A Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council Webinar presented by Cassidy Richards of Charity Dynamics and Shana Masterson of the American Diabetes Association.

1. Using Engagement Tactics to Drive
Event Results

2. 2
Your hosts
• Cassidy Richards
• Sr. Consultant, Charity Dynamics
• crichards@charitydynamics.com
• Shana Masterson
• Associate Director, Interactive Fundraising &
Engagement, American Diabetes Association
• smasterson@diabetes.org

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• How engagement impacts
your bottom line
• Your fundraising VIP’s
• Why Multi-Channel is vital
• Develop your Multi-
Channel Engagement Plan
• Next Steps
• Questions
Agenda

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Engagement
big return on investment

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• Building relationships with your participants to
increase loyalty and fundraising
• Communication
• Community Building
• Customer Service
• Engagement must be ongoing
• often campaigns begin and end with
Recruitment
What is engagement?

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• Fundraising growth outpaced participation
growth
Engagement impacts your bottom line
Blackbaud 2011 P2P Benchmark Report

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Can you afford not to engage?
Goal
# Teams 125
% of teams fundraising 80
# Fundraising teams 100
Fundraising Average $1,200
Total Revenue $120,000
+ Engage
125
85
106
$1,500
$159,000
- Engage
125
65
81
$1,000
$81,000
Sample Exercise

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Step Out: Walk to Stop Diabetes
Fundraising Trend
• Growth in participant
numbers pacing with
overall growth
• Growth in fundraising
average – a direct result
of engagement.
• $1M increase online
• Opportunity for growth:
More fundraising
participants (less $0)

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• Returning Participants raise more money (a lot
more!)
• It costs less to retain a team/participant than
recruiting a brand new one!
Can impact next year’s retention
Blackbaud 2011 P2P Benchmark Report

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• 47% of donors give the majority
of their money to their favorite
charity
• 30% of constituents fundraise
for their favorite charity at least
once a year
• Constituents tended to leverage
multiple digital access points
(website, email and social
media) to fundraise,
communicate and spread the
word about their favorite charity
Favorite Charity

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How it relates to P2P world
Talk to friends and family 54%
Encourage friends and
family to donate
40%
Encourage friends and
family to volunteer
30%
Forward an email 27%
Forward an e-Newsletter 23%
Share, like, or comment on
Facebook
22%
The very
actions we
need our
P2P
participants
to take!

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So…how can YOU become your
participant’s favorite event?

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Your fundraising VIP’s
All fundraisers NOT created equal

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Identify your VIP’s
80% of revenue raised by 20% of participants. You have to
know who the 20% is before that becomes truly useful.
• What does your
most engaged/top
fundraiser segment
look like?
• How do they prefer
to engage with you?
• What are common
fundraising
behaviors?
• How did they
evolve over time?
• What is connection
to mission:
• What does your
least engaged
segment look like?
• How is that
different from the
most engaged?
• Can you affect
change on them?

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• Conducted exercise to identify top
performers
• Team Captains
• Red Striders
• Champions
• Impacts all communication and website
decisions
Step Out VIPs

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• First priority for
early registration
• In-person visits
• “Sneak peeks”
• Recognition
• Email segmentation
Step Out VIPs

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Step Out VIPs – Email Segmentation

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• Once you identify your VIP segments, identify
common traits and what is making them
successful
• Use that information to prioritize your time
and inform your messaging and content
• Goal is for ALL participants to duplicate what
most successful groups are doing
• Provide opportunities for VIP’s to share their
own successes
Duplicate VIP success

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Encourage Fundraising Behavior

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Multi Channel Engagement
Strategy

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What is multi channel?
Engagement
Email
Mobile
WebsiteOffline
Social
Media
• Engage with your participants where they are
engaging in their daily lives

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• Each channel has a “mini-communications plan”
that includes engagement campaigns
• Email – Segmented, follow-up
• Print – timing in regards to other channels
• Social – Posts, imagery, cover photos, ads
• Website – Content pages, action pages, promo
spaces, etc
• Text
• Phone/In-Person***
Step Out Better Practices

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Email
• Important part of the plan-not the
WHOLE plan
• Email open rates are going down
• Don’t assume that because you “told
them” something via email that the
message was received
• Planning to make your emails stand
out
• Not everything has to be shiny,
preplanned and group email...you can
(and should) send individual emails!

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Email Marketing puts
the focus on us.
Email Engagement puts
the focus on our
constituents.
Constituent-Focused Emails

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• Count the number of times the word “you”
appears in your email.
• Now count how many times you say the
organization’s name, the event name,
“we”, “I” or “us”.
• If “we/us” outnumbers “you”, it’s time to
re-write your message.
The “You” Test

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CONTENT is KING,
but AUDIENCE is just
as important in Email
Engagement.
“Even if you have permission to send an email,
people will not open it, read it, or stay on your list
very long if the information you send isn’t relevant
to them.”
- Jeffrey Rice, MarketingSherpa
Audience and Content

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This Doesn’t Apply to Me
• Overwhelm with
irrelevant information
• Reduce trust in the
event
• Less actions taken,
donations made, etc.
• Over time, you are
telling people not to
read your messages,
to unsubscribe or mark you as spam!

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Email- Make it relevant
• Make it personal!
• Participation
types
• Fundraising
behaviors
• Fundraising
results
• How they are
making an impact
• “Thanks for stepping up
as a leader in the fight
against Diabetes as a
team captain!
• “Great job, Shana!
You’ve reached your
fundraising goal and
raised $1,000!
• “You’ve taken the
important first step of
updating your personal
page. Now’s the perfect
time to spread the word
about your participation
by sending emails.”

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Mobile
*Info & Graphics from OrangeSODA and Microsoft Tag

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Mobile – Step Out Goes Responsive!

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Calls To Action on Mobile
22% of
website
visits via
mobile vs.
5% in 2012.

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Mobile Email
• Mobile isn’t just your website…how do
your emails render on mobile?
BlueHornet “Consumer Views of Email Marketing” (2012)

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• 35% of donors in the Nonprofit Donor
Engagement Benchmark report visiting a
charity’s website from a few times per
year to daily.
• Website should serve as anchor for all
digital communications
• Keep contact fresh: give them a reason to
keep coming back
Website

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Website

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• Personalize the
experience
• Recognize
actions already
taken
• Prompt for next
steps
• Relevant
information
(local contact,
etc)
Website

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• An additional spoke in your engagement
wheel…if used correctly.
• Only engagement if used as two-way,
dynamic communication.
• FOCUS!! Where are your participants?
• Better to be really good at one than bad
at many
Social Media

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Step Out Analytics
*ROI*
Considerable
percentage of
registrations and
donations
sourced through
FB.

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Social Media power lies with audience

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Social Media power lies with audience
Profile Photos
for Participants!
Cover Photos for Participants!

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• Pick 1-2 channels and master them
• Create an editorial calendar to serve as
guide
• Monitor your channel daily and respond
• Recognize VIP groups
• Encourage and provide tools for crowd
sourced content
Top 5 Ways to engage on social media

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• Emerging technologies do not negate the
importance of conversations in person or
on the phone
• Phone calls: Step Out 24-Hour Challenge
• Customer Service: Returning phone calls
is an opportunity to turn it around AND
get to know your participant
• Involve committee or other volunteers
Offline Engagement

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• Time constraints are reality so plan events that
provide opportunities with multiple people at
once
• Kick off events
• Corporate Recruitment Events
• Fundraising clinics
• Training sessions (endurance/cycling events)
• Web launch party
• Volunteer call nights
Maximize offline opportunities

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• Make your “Thank you” meaningful
• 21% of donors from Nonprofit Donor Engagement
Benchmark say they were never thanked
• Don’t go dark
• Use offseason to build your social media following
• Creative communications around holidays/special
occasions
• Invite to other organization events throughout the
year
Post Event (and ALL YEAR!)

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Now that you have the tools…
What’s Next?

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Take Stock
• Utilize data to identify VIP’s and core
fundraising behaviors
• Is my communication plan robust and
multi-channel?
• Am I segmenting communications to
create personal experience for
participants?

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• Prioritize based on resources, timing and
current status
• Create calendar – used as a guide but be
flexible
• Include chosen channels
• Dates
• Segments
• Message content
• Take risks by testing segmentation and content
Develop the Plan

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• Use data to evaluate the effectiveness of
your efforts thus far
• Will help to create benchmarks for
future
• Be nimble and make tweaks as needed
along the way!
Execute, Refine, Repeat!

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Cassidy Richards:
crichards@charitydynamics.com
Shana Masterson:
smasterson@diabetes.org