Scaling campaign operations and successful fundraising go hand-in-hand. Many are willing to donate to campaigns they care about and believe in, but fundraising teams need to carefully strategize the best ways to reach and engage these people.
In our webinar, “Leveraging Impactive for Fundraising in 2022,” we discussed how campaigns can fundraise effectively with digital tools like Impactive. The webinar was led by Impactive’s Juliet Albin, Senior Sales Executive, and Ilana Kaplan, VP of Client Strategy. They were joined by guest speaker Michael Beckendorf, Business Development Manager at Opt-In Strategies.
They shared the following best practices for campaigns looking to scale their fundraising operations:
1. Solidify and segment your contact list. There are three kinds of audiences that campaigns can contact for donations: engaged supporters and donors, supporters who are engaged on other platforms like email, and new donors. For all three groups, campaigns can start texting campaigns for the most consistent and coordinated fundraising outreach.
2. Personalize your messaging scripts. This can be as simple as making sure that the text message addresses the contact by their name. Some platforms, like Impactive, allow campaign staff to insert dynamic variables into the message script to streamline message personalization. To go one step further, campaigns can create scripts for specific communities based on location or other data that they might have for contacts.
3. Capitalize on the moment. Whether it’s news that an opposing candidate has outraised the campaign or is using smear tactics, campaigns should be ready to conduct rapid response and reach people with an urgent appeal. Broadcast messaging is the best tool for this!
4. Leverage A/B testing. Strategy optimization requires constant testing, and one way to do this is by conducting A/B tests. Campaigns can send variations of a message to a small group of contacts to see which message has a higher interaction rate and will ultimately serve as the message template for peer-to-peer texts.
5. Incorporate user-generated content into messages. User-generated content yields a 28% higher engagement rate than any other content. Campaigns can use MMS messages to incorporate more visual content into their fundraising outreach and increase engagement with new and returning donors.
6. Engage all supporters as potential donors. People sign up to receive updates from a campaign for many reasons — maybe they’ve signed up to volunteer, or just want to receive information about the campaign. Campaigns should engage with these supporters frequently; down the line, they may turn into donors. In fact, campaigns may even find success re-engaging contacts that have unsubscribed from other mediums, like email, for text campaigns.
7. Start texting supporters earlier in the year. Many campaigns ramp up communications heavily in the few months leading up to Election Day, but campaigns should start texting supporters earlier to make sure they are building strong relationships with their supporter base and finding what works best for their needs.
2022 is another critical election year, and campaigns should begin to ramp up their fundraising outreach strategies. With coordinated text messaging, consistent communication, and thoughtful relationship building, campaigns can successfully expand and strengthen their donor base.
Watch the full webinar here to hear more from the speakers.
To learn more about using Impactive to scale your fundraising efforts, schedule a demo here.
