4 Rule-Bending Campaign Tests That Improved Outcomes
Best practices and benchmarks are powerful tools, but that data can also reinforce past assumptions instead of driving the change nonprofits aim to bring about. Additionally, if all organizations do things exactly the same, then no one stands out.
“If we just land on only doing best practices and using them beep, bop, boop our campaigns, we're just in search, ‘urgent’ lead here, say ‘match, match, match,’ say ‘deadline,’ then everything looks the same,” Rachel Allison, principal and co-founder at Fresh Eyes Digital, said. “It doesn't resonate on that authentic level. It doesn't really reflect the stories of each one of our teams and our organizations.”
Allison presented “Keep Campaigning Experimental: Rules to Bend (and Break!) to Authentically Engage” during NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference on Wednesday. Miguel Sedano, senior manager of digital marketing at the Peninsula Open Space Trust, and Thelma Andree, production and design director at Fresh Eyes Digital, joined her for the presentation.
Here are four rules the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which acquires and preserves lands on the peninsula and South Bay near San Francisco, has bent or broken to improve metrics such as email unsubscribe rate, social media donations, email click-through rate and more.
1. Add Non-Donate Links in Appeals
Though best practice is to avoid including non-donate links in appeals, Peninsula Open Space Trust had an uptick in unsubscribes for its non-donor segment, so the nonprofit’s team opted to include what it called “a speed bump” at the end of its fundraising email appeals. This not only further humanized its emails, but provided a useful link to something that the nonprofit produces, like a hiking guide.
“So it lowered the unsubscribes, especially with the community group, to a statistically significant degree,” Allison said. “Actually, they gave a little bit lower in terms of the average gift. It's probably because we were getting more community members, prospects to give who weren't at high levels, but they gave 31% more gifts, which wasn't even what we were going for.”
Once the nonprofit rolled out that change to all segments, its unsubscribe rate shrunk by 30.8% year over year.
2. Create Less Polished Content
Organic social media content from influencers prompted the nonprofit to test digital advertising content that wasn’t necessarily as sharp and on brand as usual. Instead, they focused on organic aesthetics that allowed viewers to see themselves in its stories.
With influencers posting the more relatable content directly to their accounts plus the nonprofit committing to a series of paid ads specific to the video content, the Peninsula Open Space Trust found 45% of its Meta donations during its campaign came from one of the two influencer ad campaigns created.
“That was something that we didn't expect, but that was really good to see,” Sedano said. “The key takeaway, in my opinion, is that you need to continue to try new things. … There's so many ways that people are being creative online. For us, it's led us in the direction of producing more video content for campaigns, which I think it's a good way to expand your library of content as well.”
3. ‘Waste’ Fundraising Campaign Emails on Cultivation
Nonprofits are always worried about sending too many emails. In the Peninsula Open Space Trust’s case, the team was hesitant to add emails purely for engagement efforts. Wanting to continue strengthening the response from its non-donor segment, the nonprofit aimed to create email outreach for cultivation. The organization opted for trivia since engagement for quizzes was strong on social media.
The emails promoted quizzes that questioned supporters about weird nature-related facts, like badgers having three eyelids. And with its first cultivation quiz attempt, the nonprofit achieved roughly its advocacy benchmark in terms of click-through rate. The next trivia effort nearly reached its benchmark for appeal response rate.
“And in the following campaign, we raised about $6,000 just from the quiz campaign, which ended with a little, tiny donate link in part of it, right?” Andree said. “So it helped our message, and it got a lot of positive feedback from the community.”
4. Deviate From a Strong Visual Brand to Create a Standout Campaign
Though the Peninsula Open Space Trust has a strong visual brand with stunning landscape visuals, the ability to stand out on GivingTuesday is tough regardless. After a series of urgent campaigns around local wildfires but prior to a new wildlife study launch, the organization opted to lean into its 2020 viral wildlife camera footage that featured a playful coyote and badger.
The GivingTuesday campaign noted the study discovered that local highways make it extremely difficult for wildlife to move safely throughout the area.
“A creative risk like this can be worth it, because even if we didn't necessarily do a formal A/B test,” Andree said “It was a new approach, it was a new tone … — it was just something new that POST could start with, and now they're able to alternate between. Sometimes they'll do a really brand-new campaign like this. Sometimes they’ll stick to more of their traditional storytelling. And if there's a really good story to tell, we can experiment now.”
What worked for the Peninsula Open Space Trust might not work for all nonprofits. However, the organization took some calculated risks by being agile while listening to its audience.
“I think there's sometimes a desire for marketers to emulate what’s shiny or new …. I want to emphasize to remain true to your brand and your audience,” Sedano said. “And as a marketer, be brave when you start your path to experimentation.
