10 lessons learned working in one of the largest charity digital teams in the UK
I’ve just finished working at one of the largest digital teams in the UK charity sector. Whilst it’s impossible to boil down everything into a bite sized Medium article, I thought I’d do my best.
Creating customised digital products will be an option for the biggest charities — but is expensive
In the same way that those with resources to invest will create their own bespoke fundraising packs, sponsorship forms and donor letters, the largest charities will develop their own digital experiences, highly customised to their audiences’ needs. This will no doubt increase their margins and ROI in the long term, but you need to have the capital to invest at the start. You will also need to consider the ongoing costs which are no doubt extensive in both technical set up and the people power needed to keep developing on your product.
There is a tipping point at which sharing digital products (like JustGiving) makes more sense
There are no doubt benefits to using a centralised platform which is able to develop itself based on the needs of the many. For those organisations in which it doesn’t make sense to overtly customise, there are amazing digital products out there which will fill a high proportion of your audiences’ needs. Don’t forget to ensure that you have good access to the glue that binds them all together though — data!
Analytics is the most important thing you can invest in that you probably won’t
My biggest regret of my time in house was our underinvestment in analytics. Digital gives the world an unparalleled opportunity to understand what is happening on their marketing materials. In order to do that though, you need to invest in implementing analytics properly and those people who can help you to understand it. Even with highly skilled digital operators taking up a lot of the responsibility for reporting, the implementation piece remained a large hurdle to overcome to give the granularity of reporting that we needed.
Digital transformation puts as many people off as it excites
As in Jo Wolfe’s excellent article on the subject, calling a project a ‘transformation’ exercise might excite Directors but by the time you get on the ground half the people in the room are already against you. In the end, you need to focus on the small wins you can have through iterating rather than trying to create step changes with people, processes or tools.
That’s not to say that generating momentum at a senior level isn’t important, just that once you’ve got buy in, be wary how you use it. If in doubt, picture yourself in the other person or team’s position and think how you’d feel in their shoes.
Digital Transformation = Business Change
Most of us that got into Digital started here because of a passion for the medium and the opportunities it provides. Whilst important skills are developed through this career path, it doesn’t necessarily provide us with the tools required to drive lasting change in a business. Things like stakeholder mapping, influencing strategies, compromise, project planning (gasp!) aren’t always 2nd nature to us. If we want to make lasting change that genuinely transforms a business we need to learn them, quickly!
PayPal is great — use it
There’s nothing that we did which had a more dramatic impact on donation conversion rates — and it looks like they’re more valuable too. Just do it.
Facebook Ads works great for event sign ups
Mr Zuckerberg’s play thing gives genuinely profitable ROI for getting people involved with events and initiatives. Free events with a fundraising ask provided the highest conversion rates. My personal opinion is that FB is one of the last bastions of the web where people are genuinely ‘browsing’. This means they are up for finding out about interesting things happening near them.
Facebook doesn’t currently work for driving donations
Others may disagree but I have never worked on a direct donation or regular giving campaign (other than the organic #nomakeupselfie or Ice Bucket Challenge) on FB that has provided ongoing and sustainable success. People just aren’t paying enough attention I don’t think. This might change with Facebook’s apparent donation button / CTA but I’m not convinced. With the rise of live video, there will definitely be some interesting telethon type opportunities though.
Test appetite for new initiatives / campaigns / projects through AdWords
For the price of a Byron burger, you can test whether people think your new fundraising idea is exciting or just another email to ignore in the Promos box. Get involved and use it to test copy, concepts and how to convert — it really couldn’t be easier. And don’t be afraid of pointing them to a data capture page saying you’ll get back to them if they leave their email. No one’s going to think any less of you.
eCommerce isn’t as big as you’d think
Even for a charity that has hundreds of retail stores, the traffic and income we saw through our eCommerce was relatively minimal. The online shop was still our largest single store, but in reality given the potential audience compared to physical sites that’s not an enormously high bar. Those that have succeeded in this area have had to create entirely new offerings (such as Oxfam Unwrapped) rather than try and do the same thing they’ve always done, online. Interesting things are happening using 3rd party shops like CRUK on ebay however and there’s no doubt it is great to support large scale fundraising campaigns.
