it occurred, however they’re so obsessed with sharing their story and the assistance they obtained.
Q: Crafting welcome journeys is an artwork. Might you spotlight a couple of enhancements you’ve made to those journeys which have considerably improved their effectiveness?
Lily: Our Money Welcome journey was carried out again in January 2021 to thank supporters, introduce them to the charity’s work and its impression, safe a second money present, and convert to common giving.
A cut up was added to this journey design, which tailor-made the e-mail content material and CTA relying on whether or not the recipient had already given an additional money present earlier than the second present CTA inside the e mail welcome journey. Delivering customized messaging for many who already gifted (extra thanks and impression) versus those that we hoped would present once more (donation ask and impression) improved the effectiveness of this e mail journey, as we delivered tailor-made messaging primarily based on donor habits.
Emma: It sounds easy however after we overhauled this system again in 2021, we very a lot thought in regards to the fundamentals; what have been we attempting to realize? For our money program, we needed to thank and get individuals to present once more. For our common giving program, we needed to maintain individuals engaged and giving. For in reminiscence, we needed individuals to really feel linked with us within the hope they could fundraise on our behalf. Conserving these objectives in thoughts meant that every one our postal and e mail communications had these concepts on the core. We weren’t simply sending out communications for the sake of doing it or ‘as a result of we must always’.
Q: Might you talk about the Stroke Affiliation’s method to cross channel touchpoints for driving donor engagement?
Lily: The postal mailing and emails work in tandem to drive efficient donor engagement. The mailing not solely contains postal donations but in addition signposts recipients to our on-line donation pages and the power to donate through QR codes. The emails make the most of the mailing content material and discover extra contributor (e.g. stroke survivor, researcher) tales additional, compelling audiences to help the charity.
Emma: The postal mailing, donation net pages, emails, donation funnel, and transactional emails work in unison to supply a clean and built-in expertise. Its important supporters have a seamless journey, with our content material being related and provoking them to take motion and donate, thus constructing a deeper relationship with the charity and cementing donor retention.
Q: What helpful insights do you hope to realize from different attendees on the Dotdigital Summit this yr?
Lily: I’m actually trying ahead to discussions round knowledge and automation to drive engagement and profitable cross-channel advertising. That is one thing we’re starting to discover additional as a company, so these talks can be helpful. I’m additionally trying ahead to Tim Peake’s keynote session, as this needs to be fairly inspirational.
Emma: I’m actually concerned with discussions round reactive and triggered journeys – we’re nonetheless very a lot originally of our organizational journeys. With a few of our journeys additional alongside than others, I’m eager to listen to how different organizations make sense of the spider’s net and make it really feel seamless to the shopper. I’m excited full cease at with the ability to go to a convention in particular person, as I’ve not been to 1 since early 2020.
In case you’ve not acquired your tickets for this yr’s Summit but, seize them right here.
