Multichannel Attribution, Retargeting, and Video Tactics in Fundraising

Donors interact with nonprofits through a mix of channels: social media, email, direct mail, events, and more. But here's the challenge...are all these channels working together to create a seamless experience for your donors? Or are they operating in silos, leaving potential connections and donations on the table?

Multichannel fundraising is no longer optional. It's a key part of modern nonprofit success. When your channels are integrated, you can amplify your message, build stronger donor relationships, and achieve better performance. In this blog, we discuss our multichannel fundraising experts explore some best practices and tactics for multichannel campaigns:

What Does a Multichannel Donor Look Like?

A strong multichannel donor might be a direct mail sustaining donor. She is high-value and had been for several years. Despite all of the different ways that she got touch points about the organization and with certain offers, she still preferred to give via check through direct mail. That was her preferred channel. Just because a donor gives or shows a preference for giving in one specific channel doesn't mean you should ignore all the other channels. Because they're getting the message. You're engaging your donors, and all ships rise when that happens.

Impact of Social on Direct Mail Donors

In a recent test TrueSense Marketing conducted, we served Facebook and Instagram ads to our clients’ donors that we had emails for, utilizing Facebook's customer matching platform. It’s interesting to see the customers who are interacting. They’re reacting with the frowny face or the happy face, depending on what the ad is, but they're also sharing that post and commenting.

For one of our clients, their social media ad had close to a hundred unique interactions. 80% of those unique interactions were all from direct mail donors. Multichannel integration reinforces  the branding, the offer, and the affirmation with the donors and really ties that emotional connection together. Ultimately, the gift is still coming in through direct mail, and that’s okay. When considering budget allocation, it’s important to consider both conversion channels versus interaction channels.

What’s great about your direct mail donors is that they are commenting on those Facebook ads. The more they comment on, share, and like that content, the more Facebook is going see it as valuable, which means it will show up in more newsfeeds. The more people interact, the better it is for your social media credibility.

What is Attribution in Fundraising?

Attribution seeks to understand how much money is allocated to digital, direct mail, phone, face-to-face, or events, and then how much of the total revenue coming in is attributed back to those channels. When organizations tackle direct response program from a siloed approach, everybody is fighting for their budget independently as opposed to striving for a cohesive budget, which is the best way to reach an organization’s fundraising goals. 

Facebook allows organizations to bring their direct mail donor list into the social media platform. This enables charities to discover how many donors were interacting with an ad and then made a donation within a 14-day time period. This knowledge begins to show what we can achieve with attribution. Every organization would be a little surprised at the sheer number of direct mail donors who are interacting with social media, which starts to directionally point us with regards to budget allocations.

Once attribution is part of the conversation, planning for an annual fund campaign might look like this: Every time I do a direct mail campaign, I need to spend some money in media costs for Facebook. I need to invest so much money in digital, so much money in my mailing, and so much money on phone. I'm not really worried at the moment about who gets credit for what. I'm more worried about reaching the bottom line.

What are Retargeting Tactics in Fundraising?

Retargeting is the way to boost digital conversions from a missed opportunity. There are three types: search retargeting, site retargeting, and Facebook retargeting.

Search retargeting is when someone’s doing a search query on a search engine (Google, Yahoo!, or Bing) and, for whatever reason, they don’t go to your website. They don’t go to your donation form. It’s a missed opportunity. There’s a way to retarget them and show them display ads on the website and publisher networks that they visit shortly after that search query.

The same happens with site retargeting, as well: a visitor comes to your website and the missed opportunity of the conversion happens. For whatever reason, the form isn’t completed or you don’t get the “submit” button pressed there. The website that the user goes to shortly after that visit can be used to display advertising, as well. This will appeal back to them to pull them back and remind them of whatever it was that they initially had come to your website for. Hopefully, it will gain that conversion at a later date.

Facebook retargeting really does work the same as site retargeting. The only difference with Facebook is that you can serve up content that’s a little bit different. For instance, the ads can also come through the form of articles. It’s not as direct as a display ad. It’s a little bit more engaging and authentic, which can pull potential donors in and hopefully gain your missed conversion.

Using Video in Fundraising