As the end-of-year season wraps up and a new year begins, the question can pop up, “where were these supporters all year?” People want to champion your cause — and not just in December. But many nonprofits get stuck in the annual cycle of waiting until those last few weeks.
Vanguard Charitable, in a recent article, states, “30% of annual giving is done in December and 10% occurs in just the last 3 days of the year.”
The holiday season is clearly a strategic moment, and it’s likely your organization will continue to receive the lion’s share of donations around that time. But you should still go out on a limb and invite supporters into a deeper relationship.
NextAfter found that, “The cost of retaining your donors can be up to 5x cheaper than acquisition. The more donors you can retain year over year, the more cost-effective your acquisition efforts become.”
So it’s definitely a good idea to help these holiday donors turn the corner and become lifelong supporters. Not only do all of us crave for our day-to-day lives to be valuable, but also your nonprofit wants to make the world a better place, and more revenue isn’t going to hurt.
There are a million ways to make a donor feel special, and all of those are still on the table when engaging with your community. But we’re going to focus on three failsafe ways you can turn holiday donors into lifelong supporters:
In 2025, effective marketing is personal. Nobody ever smiled reading a generic email (ok, unless it was really good). It makes us feel like we’re lost in the crowd.
All of us want to feel unique and heard, which is why nonprofits that engage with audiences in nuanced and personal ways are going to win big this year.
If you don’t do anything else this year, try at least to incorporate a few of these elements in your next email marketing campaign:
Also, in all of your communications with donors or supporters, make sure that you’re putting their generosity and partnership at the center of everything.
Instead of saying, “look at everything we’re doing,” tell them “look at all the cool things your generosity has accomplished!” All of us want to feel like what we’re doing matters, and when donors give to your mission, they’re doing one of the most important things they’ll ever do.
Segmenting your audience may fit under the previous heading of personalization. But it’s so important, and it can require some care, so we’re considering it its own topic.
Instead of sending one email to everyone, segmentation allows you to break up your audiences into unique groups who have shared interests. Maybe they give at similar times in similar amounts or maybe it’s a cohort of your youngest volunteers.
Either way, you’re going to want to communicate with different people differently. And segmentation allows you to get specific without needing to send every single donor or supporter an individual email.
Here are four groups that you may want to consider segmenting today:
I never made it to the collegiate level with my athletic skills, but I still learned something along the way. A lot of success in sports boils down to “follow through.” And it’s not all that different when it comes to engaging your holiday donors.
If you had (or have) a brick and mortar storefront, you likely introduce yourself to everyone who walks in. Maybe a “hey, how can I help you?” or “what brought you in today?”
In the digital world, your website is really the closest thing to a storefront. So you still want to do the work of following up with someone if they’ve gone all the way through the trouble of traveling to your site.
Retargeting ads are one of the simplest and most direct ways of following up with those interested guests. These ads only serve to people who visited your website or even a specific page on your website. So it’s clear as day that they are interested in your organization.
And one of the highest converting types of retargeting ads are those that are served to people who made it all the way to the donation page yet failed to give. These people didn’t get that far along the process by accident. They care about your mission, and they’re likely close to the finish line. A simple ad reminding them of their interest may be all it takes.
We understand how much is expected from nonprofits, especially with a small staff and budget. Which is why we want to say that all of the above are simply ideas. If you’re able to use one of them and run with it, great!
One of the biggest bottlenecks for nonprofits is their software solutions. Writing thank-you letters to every single donor may be impossible unless you have access to effective email automation tools.
And the same is likely true with your email provider; if there aren’t good ways to break up your audience members into effective and repeatable segments, it may simply cost too much time to accomplish on a regular basis.
That’s why we love partnering with nonprofits of all stripes. We want to see every nonprofit equipped with the marketing tools they need to find greater success getting their message out. Because what you’re doing really matters, we think more people need to know the full story.
If you’re looking for ways to turn the corner with your nonprofit’s marketing efforts, we hope you’ll pick up the phone (or schedule a demo here) and see if Feathr is the right fit for your organization’s needs.