4 Tips to Increase Engagement With Your Digital Fundraisers

Digital campaigns have taken off in the world of nonprofit fundraising, and it’s not hard to see why.

According to NextAfter’s 2024 Fundraising Benchmark Report, digital-first organizations (those that consider digital platforms as “the primary point of engagement” with their audiences) are growing 12.7% faster than the average nonprofit. In addition, in 2023, donors acquired online were 48% more valuable than offline-acquired donors in terms of total revenue generated.

If your organization is like most others, you may face a familiar obstacle to maximizing the benefits of digital fundraising: driving engagement with your online fundraisers. This guide offers a checklist of digital marketing tips to help increase engagement with your online fundraisers.

1. Segment your audience to personalize communications.

Segmentation involves grouping supporters based on shared traits and interests. Once you’ve segmented your supporters, you can create personas based on each segment. A persona represents one of your core audiences and includes details about each individual’s motivations for getting involved, past involvement with your organization, and other specific information and traits.

For example, you might group supporters based on their giving amount and create personas for small, mid-level, and major donors. You could also segment supporters based on generation and develop personas for younger, middle-aged, and older donors.

But how exactly does the segmentation process work? Follow these steps to group supporters accurately and effectively:

• Use predictive analytics to group donors based on shared characteristics. Predictive analytics solutions can help you develop supporter segments and automatically assign new audience members to the right segment. These solutions consider each supporter’s past interactions, motivations, and interests to assign them to the right groups. BWF’s guide to predictive AI recommends developing between three to five primary personas to address each of your core audiences.
• Research each segment to understand their preferences. What type of digital engagement opportunities interest your core audiences? What social media platforms are they drawn to? How often do they engage with your emails? Use your marketing platforms and CRM to better understand how each segment interacts with your current engagement efforts.
• Create tailored engagement strategies for each segment. Design specific outreach strategies for your core audiences. For example, you might determine that email is the best way to reach older audiences, while younger supporters respond best to social media engagement. The more you can personalize your donor outreach efforts, the more likely supporters will engage with your fundraisers.

Using segmentation and personas, you can create personalized content for core groups rather than individuals. As a result, your team can save time while still delivering the individualized experience today’s donors expect.

2. Focus on genuine storytelling.

Sharing facts and figures about your organization’s effectiveness at reaching its mission can be helpful, but they’re most effective when contextualized as part of a larger story. Storytelling brings your fundraising efforts to life and can be much more memorable for your audience than data alone.

Use these strategies to improve your storytelling efforts:

• Interview beneficiaries and other stakeholders. For example, let’s say you’re fundraising for your university’s current capital campaign. It’s essential to feature authentic stories from current students who your fundraising efforts will impact. With that in mind, you may interview biomedical students who can conduct more complex research with the help of a new facility your capital campaign will fund.
• Include photos. The human brain is drawn to photos and can quickly process visual imagery. Photos showing people’s faces are particularly engaging—one study found that pictures with faces are 38% more likely to receive likes and 32% more likely to receive comments on Instagram. Incorporate authentic photos (not stock images) into your digital marketing materials to capture your audience’s attention.
• Adapt your stories to different platforms. Tailor your stories to each marketing platform to drive the highest engagement. For example, social media users on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) prefer shorter posts of around 100 characters maximum. If you want to tell longer stories, you could link to more comprehensive blog posts on your website.

75% of donors who give regularly seek information about the nonprofit’s impact. Compelling stories provide this context, illustrating the extent of your organization’s positive impact and how you’re changing the lives of real people in your community.

3. Use video to drive engagement.

Video is a valuable tool for your organization because it can significantly boost your engagement efforts. According to a Wyzowl survey, 87% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads, and 89% of consumers want to see more videos from brands in 2024.

If you’re interested in adding video to your engagement strategy, it’s important to do it the right way. To increase engagement and drive donations, your videos should:

• Be professional quality. The Wyzowl survey found that 87% of consumers say video quality impacts their trust in a brand. Therefore, it’s worth it to invest in high-quality video recording equipment, like a camera, microphone, and lighting, or work with a professional video firm to produce your videos.
• Focus on specific individuals. Incorporating interviews with specific individuals impacted by your fundraising efforts will strengthen the emotional impact of your videos.
• End with a call to action. Your videos should not only inspire viewers—they should provide an immediate way for supporters to take action and give to your fundraising campaign. Provide a link for supporters to visit your online donation page within the video itself, the caption, and any social media posts that include the video.

To reach a wider audience, share your videos on multiple platforms, including social media, email, and your website.

4. Tailor social media campaigns to donors’ preferences.

Social media is an essential engagement platform for your fundraising campaigns because of the sheer number of people who use it. As of July 2024, there were 5.17 billion social media users worldwide (63.7% of the global population).

Plus, social media can be highly effective for inspiring generosity. Studies show that 55% of people who engage with nonprofits on social media end up taking some sort of action, and 59% of those people donate money.

Just like your other outreach efforts, it helps to tailor your social media efforts to your supporters’ preferences. Reference your primary personas to understand each group’s preferences, such as their:

• Preferred social media channels, whether Facebook, Instagram, X, or TikTok.
• Favorite type of post, whether videos, photos, text only, or a combination of media types.
• Favorite time of day to use social media, whether the morning, mid-day, or evening.

With this information, you can send the right messages at the right time, using the right platform.

In addition, you can also use social media to personally engage with supporters. Tag supporters in your posts, asking them to share the link to your digital fundraiser. Use direct messages to personally thank supporters for giving or sharing your fundraising information. Supporters will respond positively to efforts to engage with them as individuals.

The best part about leveraging social media for digital fundraising is that you can also automate much of the process. You can schedule posts to be published at the right time and use social listening tools to track references to your organization. This can help you stay on supporters’ radars and make the most of conversations about your brand.

As you can see, boosting digital fundraising engagement requires meeting donors where they are and leveraging personalized outreach efforts to connect with them on a deeper level.

Create an outreach cadence ahead of your next digital fundraising campaign to ensure you’re reaching out to donors regularly and gathering support. In addition, track metrics such as social media engagement rates, email open rates, and donation page conversion rates to see what’s going well and identify opportunities for improvement.