If you are worried about the impact of COVID-19 on your fundraising revenue, you are not alone.
A recent survey by the Fundraising Institute of Australia showed that most Australian non-profit organisations are concerned about the impact that government-mandated social isolation will have on their ability to fundraise. This anxiety is especially heightened for high-performing channels like Face to Face (F2F) fundraising, events, and supporter briefings that simply can’t be done for an unknown time.
However, encouragingly, most charities were optimistic that diverting their investments to Digital channels could help to somewhat mitigate the losses they might experience from those limitations.
So, now more than ever, it’s time to make sure your digital channels are performing as well as they could.
Audit your digital results
Take a look at your Google Analytics account over the last 12 months.
What should you be looking for?
You need to look at your traffic sources and see which channels have a relatively HIGH average gift or conversion rate, but are receiving LOW traffic compared to other channels. These are your #1 PRIORITY areas.
Next, look at channels that are receiving HIGH levels of traffic, but may have a LOW average gift or conversion rate. These are your #2 PRIORITY areas.
What can you do?
Priority # 1
For your #1 PRIORITY areas, think about ways that you can boost traffic to your website via these relatively high-performing channels. This depends on what those channels are for your website. It might require spending some budget on paid advertising, or sending more emails, etc.
e.g. if your #1 priorities are:
- Email – look into which donor segments are converting at the highest rate, or providing a high average gift, and focus on maximising your fundraising returns from emails to them.
- Paid Search – when was the last time you looked at your Adwords account? Chances are you can be getting more out of your Google Grant budget. Alternatively, if you have some unusable budget from F2F or events, consider creating a Paid Google Adwords account and using it to bid above the Google Grant limitations for more traffic on keywords and phrases that convert well for you already.
Priority # 2
These usually requires a bit more analysis, because you are going to have to OPTIMISE lower performing channels to get better results.
e.g. if your #2 priorities are:
- Social Media – if your social media isn’t converting at a high rate, consider running a paid social media campaign. Get really targeted with your audiences, and make sure you have a strong call to action. Start with a small budget, and if you get good results, increase the budget. Make sure you use a few different creative options and see which performs best.
- Organic Search – you are going to have to get strategic here. See which are the most popular landing pages from organic search traffic, and experiment with making your Calls To Action bigger, bolder, and more direct on those pages.
There are tools out there that can help you optimise your webpages, run A/B tests, etc. Check out HotJar and Google Optimize.
If this all sounds great, but you don’t have the in-house resources to get started, please reach out and we can work together to get you on the right track.
Google Analytics Audit for Non-profits
Get a report on how you can boost results-
Which channels are under-performing, and why?
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Which high-performing channels should be boosted?
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A list of recommendations from an expert.
