Dataro - turn your donor data into donor predictions

Recruiting new supporters online

Howard Lake | 27 July 2016 | Blogs

With Change.org having recently announced that they’re no longer going to be offering sponsored petitions to help charities recruit new supporters, and with all the changes over the past year with ensuring people have opted in to receiving communications, it’s an important time to think strategically about supporter recruitment.
Here are some of my favourite ways to sign up new people to your email list online.

Pop ups on your website

Have pop ups encouraging people to sign up to your email list in certain key places on your website.
Don’t overuse them, as that just annoys people, but displaying them when people go to close the browser or tab when they’ve been reading a blog post or when someone has been on the website for over a minute might be good opportunities to test if they work for your audience.
One good tool to use for this is Opt In Monster.

Fundraising via campaigning

Campaign actions such as petitions can be an easy way in to your organisation for new supporters. And Care2 of course are still offering this very successful model as a way of recruiting new supporters.
Signing a petition or other form of campaign action and giving people the option to join your email list is a great recruitment method.
But there are three key things to bear in mind to get the most out of this:

Advertisement

Why your supporters are wealthier than you think... Course by Catherine Miles. Background photo of two sides of a terraced street of houses.

Drive traffic to your campaign action

Once you’ve got your campaign action and a great welcome journey prepared, you need to get people to the page.
My two favourite methods for this are Google ads and Facebook promoted posts.

Leverage your existing supporter base

Your existing supporters can be your biggest and best resource for bringing in new supporters.
Here are some things to try:

Want to learn much more about these and many other ways to recruit supporters online?
 
 
Glyn Thomas is a digital communications consultant who has worked with NGOs and charities in the UK, Germany, Romania, the USA, Canada and Mexico. He specialises in helping charities recruit new supporters online, retain and reactivate lapsed supporters and maximise the numbers of people taking part in campaigns and donating. He has helped several UK-based charities more than quadruple their online fundraising income, and regularly delivers training on online campaigning and fundraising. 
He and Amelia Showalter (who was Director of Analytics during the Obama campaign in 2012) are running a training session in London on 8th September. There are still a few reduced rate early bird tickets available.
They will be covering a whole range of best practice tips and tactics to help you get the most out of petitions and campaign actions on your own website. They will also look at how you get traffic to them through:

 
Main image: Helping hands – Photoraidz on Shutterstock.com
 

Loading

Loading

Mastodon