Retargeting: What is it and why you should consider it as part of your marketing mix.
The theory is simple. People receive your campaign email or social media posts promoting your campaign and they visit your fundraising page — but for a myriad of different reasons they might not ‘convert’ by donating or signing up as a fundraiser.
So, your next step is to create ads that appear on Google (search, websites, apps) and or Facebook / Instagram that show up for those potential donors/supporters reminding them to come back to your page and contribute to your campaign. This is called ‘retargeting’ or “remarketing’
We have such a small team and budget — should we bother?
Some considerations…
“Overall, 1.1% of nonprofit website visitors completed a donation” M+R 2018 Benchmark Study (US)
The charity sector is a competitive online space and is growing at a rapid pace with an average of 10 new charities registering in Australia per day
And the latest M+R 2018 Benchmark Study (US) found that even small non-profits reported a 94% increase in digital ad spending.
First time conversions like sales are low, the market is saturated and “everyone” is starting to spend on digital ads.
Now is probably a good time to get across what retargeting could do to lift your conversion rates, help you stay competitive and in turn lift your fundraising revenue.
Where to start?
The two options to consider are Google Adwords (using the Google Display Network) and Facebook (this includes Instagram — “Social media audiences continued to grow in 2017, especially on Instagram, where nonprofits ended 2017 with 44% more followers than they had at the beginning of the year” M+R 2018 Benchmark Study (US)
Despite what these tech giants might tell you, the set up can take some time (especially Google) — you’ll need perseverance and a few visits to Dr Google but once it’s set up you can then focus your attention on optimising your work.
This guide from Ad Espresso has an excellent primer on how to set up Google remarketing. It is also pretty frank.
“AdWords is not the most enjoyable platform on the internet” 😂
Their Facebook remarketing blog is also a great starting point.
Keep scrolling and half way down the article you’ll find a step by step guide to setting up a remarketing campaign in 5 minutes. To be honest though, it will probably take more than 5 minutes.
I’m launching a campaign next week, can I set it up once its gone live? Nope!
Month one: Set up your tags* and wait — you need to start collecting data, you’ll need at least 1000 people, which is why you need to start tagging visitors early, in the lead up to your main campaign push. The longer the better to build your cookie pool.
Month two: Using the data you have collected start trialling who you are going to target.
Month three: You should start seeing results so you can scale up what works and dial down what doesn’t.
*Raisely was built with retargeting in mind. Under the hood you’ll find app integrations that make setting your tags for Facebook Pixel or Adwords (via Google Tag Manager) easy.
We’ve provided a guide to walk you through the process
A guide to connect your Raisely campaign to Facebook Pixel.
And you can always reach out via that little blue bubble in the right hand corner of the screen (Intercom). We monitor incoming messages and reply quick as a flash⚡️.
If you use MailChimp for your email you might want to check out their retargeting tools — connect your Raisely page and create ads within their easy to use platform.
This blog is just a gentle nudge to consider adopting tactics that have the potential to increase the revenue of your campaigns and level the playing field a little when it comes to a share of the fundraising dollar.
For more info on what Raisely, the free and beautiful fundraising website can do for you go to https://demo.raisely.com/
Sources
F&P Magazine http://www.fpmagazine.com.au/
M+R Benchmark Studies 2018 https://mrbenchmarks.com/
Ad Espresso by HootSuite https://adespresso.com/blog/adwords-retargeting-guide/
Ad Espresso by HootSuite https://adespresso.com/blog/facebook-remarketing/
MailChimp https://blog.mailchimp.com/introducing-google-remarketing-ads-in-mailchimp/
