When you measure the right numbers, you can improve nonprofit marketing. From using web metrics to help with optimizing landing pages and social media, to navigating Google Analytics and increasing ROI, this helpful guide is ideal for new and existing non-profits that want to improve nonprofit marketing performance with cost-efficient techniques and proven web metric strategies.
Key Performance Indicators
Nonprofits use success metrics referred to as key performance indicators (KPIs) to understand if their marketing efforts are working or not.
Ways to measure KPI success include through your:
- Social media presence
- Landing pages
- Track record with pledge fulfillments
- Increase in donor numbers
- Fundraising ROI
- Average gift size
So let’s explore these further…
Social Media Presence
Social media metrics are important to nonprofits, not just for tracking increases in followers, but how campaigns convert to donations.
To help with your social media metrics:
Monitor Conversions
Because you rely on donors to stay abreast of donations, use conversion tools like:
- Google Analytics to measure return on investment (ROI) and understand donor behaviors.
- Google Tag Manager to use simple tags instead of complex codes on your nonprofit website to track fundraising links to events or downloads and gather data like how many potential donors downloaded event materials or what page they were on when they clicked a site link.
- Optimizely for testing campaigns and page performance.
- Hotjar to understand donor traffic on your pages.
Monitor Engagement and Brand Sentiment
Tweets, likes, and shares are important, but they should lead to conversions. Sentiment is also important and shouldn’t be overlooked. While it’s intangible, how people perceive your organization matters.
To monitor your brand and mentions, use helpful tools like:
- Social Mention to view interactions and brand mentions, see top keywords, users, and hashtags.
- Mention for tracking your brand on social media.
- HootSuite to review mentions on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
- Twilert to monitor when you’re mentioned on Twitter.
Tip: Use alerts in the apps above to flag you when people mention your nonprofit on social media.
Optimize Landing Pages
Landing pages are important. When potential donors visit your site they want to see your mission and learn about your cause.
To improve nonprofit marketing on landing pages:
- Use free stock images (just not cheesy ones!) and backlinks to convert landing pages.
- Use bold, friendly colors and include a call to action (CTA).
- Keep paragraphs short, and use stats and quotes to break up text.
- Use content that helps convert visitors to donors.
- See sample landing page ideas here.
- Consider a website redesign.
Seeing followers increase is ideal, but conversions should be backed with a strong ROI. So let’s look at ways to monitor potential donors and increase donations.
Pledge Fulfillments
Fulfilled pledges are important metrics to track. While pledge rates vary, documenting pledge agreements can be helpful. To help with pledge fulfillment, ensure all terms are agreed upon in writing with a binding contract to avoid conflicts.
Fundraising ROI
One of the biggest metrics regards ROI with fundraising. Explore fundraising ideas and change campaigns to keep them fresh, but know that ultimately, the goal is donation output.
Donor Numbers
Monitoring donor increases should be reviewed annually. To improve giving, target donor loyalty, repeat gifts, and set up monthly giving programs to ensure there’s no lack of retention or acquisition.
Average Gift Size
Whether you use nonprofit impact reports or nonprofit outcomes after fundraisers, nonprofit impact measurement strategies can help with your mission and a vital metric is average gift size.
Average gift size confirms average donation amounts. While you might have several steady and small donations, consider wealth screening to determine donor capacity and reaching out to major contributors for annual donations. If you’re preparing an impact report or end of year report, you may use your annual report to find total donor contributions.
Wrap-Up
There are several metrics that can help to improve nonprofit marketing. By ensuring you’re keeping landing pages and content fresh, monitoring sentiment on social media, and using KPIs and evaluation practices, you’ll be on track to meet your goals. You’ll also be on track for creating a data culture in your organization — something every nonprofit should be starting to think about.
Interested in getting started with website KPIs to make it more useful and valuable? Ask about our Nonprofit Website Care Packages for WordPress and Drupal.