3 Solutions to Multichannel Fundraising Challenges

Donors are more than just donors — they are passionate people. They exist all around us. They read the newspaper, listen to podcasts, walk to their favorite coffee shops, use Facebook, read emails, search Google, get mail and live perfectly normal lives. Remembering this when thinking about how to encourage donors to support your cause is important.

This is why multichannel marketing and fundraising make sense. Multichannel fundraising is different from omnichannel fundraising. An omnichannel approach creates personal, unique flows for each donor tailoring content and appeals to them on the channels that they prefer. On the other hand, multichannel marketing pushes out messages to audiences across multiple channels because it understands that people are influenced by different channels at different times. While it is not a truly personalized experience (although it does include personalized aspects), it is an opportunity to show people that you see them and fit into their lives because you engage on the same channels.

In other words, just because you give via direct mail doesn’t mean that is your only channel of influence. This is proven in the results of co-targeting on additional channels, which often shows a lift in both response rate (number of gifts) and in value (average gift amount).

So if case studies and data show success when targeting audiences with a multichannel approach why aren’t all nonprofits adopting this approach? Here are three challenges they encounter.

1. Difficulty of Revenue Attribution

Multichannel fundraising means adding more touchpoints across a variety of channels to connect with potential donors. The challenge with adding more channels is being able to decipher what metrics those channels offer, how different channels influence people and how to track all of it — aka revenue attribution.

This is more challenging than just a “look at this report” comment – although Google Analytics does have good reporting about path attribution if you’ve connected your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account and have channel tracking set up properly.

It is more a question about how nonprofits set and report on budgets. This presents a big barrier for true multichannel marketing and fundraising because nonprofits justify their investment in different channels (often run by different partners) by looking at expense versus revenue.

Today, nonprofits are starting to shift this channel-centric reporting a bit by reporting on campaign and audience metrics instead of just channel metrics. While this is helpful, it often requires a few things:

• A shift in internal reporting and budget rationale
• A consolidation of partners involved in fundraising and marketing
• A change to how donors are classified and thought about in CRMs and databases

Potential Solution: View-Through Revenue

A big topic of discussion around the channel-centric reporting approach is view-through revenue (VTR) versus click-through revenue (CTR). VTR attribution is more concerned with impressions (aka views), while CTR attribution focuses on actions (aka clicks).

Depending on how you report campaign success, you may have drastically different opinions of what is successful and what is not. I recently reviewed campaign performance with a nonprofit that analyzed the results in its CRM and determined that the campaign was a failure because the campaign code associated with donations from Meta was very low.

The issue is that Meta reported a return on ad spend of a nearly three-to-one ratio by combining both VTR and CTR. This discovery led to a larger discussion about how to track performance and the importance of understanding the metrics different platforms provide.

As a society, we are skeptical. We’re told about scams and phishing emails, as well as fake ads on social media for non-existent products. This is why VTR matters. While donors who do not click on an ad may not get their campaign code added to a CRM, they are likely influenced by the ads that they see. It is reasonable to believe that they want to do more research and ensure that they actually trust the organization asking for a donation. This gets more complex on mobile devices as people often jump between apps where URL parameters can easily fall off.

2. Differing Conversion Flows Across Channels

An empathetic story that connects people to your mission using emotion and then tying that story with a specific ask will always be at the root of what drives support. Being able to then allow people to justify their donation with logic (secure donation logos, impact data, etc.) can turn one-time supporters into lifetime champions.

While the root of what drives action is consistent across all channels, every channel is unique and fits into our supporters’ lives in different ways. This requires us to think about the role of each channel and how to leverage its unique aspects.

A stark contrast can be seen between direct mail and digital channels. Direct mail has friction built in, so strategically it’s important to encourage donors to embrace the friction — opening envelopes, reading pieces of paper, navigating to websites or getting out their checkbooks, filling out forms or writing checks, sealing the return envelopes and mailing the donations. This is a much different flow from digital where we strive to offer donors friction-free experiences — click donate calls to action, select amounts if different from the prepopulated ones, enter information if not autofilled and click “submit.”

While direct mail and digital include inherent differences in their path to conversion, each has a unique flow that needs to be monitored and optimized to ensure that the multichannel fundraising effort truly is working.

Potential Solution: The Five Whys

It’s important to ask “why?” when looking at numbers, especially when it comes to fundraising. I often use the five whys as a framework to evaluate success and identify the part of the journey that needs to be improved.

Donor journeys are complex. The longer they last the more complexity and distraction are added. One example of this came during a review of native advertising results for a regional nonprofit. The organization had a low conversion rate and wanted to write off native ads.

By doing the five whys, we discovered native ads captured the attention of the organization’s audiences, but when prospects clicked on the ad and landed on a donation form, it was very jarring. So, the organization tested driving prospects to a landing page that shared a story and made an ask. This not only drove more donations, but increased the cost per click as well since the platform had more conversion data.

3. Measure of Success Across Channels

Adding more channels means looking at more metrics and trying to identify what is working and what is not. This can be a challenge because it shifts the focus from just donations to leading indicators of a donation.

To truly understand the impact of communication channels, it’s important to track the impact those changes have on your donor flow — not just on your donation value or volume. These metrics take time to analyze and see the impact. Nonprofits often operate on an annual cycle. A lot of giving happens toward the end of each year, so understanding the impact of a channel adjustment that your organization made in February may take some time.

Potential Solution: Leading Indicators

Leading indicators are the metrics that impact donations. So a donation goal requires driving traffic to the website, traffic on the website to a donation page and people on the donation page to enter their information into the donation form. These steps result in a donation — typically the primary key performance indicator of fundraising.

By looking at leading indicators, you can assume that if you drive more traffic to your website more people will visit your donation form and if more people visit your donation form more people will enter their information and make a donation. So breaking the metrics down you can see where there are cracks in your donor journey:

• Are you struggling to get traffic?
• Are you able to convince that traffic to visit your donation page?
• Are those visitors entering information into the form on your donation page?

With this information, you analyze your supporters’ needs on each channel. This may affect the content used on a given channel, where you take people to engage, the ask array or any number of campaign decisions related to your fundraising.

One often-overlooked leading indicator that I encourage everyone to consider is media spend — can your paid campaigns actually spend the money that you allocate. If they can't, you need more interest in your mission or your organization to truly grow your impact.

Donors Are People and People Are Complex

When it comes to fundraising it’s important to remember that donors are just people. They are often just like the fundraiser or the marketer fighting for their attention and trying to capture their monetary support for a cause they are passionate about. When we approach outreach with this mindset we can discuss success and multichannel efforts in a productive way.

I can count the times I’ve clicked an ad and converted throughout my life on one hand. The most recent time it was for a nonprofit that created intrigue by asking if I’d shop blind. I clicked out of curiosity and to this day it is still one of my favorite campaigns to see in action.

With the number of scams online and fake letters demanding payment, we are a skeptical culture. When it comes to spending our discretionary money, we research the nonprofits we support and need to not only feel an emotional connection to them, but see them as a trusted organization that fits into our lives. This happens at events, through paid ads, via direct mail, on social media and through countless other channels that we use daily. To be this type of organization, nonprofits should embrace multichannel efforts and encourage multichannel touches to engage with their donors.

The preceding post was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.