Fundraisers know that it’s a rare occurrence for a new supporter to land on an online Call to Action for the first time and opt to join your Regular Giving program there and then. The mixture of phone and digital lead generation offers a unique way to combat this through a process of cultivation and, increasingly, of customisation.
Public Outreach has been working in the Acquisition Phone space for over seven years now, however in the past 12 months we have seen increasing success coming from what we refer to as “the premium lead space”. Premium leads represent leads that allow for customisation, cultivation and scalability.
As more and more new Regular Givers are discovered by the tele-fundraisers, these social media profiles are looped back and matched to the campaign meaning that audience targeting improves over time.
Social lead generation & re-targeting
Over at Public Outreach we’ve always had the pleasure of working with a number of really wonderful lead generation agencies and brokers. People doing incredible and creative things with us on behalf of charities.
Recently, one of the most exciting endeavours has been an increasing number of joint campaigns with Dataphoria and their Social Connect product. Social Connect allows for the campaign to re-target individuals who have already “opted-in” to hearing from the charity. In many ways, it acts as a branding campaign, but without the advertising cost wastage. Better yet, this happens in real-time, meaning that as soon as someone registers their interest in hearing from you, they can immediately be served an ad.
Imagine seeing a moving video on Facebook of the heartbreaking crisis currently in India. Then the phong rings and it’s a well known humanitarian organisation calling about how they need YOUR help in getting medical equipment and staff to India. This is the power of crossing that digital and offline divide.
How does PO tele-fundraising fit into this?
Calling occurs at the same time as the re-targeting. Essentially this means that when a tele-fundraiser makes that phone call, it’s combined with the fact that the individual is simultaneously seeing content from that same charity on their web and social media feeds.
The overall journey is also more intuitive and seamless for the individual. Lead creative content matches the content that is spoken about by the calling team. If the Facebook ads are about the need for crocodile dental care, the callers aren’t then speaking about how Australian bats need fuzzy, warm hats for winter.
Combined together, this makes for more engaging conversations. Instead of reminding the individual exactly who the charity is and what it is that they do, this dynamic creates more time and space to build authentic and genuine phone calls around issues that the individual is passionate about. People are informed and stewarded to a point where they feel comfortable in the way we’ve paved a clear way for them to start financially supporting the charity and make an impact.
Steadily turning ‘traditional fundraising’ on it’s head
Working closely with Dataphoria and our valued charity partners, the past year has marked a philosophical shift. These are some of our key takeaways on why this works so well!
Regardless of the charity and the content, these campaigns truly recognise that we are potentially only a small part of someone’s day. It’s not enough to ask someone to complete a call to action and simply expect them to remember everything and maintain the engagement they felt in that exact moment. We have to work to constantly re-engage them. In this way, lead-generation is seen as ‘completed’ when the individual signs up to the charity, rather than when they simply opt-in.
There is no silver bullet to Regular Giving. One of the reasons for why these campaigns are so successful is because they combine traditional forms of fundraising with new forms of fundraising. Arguably, the innovative elements come, not from the separate parts themselves, but from the way we now see Acquisition as a holistic circle rather than the traditional one directional trajectory line going from A-Z.
This approach addresses and helps to avoid fatigue in interested prospects. The more visible and relevant you are to potential supporters through multiple channels, the better the conversion chances.
This type of fundraising is scalable. Gone are the days when it was thought that “premium leads” could only represent a small percentage of your calling campaign. Over the past 12 months we’ve seen incredible versatility, from a volume perspective, with some Dataphoria Social Connect campaigns providing more than 3,000 engaged leads to Public Outreach fundraisers per week.
The team at Public Outreach are happy to chat and explore what options might be of interest to you and fit your organisation’s needs. Feel free to get in touch via our website. You can also get in touch here with our friends over at Dataphoria. As always, our belief is that great things can often begin with a conversation!
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