Election Day’s approach can motivate campaigns and committees to evaluate their fundraising programs, but you can (and should!) take its temperature throughout the cycle. Here are some questions you can ask yourself and your team to check on your digital fundraising:
1. What do your metrics say?
Pop into your ActBlue Dashboard and take a look at your small-dollar fundraising metrics. How close are you to your fundraising goal? What’s your average contribution size? How long are your recurring donors staying with you? Check out the “Downloads” tab in your Dashboard to see how many first-time donors have made a contribution in the past week.
2. Is your team in the loop?
Using data to assess your strategy is most helpful when you can answer why something is or isn’t working. Call on your team to talk through how a recent fundraising email or Twitter campaign performed and come up with some hypotheses. Test those theories on your contribution forms with the A/B test tool to help you pinpoint what practices are best for your program right now. Mass mailers usually offer an A/B test tool so you can also easily run tests on your emails!
3. Are you treating your email list like a community?
Your email list is made up of individual people! Ask for their feedback, offer ways to get involved other than donating, and thank them for every contribution they’ve made. Consider offering a free gift when you ask for recurring donations using the recurring incentive tool. Have a team brainstorm on what kind of emails you’d like to receive as a subscriber, and don’t be afraid to try something outside the box!
4. Do you get emails from other programs and industries?
Sign up for as many email lists as you can across political, nonprofit, and commerce spaces and pay attention to what draws your eye: What subject lines catch your attention? What designs do you want to keep looking at? What inspiration could you bring to your own email program?
5. Have you asked for advice?
Your schedule is packed, but getting another perspective is worth the 20 minutes. Schedule a call with your Outreach contact and ask which ActBlue tools could level up your strategy. Your Outreach contact is an expert on digital fundraising in your region, and is ready to assist you!
Evaluating your program regularly enables you and your team to make improvements as you go and learn more about fundraising strategies together. As our Senior State Outreach Manager Zoë Richman likes to say, digital fundraising can be like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks!
