Study Details Nonprofit E-mail, Fundraising and Advocacy Results, Shares Advice

By Abny Santicola

The keys to its success were:

Focused messaging. Rather than using traditional end-of-year language that gives a broad overview of the organization's successes and upcoming initiatives, Oxfam highlighted the specific, urgent issue of the global hunger epidemic. The study says this helped the organization "make the case for why it was important to give right this minute."
Making the most of its e-mail schedule. The organization set a public goal and deadline and promoted them in e-mail and Web copy, also featuring a thermometer graphic to show its progress toward the goal. It also replaced an e-mail newsletter and an appeal from another Oxfam program with two fundraising e-appeals, so as not to increase the overall volume of messages over the previous year.
Optimized landing pages. Inspired by test results from previous campaigns, Oxfam made two key changes to its donation page. It created a short online video with moving text, simple animation and music that made the case for giving, and used it in every appeal and on every donation page. Oxfam also produced a cleaner and simpler API-based donation form.
Maximizing homepage real estate. Oxfam added a "lightbox" to its homepage, which compelled visitors to give before visiting the rest of the site. It also rotated four different promotions on its homepage, which it updated with fresh content as the deadline for each promotion approached.

The study also reports that despite increased use of social-networking sites, e-mail still rules online marketing. What's more, the two methods aren't at odds with one another. Some organizations have found success using social media to grow e-mail lists. The study shared the following advice for building lists via social media:

Provide valuable content first, ask for sign-ups second.
Have a clear call to action on every page/site to which you drive traffic.
Source-code newsletter additions. Stay on top of which networks and which conversations are driving the most traffic and recruits.
Be patient. Social media is about conversations. It will take a while to build the connections that will help drive enough traffic to build your list.