25%
Increase in broadbase web donors
54%
Increase in new donors
27%
Increase in total broadbase web gifts
Our Role: Campaign Strategy, Campaign Management, Data Analysis
Challenge
This client is a ministry that focuses exclusively on premium offers for the bulk of their year-long fundraising efforts. December’s premium offer has been the same year-over-year: a daily devotional book coupled with a month-long match campaign.
This offer has traditionally been one of their best-performing offers. It is promoted on all offline and online channels, with TV programs, radio, direct mail, email, website, and digital media, all geared towards promoting this offer.
NextAfter was tasked with managing the strategy and execution of the year-end digital program in 2022 and through a mix of digital strategy, testing, optimization, and technological advances, this organization was able to reach 5-year highs in donor counts and revenue.
Our challenge during the 2023 year-end campaign was to get better results for the program across the digital program while keeping the budget flat.
Solution
While we had historical data on the performance of this offer across digital channels, we were charged with raising more funds; therefore, this year, we made a couple of changes that resulted in big gains:
Change #1
The Giving Tuesday campaign in 2022 focused on a premium offer that combined the devotional with a brand-new CD featuring holiday music. At the time, this combination brought in the most revenue the organization had ever seen. In 2023, we were prepared to repeat the same combined offer, however, the music CD had not performed well in digital channels during a pre-release campaign in 2023.
Thus, for Giving Tuesday 2023, we pivoted to promoting the devotional offer primarily, with the music CD as smaller bonus material. This pivot brought record-breaking results (121% increase in revenue, 170% increase in gifts)!
Change #2
Instead of focusing on promoting just a single offer in digital media as we had in 2022, we diversified the offers we pushed through Facebook and email prospecting channels, focusing on not just the devotional resource but also their best-performing evergreen offers.
This change in strategy allowed us to reduce cost per acquisition (of donors) by 42% and drove down net cost per acquisition (of donors) by 35%.
Results
The number of gifts and revenue growth year-over-year has been record-breaking for this organization, which has experienced the highest performing 2-month period in the last 5 years.
Since 2022:
- Number of total donors has doubled in the last 2 years
- 90% increase in digital revenue
- New donor growth over 3X (Double the amount of new donors generated during the ‘COVID bump’)
And in 2023 alone:
- 25% increase in broadbase web donors
- 54% increase in new donors
- 27% increase in total broadbase web gifts
Donor Growth Over Time
