10 Ingredients That Produce Wildly Successful Appeals: Stewardship and Report, Analyze and Test
In October, I presented a webinar on 10 ingredients that produce wildly successful appeals. Combining research with practice, we will be breaking these down in the blog over the next few weeks. Read the full series here.
9. Stewardship
To have wildly successful appeals, we need to communicate with our donors year-round. Your donors should hear from you at least quarterly, with intentional communication that doesn’t make a hard ask.
You can also do stewardship with people who are not donors yet. We developed a welcome series for Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, specifically for the parents of patients. The first round, an email, got a 3% response rate, which shows that the campaign is resonating with recipients. The second got a 48% open rate, well above the industry average of 17.5%.
10. Report, Analyze, and Test
Too many nonprofits are content to achieve their goals without dissecting the factors that made them a success. Which donors are upgrading and renewing? Which communications and calls to action worked best?
An analytics engine like a donor migration report can help you see the trends in your donor base — from donor churn, to acquisition. These have to be segmented into the different levels of donors, so you know where to focus.
In addition, we must make sure that we test. In an ideal world, every appeal should include a test. Testing disproves intuition that can lead to failure.
Throughout this entire series, I have spoken about several techniques that can increase the success of your appeals. You don’t have to do these all at once — keep it simple! For your next appeal, try introducing two new ingredients, analyze the impact, adjust, and move forward.
Good luck!
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