Is your homepage ready for year-end giving?

Is your homepage ready for year-end giving?

More often, donors — and prospects — are receiving direct mail, yet making their contribution online. Are you opening the door to these generous folks and welcoming them in to your website from your homepage?

The prospects, especially, are not going to personalized urls or purls, they heading straight to your homepage. They want to know about your organization.

With one organization, November 2012 prospecting efforts generated approximately $35,000 in contributions through the mail. But when we matched up the year-end website gifts to the mailfile, we learned that new donors from the campaign generated an additional $31,000 online! The average gift in the mail from the prospect file was $52, but the average online gift for this group was $142. In the case of this campaign, 24% of the gifts were generated online. We also learned that prospects from specific lists were more likely to give online than others.

During other merges throughout the year, this organization generated between 7-15% of new donors online. These percentages are growing. Campaign deadlines and “respond by” dates, increase the response to online giving. So, if you are sending out a challenge by mail, make sure it’s prominent on your homepage.

Your direct mail program may not be dying; its driving donors and prospects to your website. Recognize the trend for online and even mobile giving and pay attention to your online program.