The state of the sector
Cash income has fluctuated in recent years because of global instability. The volume of digital supporters has decreased dramatically over the past 2 years, with a decrease of 13% and 26% in 2022 and 2023, respectively. However, digital income has been much more stable, with reductions of only 7% and 9% across the same timeframe, suggesting that fewer donors are giving more. The share of income generated by digital channels has also increased over the past 3 years, now sitting comfortably at 23% of total revenue.
This all suggests that audiences are open to engaging through digital channels, but work needs to be done to gain more supporters and drive greater levels of income.
This means that through 2024/25 there will be more competition with a lot of charities going for the same group of people – so how can you find your audience and covert donors?
The current response
Currently, two main responses to this situation are prevalent: conversion and lead generation. Whilst both responses have their benefits in the short term, long term they have some drawbacks.
The focus of both those activities tends to be on warm prospects, the low hanging fruit. The issue with this is that when picking hanging fruit, all too often, nothing is replenishing the audience. What we see is short lived success. Once that warm pool of prospects is exhausted, there is a lot of work to do to try and replenish that group.
With lead generation, what we’re seeing is really good results and CPAs are being driven down. However, again, there exists the same problem with low hanging fruit as Meta and other digital platforms optimise who’s most likely to convert, not necessarily the best people to convert. So, whilst people are coming in, they’re not converting to fundraising – the upsell isn’t there, leading to a relatively poor-quality relationship from then on.
Why brand awareness?
So why brand awareness? Whilst conversion activity drives short term uplift, it is without building a base for the future. Building brand awareness on the other hand leads to sustainable long-term growth.
The trade-off is that it takes a little bit longer to reach the same levels and may take a few months before we can see the same level of results and same level of return as you would if focussing purely on conversions.
The investment isn’t a quick win but it’s about future proofing your strategy, and hopefully making jobs a little bit easier in the months to come once a strategy is in place.
Brand awareness can often seem disconnected from acquisition and stewardship, but the journey to nurture cold audiences begins at the first touchpoint. Don’t think of it as brand awareness, but instead, connecting and priming.
Appealing to your audience
They deserve relevant content, that will set them up to have long term relationships with organisations.
1) Appeal to their knowledge: This can be especially useful for Charities whose causes may not be as well known. Can you address misinformation, share the truth of a subject matter or look at the wider conversations happening in society, and capitalise on that to help boost your message?
2)Addressing their motivations: Not only trying to show them content that is likely to engage them, but also address what might be stopping people. Our latest research Tomorrow’s Donor, Today found the main motivations to give which included 43% of people said they were willing to donate because it was made very clear how their donation would make a difference and 34% that the fundraising content emotionally moved them, which is really strong case for that awareness, storytelling element.
3)Breaking down barriers: Our research also found the barriers that exist to giving to a charity. These included thinking too many charities are the same and not knowing how to choose, and charity fundraising messages being dull and uninspiring. Both of which can be solved by not just going in with a cold acquisition ask but taking the time to build brand awareness.
4)The case for context: relevance has always been an important part of maximising digital engagement but as users become more aware of how their data is being used, we’re seeing a shift from behavioural relevance and towards contextual relevance.
The underlining resolution is that storytelling is key. Engaging with people multiple times to reach their intended conversion is what will prevent a large drop off and is the way to maximise engagement rates, maximising ROIs and reducing CPAs.
