**Watch/download more of our free webinars at: http://bit.ly/freeC2webinars Most online fundraising begins and ends with email. The vast majority of donations made online are in response to an email from the charity asking for a donation. But many charities are skipping simple steps that can seriously boost response to email fundraising appeals! Are you pre-populating donation forms, or making your prospects and donors re-enter their address every time they donate? Does the branding on your landing page match the branding in your email? Or do you use a generic landing page for all donation appeals? (Don’t worry, we’re here to help!) Join Engaging Network’s Ghazal Vaghedi, Humane Society International’s Elise Ledsinger, and Care2’s own Eric Rardin for a deep dive into tactics that you can use today to quickly improve results from your email fundraising appeals. Presenters: -Ghazal Vaghedi (Head of Market Development - North America, Engaging Networks) -Elise Ledsinger (Manager of Online Fundraising, Humane Society International) -Eric Rardin (Senior Director of Nonprofit Services, Care2)

1. Ways to
Your Online Fundraising
Campaigns
Presented by:
Ghazal Vaghedi – Engaging Networks
Elise Ledsinger – Humane Society International
Eric Rardin – Care2
@care2team | #c2webinar

2. about
Citizens use Care2 for:
Starting or signing petitions
Nonprofits use Care2 for:
Volunteering
Donating $ Recruiting Donors & Supporters
Spreading news
Traffic/Branding/Awareness
Commenting on blogs
Starting group (organizing) Advocacy
Joining nonprofits Building Facebook fan base

3. about our speakers
Ghazal Vaghedi, Head of Market Development (N. America)
Engaging Networks
-overseas business development and overall account mgmt
-past work with Hayes & Associates (event fundraising) and
Refugees International (fundraising, advocacy, events)
Elise Ledsinger, Manager of Online Fundraising
Humane Society International
-manages online, new media fundraising, and communications
-previously an Online Producer for HSI, creating online content
(emails, donation forms, action alerts)
Eric Rardin, Senior Director of Nonprofit Services
Care2
-advises on email acquisition and multichannel conversion
-past work on integrated advocacy campaigns for oceans
groups and other environmental nonprofits

4. Begin with the end in mind:
Lead with a thoughtful strategy, and set goals to measure success
Before the tools, comes strategy
Determine your fundraising goals
Put your content (e.g. story) at the heart of
your strategy
Brand your campaign
Determine your marketing plan
Determine your audience segments
Make sure your strategy includes other
channels

5. Begin with the end in mind:
Lead with a thoughtful strategy, and set goals to measure success
HSI goal for seal campaign on Care2: acquire new names and convert
them into donors. On Care2, we did a petition, Next Action Page and a
blog post. Our approach was based off what performed well for us in
2011.
Target countries: Canada (70%), EU (15%), UK (15%)
Rate per name: $1.50 USD
Total Care2 acquisition budget: $6,000 USD for 3,750 names
Also spent $375 for 3,750 impressions on Next Action Page (NAP)
4,666 names delivered
Average cost per conversion = $1.29
We had a campaign goal of raising $400k for HSUS + HSI (based
off of previous years‘ earnings)

9. Perfect your welcome series
Don’t take new supporters for granted, engage and
cultivate with a welcome series
Use e-mail triggers to automate an engagement
process over a certain span of time – beyond just an
automated thank you
Makes sense for new donors / new sign ups
Educate supporters on your mission
Provide options for engagement
Segment your welcome series based on channel
Allows you to build your donor community by adopting
―customer service‖ manners

10. Perfect your welcome series
Plan your online marketing strategy early!
We started planning 4 months ahead of the campaign start
Send out welcome series in a timely fashion once
they‘ve taken action on Care2
We did a 3-part series: welcome/survey, appeal, and thank
you
Sometimes we‘ll do a welcome email, survey, appeal, and
thank you (it all depends on the timing of how long the
campaign is running and when we receive the names from
Care2
Engage your audience
We combined welcome email with a survey
Follow up with a donation ask and a thank you email
Always make sure to thank your donors and action takers!

13. Segment your list(s)
Who is your audience? Remember:
Consider steering away from Profiling is key to targeting
generic messaging for and hence the
everyone in your database *channel*: creating supporter
Use profiles to automate profiles will help you target
segmentation based on different audiences in different
transactional, historical, or channels more effectively. For
even form data example, your fundraising
email list versus your
Donor levels should match
Facebook page versus your
specific asks--a historically
direct mail—three different
high level donor should never
channels translates to three
get an ask that is below their
different communication
previous giving level
tactics.

14. Segment your list(s)
We generally segment our list whether or not someone has
taken action, donated, or opened an email
For seals, we segmented by monthly donors, 2012 donors, 2011
donors, non donors, and action takers – by using Profiles in EN
We also segment our lists by country so the constituent will
see donation forms/content specific to their currency and
country director
HSI Canada emails to Canadians, HSI UK emails to UK residents,
HSI Global emails to all other international folks
Be mindful of the emails your new group receives – we keep
them separate from the rest of our list so they don‘t get
overwhelmed with other emails from our organization
Suppress this group from all other email communications until the
entire welcome series is complete

15. Use conditional content
Conditional content is tied to profiles / segments
Allows you to send one email to all your profiles, but
will swap in conditional content based on supporter
profile
Allows for more personalization based on the
supporter‘s historical interactions with you
Leads to higher conversion and engagement
Saves you time!

16. Use conditional content
Personalize emails as much as possible
First name (custom salutation), use dynamic campaign links
so the donation form/action alert auto-populates with
constituent‘s information
For HSI -- Canadians get email with HSI Canada logo,
signature by HSI Canada director, donation links to
Canadian currency
Same for UK and global

18. Grow your list
Convert site traffic
Distribute content on social
networks (widgets!)
Make it easy for others to
distribute your content (user
friendly share tools)
Permission based name buy
Distribute through partner
organizations and blogs

19. Grow your list
Ask people to share your content on social media
Use share links on
all donation forms,
action alerts and
emails
Use multi-channel
marketing approach
(we grew list by
1,000 using
Google/FB ads)
Hijack your homepage with a windowshade or overlay to get new
people to sign up or donate
Use fun, interactive landing pages with imagery
Use widget to create Facebook tabs

21. Unify your branding across channels
Define a theme
Branding helps create broader awareness
Brand your campaign across channels consistently
Email
Landing page
Social networks (brand your widget)
Create mobile templates consistent with the rest of
campaign
Use display widgets as part of your branding to
provide social proof of your campaign

22. Unify your branding across channels
We used the same masthead and image across all
channels for this year‘s seal campaign
Emails, donation forms, and action alerts all had the same
masthead image with the [Protect Seals] campaign logo
We updated our cover photo on Facebook with the same seal
image as well

23. Consider an incentive
Matching gift
Limit campaign time
Different donation levels tied to different benefits
 Certain donation amounts get special access to senior
staff
 With $1000 donation you will become part of the
President’s circle

24. Consider an incentive
We engaged people by telling them we would provide them with
breaking news, ‗live from the ice‘ tweets, an insider‘s look into
meetings and the opportunity to make a change, and more if they
took action or donated
Monthly donors receive a special monthly newsletter thanking them
for their ongoing support
We also explained what their gift
could be used for on donation forms

25. Integrate your email and fundraising
landing pages
Easiest to do when donation pages are hosted on the
same platform as your e-mail service
Pre-populated landing pages lead to increased rates
of conversion
If using dynamic content in the email why not carry it
through to the landing page for maximum
personalization
Allows you to track from the time email was opened to
form completion
Create mobile versions of your email and landing
pages

26. Integrate your email and fundraising
landing pages
We used EN to
host all assets –
donation, email
and advocacy – a
fully-integrated
campaign
We created a
‗splaction‘ landing
page, where
people could take
action, donate, get
news and more

27. We created a windowshade/overlay on the
website to make donating easy

28. We also created an
infographic,
encouraging
people to learn
more, share on
social media, and
donate!
The ‗splaction‘,
infograph, donation
forms and action
alerts all linked to
each other once
someone took
action.

29. TEST EVERYTHING!
Test your supporters profiles
Test landing pages
Test subject lines
Test e-mail content
 Test your ASK
A/B test

30. TEST EVERYTHING!
We test everything and use findings to improve
campaign year to year
We use Care2 often to acquire new names, and have
found this series works the best for HSI
An automated welcome email, survey email, appeal (1x if
they haven‘t donated, monthly ask if they have given a 1x
gift), and follow up with a thank you. Then we integrate them
into our list so they receive our other communications

31. Over the years,
we‘ve found
incorporating a
video on a donation
form has the
highest conversion
rate
Big, red submit
button also has
highest action rate
Use catchy subject
lines

32. Evaluate and optimize
Social media experts say:
"you must measure, listen, and adapt"
Create tracking links for all your
pages
Review your reports for email appeals
to measure:
Performance (click throughs,
what worked in your email?)
Conversions for donation
landing pages
Measuring what works will tell you
what you will need to adapt
Always listen to what works for you
and what works against you
Always clean up your list based on
bounces

33. Evaluate and optimize
Use unique tracking/source codes on all links, unique
to each email, so that you can get more detailed
reports
Pull email, advocacy and donation reports to see
which emails performed the best and keep track of
how you can optimize for your next campaign
EN is great because when you use dynamic campaign links,
you can easily see which links were clicked the most
Our welcome/survey email had a 23% open rate, 22% click
thru rate
Monthly ask had a 20% open rate, 2% click thru rate

34. 2012 full campaign report and take-aways for 2013:

35. 2012 HSI Care2
Welcome Series
Averages:
22% open rate
6.5% click thru
rate
2.5% action rate
35 monthly donors
$810 monthly,
$9,720 annually

36. thank you! questions? contact us!
Ghazal Vaghedi
ghazal@engagingnetworks.net
@engagingnetwork
Elise Ledsinger
eledsinger@hsi.org
@humanesociety
Eric Rardin
ericr@care2team.com
@care2team