Not Digital First. Digital Also.

03 Sep Not Digital First. Digital Also.

3 September 2024

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

Biting on a recent email ad, I registered for a “digital first” webinar hosted by NextAfter, a digital marketing firm that actively conducts market research related to online giving and generosity. Most of my post this week is critical of that webinar, so I want to say upfront that I have a lot of respect for their research, and I have learned a great deal from their content. If you are looking for results from A/B tests on subject lines, using a person’s first name in email messages, email solicitation ask strings, and much more, their library is a good place to start.

Just don’t forget to think for yourself also.

I learned a great deal from the webinar. I actually viewed it live and then viewed the recording later. The bottom line for me is that they have a story to tell, but we need to think critically about how they are telling it before we buy it hook, line, and sinker.

First, some really good statistical information:

• Members of the “Silent” and “Boomer” generations still represent nearly 70% of all donors and giving and they give through the mail. Both groups are influenced by digital media, but both are more likely to be motivated to give from direct mail. (Many Boomers are comfortable giving both online and using checks.)
• By comparison, “GenX,” “Millennials,” and “GenZ” generations almost never write checks. Their bills are paid online and their giving is conducted online. Many (most?) Millennials do not have checkbooks.
• Giving through the mail is still much more prevalent than giving online, but it’s easy to see from the trend lines that they will be equal soon and online giving will surpass mail in the near future.

And there lies my first criticism: If 70% of your donors and money comes from generations that give through the mail, thinking “digital first” doesn’t make as much sense as thinking “digital also.”

Unless you are a digital marketing firm that is.

It is very interesting that Silents and Boomers are influenced by digital media and that GenX and Millennials are dependent on it. I would never advise ignoring digital media – just don’t ignore mail. Digital is not a substitute. It’s a complement. In fact, I think we should return to prioritizing mail as a specific strategy for raising more money.

Not digital first. Digital also.

Some of my general criticism relates to the confusion between online line giving and online solicitation. In one of the primary chart slides used in the webinar, generational differences in “preferred giving channel” were identified as “direct mail,” “voice calls,” “events,” and “online.” To me, online is a giving channel. Direct mail and voice calls are not.

It’s like saying that some people are going to Pittsburgh. Other people travel by train.

If we focus specifically on marketing (solicitation), it’s not completely surprising that organizations that focus marketing efforts on digital first see significant online results. But it does not necessarily follow that direct mail marketing is less effective. The webinar included a bar chart that showed online giving growing much faster than “offline” giving for 30 organizations that had adopted a digital first strategy.

“… for 30 organizations that had adopted a digital first strategy.”

This would be the expected result, no?

One advantage that digital marketing has is the speed at which one is able to adaptively manage content. Because you can know the results from an A/B test within several days, and because you can reasonably send email information monthly, you are able to very quickly adjust the content, frequency, and degree of personalization to meet people at the other end where they are – wherever they are.

But – are you doing that?

I do love that NextAfter is committed to testing. Email or direct mail, either way, we should all be so committed – and so committed to using the results. But make no mistake, they are not comparing digital marketing with paper marketing. They are comparing digital to digital.

And they obviously believe that more personalization really works.

Howdy David! … The story of Generosity Jones and the Holy Grail of Fundraising is just beginning … And we want you to be a part of the adventure. What do you think, David? If you’re ready to get new ideas for fundraising growth and have an unforgettable time …

I have certainly been on the receiving end of this kind of digital marketing, and I’m sure you have, too. And I believe it’s problematic. Ten years from now, how will people receive such tailored information? Will their BS filters become all that much more refined? Will they learn to distrust any kind of assumed familiarity? Will they respond at all?

Are we really “advancing”?

The webinar was framed around the idea of “busting” myths related to online fundraising. One of the myths they addressed was that “online donors are not nearly as valuable as offline donors.”

So what does that even mean? The inference I made after listening through twice is that an online donor is a donor whose first gift was made online. An offline donor would have made their first gift using the mail. In both cases, there was no information provided about how those gifts were solicited. Perhaps online donors tripped across the website and decided to give. Perhaps they got an email solicitation or saw a Facebook ad. Perhaps they got something in the mail and clicked the QR code in the lower right corner.

It feels like the answer matters.

Regardless, for the 30 organizations used as their case study group, online donors gave more in their first giving year than offline donors. The presenters attributed this to the idea that many of these donors gave more than once in their first year. If so, they also correctly point out that this will increase first-year retention as well.

So – to recap:

• If you ask first-year donors to give again within their first year, some of them will do so.
• If some of them do so, the total amount given, and therefore the average gift, will be greater.
• Donors who give more than once in their first year of giving are more likely to give in their second year than those who just gave once.

All of this is logical and empirically valid. It’s just not related to an online versus offline giving discussion. It’s true for both.

The last “myth” busted in the webinar was related to online donors not renewing as well as offline donors. My problem here is that I have been working with a significantly different data set.

The webinar bases its conclusion on new donors only. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they should own it up front. They shouldn’t use new-donor-only data sets to “bust” myths about donors more generally. In fairness to NextAfter, they did point out that they were basing their conclusions on new donors only. Then they ignored it and inferred that the ideas were more generally valid. I have not found this to be the case.

The new donor conversion rates they show (three years of data) are around 30%, and the online and offline donors are approximately equal in each of the three years. Anecdotally, they tell a story of online donors giving only once renewing at 21 percent – those giving more than once renew at 42%.

My benchmark for overall first-year renewal rates is 40-45%, and I use a mail-first. Several land trusts for whom I have performed assessments have seen first-year renewals over 50% and one even over 60%. Don’t get me wrong here – there are MANY land trusts with first year renewal rates in the 30s. It’s just that the land trusts that I have studied who use digital as their primary communications media have first-year online renewals much closer to the 21% quoted in the webinar. I believe they can do better.

My data, which is admittedly getting older every year, supports two basic ideas. The first is that multi-channel marketing is superior to single-channel. This idea was generally supported in the webinar. The second is that people who give in response to direct mail tend to renew more readily in response to direct mail, while people who give in response to email solicitation tend to renew more readily in response to email. And people whose first gift is at an event tend to need another event before giving again.

I have not seen anything that convinces me that these ideas have somehow changed.

Not digital first. Digital also.

So how can you use all this information?

This post is already too long, so I’ll share some ideas next week. In the meantime, please share in the comments any ideas you have.

Cheers, and Have a great week!

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Erik Karits courtesy of Pixaby.