Year-end fundraising is the most wonderful time of the year – and the busiest. If you’re feeling the pressure of year-end and wondering how you can craft the most effective year-end campaign to reach your donors, pay close attention to these 3 key metrics and why they matter.
1. Only 13% of year-end emails were sent on December 31st.
Last year, 37% of all online year-end revenue came in during the last week of the year. 15.5% of that was on December 31st.
So try shifting some more focus on that last week, but don’t forget to communicate through the year.
2. 70% of all emails sent during year-end were solicitations.
A clear ask for donations during year-end is crucial, but you can’t forget to cultivate your donors.
By sending more frequent cultivation throughout year-end, you can see better results.
One organization sent a weekly cultivation email for 6 months in addition to their regular appeals and saw a 41% increase in online revenue.
3. Only 13.8% of year-end emails were sent from a real person.
Sending your marketing emails from your own address rather than a “no-reply” address sounds quite stressful. But people give to people, not machines. The more that you personalize your email “envelope” and make it look more human, the more effective it will be.
In fact, one organization last year saw a 28% increase in email opens by sending it from a real person.
Some year-end fundraising resources to dive deeper into the metrics and strategies:
Want to see the full list of spooky metrics and year-end fundraising tactics? These metrics were pulled from NextAfter’s annual Cut Through the Clutter eBook. We collect data from real organizations during each year-end fundraising season, analyze it, and put together insights so that you can optimize your year-end campaigns. https://www.nextafter.com/cut-through-the-clutter/
And right now you can access the Year-End Fundraising for Online Fundraisers certification course for free. In the 4-session year-end fundraising course, you’ll discover new ideas to craft a successful year-end fundraising campaign for your organization based on years of research and thousands of fundraising experiments. https://www.nextafter.com/year-end-fundraising-for-online-fundraisers-course/
You can find an entire collection of year-end fundraising resources (blog posts, eBooks, training, etc.) here: https://www.nextafter.com/year-end-fundraising-resources/
