161. SPN: Lessons from Heineken

Plus, practical ways to use AI for Donor Engagement; a facilitator of social, shared experiences; and, plenty of jobs

Jul 13, 2025

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. You’ve joined a community of over 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

In this week’s SPN:

The spirit of social enablement
Lessons from Heineken; a facilitator of social, shared experiences
Practical ways to use AI for donor engagement
And, plenty of Jobs & Opps!

Greater Good Charities used Fundraise Up’s Upgrade Links to ask monthly donors to increase their gifts - and 54.8% said yes.
The result?
A 47% boost in average gift size, just by sending a link.
Upgrade Links make it frictionless for donors to donate more money to your Org - embedded in receipts, impact updates, or campaigns. No forms, no barriers, just more digital revenue.
🎯 Higher donor lifetime value
📈 Instant ROI
💡 Easy to activate
Game-changer? It is for me.
👉 You’ll raise more money with Fundraise Up!

Localization Inspiration

The creative energy and output of the agencies who produce the Heineken ads is wild.

What to do if you’re a football fan in South Korea watching European teams compete in the Champions League and kick-off is 4am local time and all the bars in Seoul have closed..?

If you’re Heineken you arrange for fans to Pour and Pay for their beers by opening Trust Bars.

Details

At each Trust Bar, fans used Heineken’s new self-payment terminals, with seamless order-and-pay functionality. Strong Fundraise Up vibes ;)
Security and verification technologies checked all the compliance with local drinking age rules and regs.
Heineken launched the campaign with a YouTube film and said that 30,000 people signed up as a result (and that they’re now planning on launching in other “trusting nations” including Singapore and Japan).

Takeaway 1: Tap into local values

Heineken’s a brand that bakes localization into its approach, in this case based on values that are a central part of Korean culture.

First, the country has a reputation for high levels of interpersonal trust and collective responsibility, which underpinned Heineken’s faith in fans to pay for their beer and snacks.

Secondly, Koreans are accustomed to a self-service culture in their everyday lives, frequently using smartphones to pay bills or shop from self-service kiosks.

In 2024, interestingly just 16% of transactions in South Korea were made with cash, making it one of the leading cashless countries in the world (Bank of Korea data from March 2025).

Take away 2: Be the social experience enabler

Heineken’s investment in all-night experiences solved a very specific local problem in that a major part of Heineken’s sponsorship budget supports the Champions League but it’s difficult to activate in Korea due to the time difference.

The Trust Bars campaign not only solved the issue, it managed to emphasize Heineken’s values as a facilitator of social, shared experiences.

Fun fact - Heineken’s focus on building on this spirit of social enablement follows their LaundroMatch campaign in 2024 and its Starring Bars global initiative that launched in April 2025 to support struggling pubs by turning them into film sets for its ads, providing financial support and mass exposure.

And not only did they help bars financially but they created a unique social experience by allowing people to engage with their local pubs in a new way, as they became part of the brand's storytelling.

Experience and storytelling - two of my favorite things - intertwined. Good inspo for the Donor Experience Summit this October too!

Practical Takeaways

Localization isn’t just about language - it’s about context. Can you align your donor experiences with local habits, cultural values, and digital behavior? Or go further: localize based on donor segments. They expect different experiences entirely.
Design for trust at every stage. What does that look like in your fundraising? Maybe it's giving donors more control over where their money goes, offering transparent impact reporting, or allowing pause/resume options in monthly giving. Trust can look and feel different at every step of the donor journey.
Experiences > campaigns. Don’t just ask for gifts but design meaningful moments that reflect where each donor is in their relationship with you. A welcome experience for a new donor. A co-creation opportunity for a mid-level one. A behind-the-scenes invite for a major donor. Think like a hospitality brand: serve, don’t just solicit.
Make your donor experience the story. Heineken’s activations were the brand story. Can your donor journey do the same? When you embed storytelling into the way people give, upgrade, advocate, and share - you're not just raising money, you're building brand momentum.
Bonus: this is one of favorite ads of all time, also Heineken →

Weekly Reads 📚

Against “Brain Damage” (Ethan Mollick)

CEOs as Ad Stars - The Risks and Rewards of Putting Corporate Leaders In Campaigns (AdAge)

Cloudflare Launches A Marketplace That Lets Websites Charge AI Bots for Scraping (Techcrunch)

ChatGPT Referrals to News Sites Are Growing, But Not Enough to Offset Search Declines (Techcrunch)

Inside India’s Scramble for AI Independence (MIT Tech Review)

Amazon Prime Video Floods TV Ad Market, Stealing Dollars from FAST Channels (The Information)

Recall: Building the Intelligence Layer for Multi-Agent AI (USV)

Gen Z Wants Real Ownership - Brands Should Give It To Them (AdAge)

TikTok Pushes Deeper Into AI-Powered Ads Amid Uncertainty Over US Ban (Digiday)

Google to Propose Price-Comparison Box in Search to Appease EU (Bloomberg)

Practical Ways to Use AI for Donor Engagement

AI is not the “future”. It’s already here, it’s practical, and it’s here to stay no matter what. For-profit companies have already fully embraced it, revolutionizing customer engagement and increasing their teams’ productivity.

Netflix has used AI-powered recommendations for years. In fact 75% of their viewer activity is driven by suggestions. Starbucks leverages predictive analytics to personalize offers and upsell, increasing incremental sales per customer and the value people store in its loyalty program. Amazon deploys AI chatbots for real-time customer support, driving higher conversion rates (and lower returns!). L’Oreal is using AI to provide personalized skincare products for people based on their selfies. Stitch Fix uses a similar tool to suggest outfits tailored uniquely to each user’s body type.

Most of them built these tools in-house, on the back of hundreds of software engineers that Orgs don’t have the budget for. However, just as with SaaS several years ago, many of the same use cases are now available as off-the-shelf products that can be used with virtually no in-house team, achieving similar results.

Org’s can - and must - learn and use these tools to raise more funds from the same consumers who are already used to AI experiences everywhere else.

Here are 8 tools your Org can start leveraging right now, all with positive ROI:

AI-Powered Chatbots for Donor Support. Chatfuel integrates seamlessly with Meta Messenger and WhatsApp – deploy the tool, train it with your website’s FAQ section and last year’s worth of donor support email history, and your Org will have 10x’ed the size of its donor communications team. Don’t deploy it to replace the existing team – instead, use it to communicate with smaller, Mass donors, who usually don’t get to talk to the donor relations team reserved for Mid-level donors plus.

Predictive Analytics for Major Gift Prospecting. Aristotle is a standalone tool that offers predictive modeling and wealth screening, integrating with major nonprofit CRMs. Salesforce has a similar built-in functionality, but not (yet!) specific for Org’s. Use it to prioritize the top 10% probability donors in your current file and deploy three times the budget in campaigns targeting them across your digital channels, excluding the bottom 20% to save the same amount.

Personalized Donor Stewardship. Gratavid creates automated, customized video messages – thousands of them – in real time. Deploy it as a creative asset in your Email campaigns to celebrate donor milestones beyond a regular “thank you – now donate more!” email. My favorite use is creating a “loyalty-like” cadence, celebrating amount- ($500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000) and time-based (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years) milestones of monthly donors.

VEOs, Virtual Engagement Officers. Conversica’s “Revenue Digital Assistant” doubles as a great VEO, having already been tested by numerous universities, and is starting to gain traction in the nonprofit space. There are several charity-specific VEO tools, such as Version2.ai, but Conversica has been in the AI Agents space for much longer. Their tool, while slightly less specific, is superior.

Social Listening. Social Listening – and the most popular tool, Brandwatch – is not new, and it wasn’t born as an AI-first tool. However, AI has significantly enriched Brandwatch’s functionality over the last few years, particularly with the addition of image recognition and NLP. This natural language processing functionality has been strengthened considerably in recent generations of LLMs, or Large Language Models. I now use Brandwatch for:
a) Monitoring of Paid Search keywords that represent top-25% of revenue (excluding Brand keywords). Brandwatch automatically tracks when these topics pick up, where they pick up (geographically and audiences), and includes when they pick up via memes and images, and
b) Sentiment Analysis – thanks to improved NLP, Brandwatch is now a great tool for analyzing the audience’s behavior before developing creative content for them. It does a great job of highlighting key barriers to donation and words that resonate – or, conversely, trigger – the audience I am targeting.

Real-time website personalization. The most exciting tool is Dynamic Yield. It makes what I had long dreamed of possible and turns a static website – or a clunky A/B test via Optimizely – into a living, breathing organism. Not many Org’s I know use it yet; most use cases seem to be in Retail and Travel, which is, however, more a function of risk aversion vs the tool’s capabilities.
DY integrates directly with most content CMS systems for native personalization and with most Web Analytics platforms for seamless export of statistics. I’ve been researching it over the last couple of months. For the demo and first test, I recommend limiting the use to your current monthly donors and using DY to turn the website into a real-time advancement ad.

Upgrading sporadic donors to regular monthlies. I’ve seen Gratavid, Aristotle, SalesForce, and other tools like that work well for identifying Monthly donors to be upgraded to Mid, or Mid-Levels to be upgraded to Major. They’re great for plugging in external data and analyzing donors’ “capacity” but tend to fall short in analyzing the sporadic, irregular donor behavior of somebody who donates 2-3 times a year at random times, with random amounts.
Optimove’s model appears to be superior for this use case. It can be deployed both as a full-stack CDP (I don’t recommend it, as it becomes expensive very quickly) or as a plug-in to your CRM and Web Analytics platforms, creating segments of most- and least-likely-to-upgrade donors.

Content Marketing efficiency. Among all the platforms available to help us become better writers, I’ve consistently found Jasper.ai to produce the most consistent quality for the price.
Of all the tools in this article, it’s also the cheapest to deploy –buy 2-3 individual licenses for your content team at $39 apiece, track conversion rate increase in a head-to-head test against your regular email process, and enjoy 10+:1 ROI.

OK, that’s all for today.

I hope you’ve found one nugget today that you can put into play next week.

If you enjoyed this SPN, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience.

Now onto the fun stuff!

Jobs & Opps 🛠️

International Rescue Committee: Manager, Mid-level Giving

UJA-Federation: Director, Digital Content Strategist ($150,000 - $165,000)

Nat Geo: Director, Membership ($128,200 - $135,000)

British Asian Trust: Executive Director, Fundraising and Communications (£120,000)

ALSAC St Jude: VP, Insights

American Red Cross: Director, Program Strategy and Partnerships ($120,000 - $130,000)

→ Many more job opportunities listed on SPN’s sister site: Pledgr

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SPN. 160: My swipe file -> landing pages, email flow, campaign inspo, ad creative and copywriting

Plus, is reach still king for branding?

Some Personal News

Jul 06, 2025

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers and a happy long weekend to those in the US. You’ve joined a community of over 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

In this week’s SPN:

A framework for modern creative thinking
Is reach still king for branding?
My swipe file: landing pages, email flow, campaign inspo, ad creative and copywriting
And, plenty of Jobs & Opps!

More Donations, Fewer Barriers
When International Justice Mission UK upgraded to Fundraise Up, they modernized their donation experience AND unlocked real results:
76% increase in conversion rate
2x more monthly recurring donors
50% increase in gift size
These are massive numbers!
Here’s how: Fundraise Up’s AI-optimized checkout, its approach to testing, and the intuitive UX made giving simple → on any device, for any donor.
✨ “We’ve seen improvements in every metric that matters.” - IJM UK
Are you ready to deliver more digital fundraising revenue for your Org?
👉 Go explore the Fundraise Up platform.

Chart of the Week

McKinsey: Recently announced ODA reductions are creating a generational shift and a rethink around the future of foreign aid

What this chart screams to me is that mobilizing - at the very least exploring - new funding routes, prioritizing investments (perhaps of new kinds) and redesigning the global development system couldn’t be more critical work today, in order to be using available resources to far greater effect.

Let’s get to work!

Creative

An SPN reader shared a good framework for modern creative thinking with me and I thought you’d enjoy it too.

1. BIG ORGANIZING IDEA

In a “lots of littles” world, remember everything needs to ladder to something bigger. “Greater than the sum of its parts”.

2. DISTINCTIVE ASSETS

Early and often. Branding in creator content is not the enemy it’s often made out to be.

3. DEFINED ROLE IN THE FUNNEL

Don’t treat creators as a strategy. Treat them as a tactic to support specific objectives.

The Drum published a decent take on creativity from a System1 exec this week:

This doesn’t mean digital is shit and doesn’t build brand, it means some metrics some marketers rely on don’t work.

In fact, given that a lot of digital media is skippable and has rather affordable reach, the creative dividend here is massive. If you can use creativity to game this system, to work out ways to get more attention and leave a strong impression quickly, you will win where other brands fail.

I’ve been banging on about the power of creative since SPN #1 and it’s always a little depressing when you ask a Brand team at an Org who does the creative and you get the standard answers - freelancers, a team in Lithuania who do them overnight, the intern, the agency sent us cutdowns of the video, the media owner is doing them for free etc etc.

It’s clear creative advertising has to be a core competence or delivered through a strong partnership with experts.

I got into a debate around whether reach is still king for branding. What do you think? Here’s one take:

I think the answer is: it depends. Two extremes: yogurt and luxury timepieces. If you’re selling Chobani, consumers are in market literally every week. And there is great switch-ability between a broad set of alternative brands, flavors and formats. Broad reach, always on low frequency makes sense.

If you’re Breitling, your customer has to be able to afford the product, and is likely in market once in ten years around key life stage events. It’s luxury/fashion, with a very specific psychological profile. Broad reach makes no sense. Context/adjacency/association drives your timing and cadence.

Practically what does this mean for a nonprofit Operator?

Brand building is critical.
And it can and should look different depending on audience, market, interesting moments.
Match your media strategy to donor decision cycles.
Do you rely on impulse and emotional immediacy? Or are you guiding long-term consideration and high-value giving? Is it February or November?
Segment by giving behavior and life stage.
Build trust and relevance thoughtfully. I’ve seen a recurring $25 donor turn into a $1M bequest many times.
Bonus thought: Diversify
It’s easy to default to Facebook Ads or DRTV because they scale reach. But that’s not always where your most valuable donor decisions are made.

Bottom line

If reach is a strategy then relevance is a condition. But not all relevance is the same.

And the Q3 question we should be wrestling with isn’t “Is relevance important?” It’s what kind of relevance are we building and how does the media plan support it?

If reach is “who sees you,” then relevance is “why they care.” And depending on your donor, the path to engagement looks very different.

Weekly Reads 📚

What I learned after handing marketing to a gen Zer (Fast Company)

At 20 Years Old, Reddit Is Defending It’s Data and Fighting AI with AI (CNBC)

Did AI Companies Win a Fight With Authors? Technically (The Verge)

In Pursuit of Godlike Technology, Mark Zuckerberg Amps Up the AI Race (NYT)

Agentic Commerce for All (AdExchanger)

Cannes Lion Festival In Retrospective From An Industry Novice (AdExchanger)

What I Learned Trying Seven Coding Agents (Understanding AI)

Context Engineering vs. Prompt Engineering (Simon Willison)

As Job Losses Loom, Anthropic Launches Program To Track AI’s Economic Fallout (TechCrunch)

Cannes Lions Grand Prix Case Study Controversies and Withdrawals-Everything You Need to Know (AdAge)

Back Pocket Reference Library

Let me take you down a rabbit hole of inspiration!

Anytime there’s a long weekend, I spend a little extra time consuming print media and trying to get inspired by new ideas, etc., which gave me the thought to share some links that I regularly dip into during any given week.

Most of my “context” is derived from conversations with nonprofit operators, brand owners, other marketers, or my peers; but it’s these links that keep me on my toes and inspired to push for “more”. Whatever more is.

Landing Page Examples

Very few things gets me more excited than finding landing pages I can take inspiration from. I’ve made thousands of pages and seen tens of thousands, so finding inspiration is hard. It’s not always the prettiest landing pages that give me a good idea; sometimes it’s an old-school, direct-response-looking landing page driving from TV traffic.

Generally, when scanning pages, I’m looking for things that make me stop and want to learn more, or allow me to process information in a more organized or efficient way. The more efficiently you can make knowledge transfer with a landing page, the higher it will convert.

TV and TikTok landing pages tend to be the most direct-response-focused, but that’s where I like to find inspiration, knowing I can likely design it better with my team. If you watch any late-night cable TV, scan every QR code that pops up on a TV ad to see where they’re driving to, what UTMs they use, what the offer looks like, etc. I call these phone numbers too sometimes, just see how those automated systems work to process orders or how they approach you running through a telephonic version of a landing page.

When I can’t find new pages or examples right away, here are a few resources I like to use for landing page and website inspiration:

Loveable - if you’re starting to play around with AI and how AI can build better landing pages with/for you, start here.

Unbounce - I come here often.

Fermat’s Landing Page Guide - I’ve sought plenty of inspo from this guide over the years

The Lander Library (ads library for landing pages)

Lapa eCommerce LP Collection

Awwwards - This site is just UI inspo, not UX inspo; aka, I don’t believe most of these sites are conversion-friendly.

Page Flows - Great UX inspo

Landbook - Website specific

As soon as I find something within a landing page that I connect with or that peaks my interest, I take a screenshot, add notes, and drop it into a group chat. Most landing page URLs don’t last forever (which is why I linked more libraries above); save them!

Email Flow & Campaign Inspiration

You wouldn’t run the same ad for 18 months, right?

So why are your email flows still stuck in 2022?

A few simple optimizations could unlock serious fundraising dollars that you’re currently missing out on. When I first start scaling retention programs for Org’s I audit everything automated or triggered.

Is it scheduled and set up to fire properly?
Does it have links that contain automatically applied Matches?
Does the pop-up fire on-site when you have traffic coming from email?
Are the subject lines truly optimized?
Could there be a way to swap a section of content to increase revenue or click-through rate (CTR)?

Here are a few websites I like to use to find what other brands are doing:

Really Good Emails - This is Facebook ads library for email.

Good Email Copy - Exactly what it sounds like!

Campaigns make a lot of money, but you’d be surprised how much more revenue your flows can be making you just by optimizing them slightly.

Copywriting Inspo

Good copy will make someone fall in love with your Org, not just want to donate to fuel your mission. My favorite copy is when Apple launches new products. I still remember when the MacBook Air first launched, the copy was, “Light. Years ahead.”

Apple consistently uses this style of headline writing to show multiple benefits with easy-to-understand and straightforward copy. They take 5th-grade-level writing and turn it into Shakespeare - it’s my favorite style of writing because it personifies the product with the largest TAM (due to the simplicity of the wording).

Here are some good places I like to get copy inspo from:

Swiped

Copywriting SwipeFile

Copyhackers

Ad Creative Inspiration

Candidly, I try my best to keep going to the websites of brands that I respect from a performance marketing standpoint and then wait to see what I get targeted with (either from them or their competitors).

Typically, when I can’t get served something, I’ll just go check out the ad libraries:

Facebook Ads Library

TikTok Ads Library

Google Ads Library

Another thing with ad creative is that I like to see how media companies and affiliates are marketing the same brands differently. They’re usually focused on driving conversion, and they tend to have a built-in audience, so their content feels more native.

A good example of this is looking at what TikTok Shop affiliates are doing and how they’re advertising certain products, or even seeing the Ads Library of MySubscriptionAddiction.

Here are some more resources for where I get inspiration for ads:

Dara Denney’s Ad Swipe File

The Ad Creative Bank

iSpotTV Ad Library

Sarah Levinger’s Ad Swipe File

I said this above but just to underline - the secret to finding the best ads is to make an DM group with 5-10 other marketers or teammates, and share the stuff you see. It’s also great gut check on what lands. Again, take screen recordings or screenshots and save them for later.

Thanks for making it to the end here.

I hope today’s SPN brought you a couple of golden nuggets that help you make an incremental six-figures in digital revenue. You’d be surprised. One improvement to post-donation email flows, adding a listicle module to your landing page, or changing how you approach the hooks to your organic content, can sometimes be the one change to make things click.

OK, that’s all for today.

If you enjoyed this SPN, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience.

Now onto the fun stuff!

Jobs & Opps 🛠️

UK Government: Head of Impact Investing and Philanthropy (£70,845 - £78,192)

Climate Imperative Foundation: Chief Communications Officer ($265,000 - $275,000)

Wells Fargo: Head of Housing Access and Affordability Philanthropy ($173,000 - $359,000)

American Red Cross: Director, Program Strategy and Partnerships ($120,000 - $130,000)

Save the Children (USA): Managing Director, Marketing Performance, Technology, & Analytics ($131,750 – $147,250)

UNICEF USA: VP, Donor Marketing & Journeys ($184,000 - $230,000)

ALSAC (American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities): Director – Direct Mail Strategy

→ Check out the many job opportunities listed on SPN’s sister site: Pledgr

SPN 159. Q4 -> The Case for Starting Now

Plus, sample email flow for donation intent re-engagement; and, brand building is soo back

Some Personal News

Jun 29, 2025

In this week’s SPN:

Why Q4 begins now
High-intent supporter contacts you can activate at year-end
Sample email flow for donation intent re-engagement
And, plenty of Jobs & Opps!

Donor expectations are rising and so are your CFOs compliance standards. With Fundraise Up, you can exceed both.
Fundraise Up is built for global fundraising, with airtight compliance across GDPR, PIPEDA, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and morrrrre. From secure data collection to automated donor consent, Fundraise Up gives me the tools to meet regulations in every region - without slowing anyone down.
Join me and the world’s most trusted nonprofits who are raising more while staying compliant.
▶️ See why fundraising teams choose Fundraise Up for compliance that scales with impact.
👉 Talk to Fundraise Up!

Brand

Some of the most interesting thinking from Cannes centered on how brands can adapt to the new world, as well as what the digital world can learn from brand building.

I enjoyed a WARC podcast from Cannes this week “Brand building in a complex media landscape”. It dug into the details and the McDonald’s convo around distinctive brand assets, in their case the Golden Arches, was enlightening.

A CreativeX analysis published last week of 100,000 creator ads across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (which ran between 2024 and 2025 and represented 800 brands) supported what SPN has long suggested - that the rules of marketing effectiveness need to apply more tightly:

To their detriment:

53% of creator ads don’t have a brand mention in the first three seconds

Only 14% of creator ads are watched past the first three seconds

45% of media spend on creator ads on Meta were, according to the company’s definition, “waste” – which meant that they were both unbranded and not watched past the first three seconds

I’ve sat through many a conversation on the cutting room floor discussing whether showing too much branding or showing the Org too early will turn off future donors. Well, I saw this fantastic Toblerone ad by LePub → and vote earlier is best.

- Distinctive brand asset in the first second (use of the Toblerone red)
- Another distinctive brand asset in 2 seconds (Toblerone “M”)
- Product in the first 3 seconds
- I counted 17 uses of distinctive brand assets (Font, Red, Product, Logo)

= marvelous!

Also reminds me of research UNICEF did with Meta that found integrating brand/programs into the story with human/program interaction drove 44% higher fundraising impact.

The debate moves on with a seminal research study. Working with TikTok, System1 published a thorough report full of gems like these:

In skippable media, creativity has become more important. This research clearly shows how short-form ads can stop the scroll and make viewers feel something to create lasting effects for modern brands. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for creative effectiveness. What works depends on who you are and how you show up. This paper reflects that nuance, unpacking how brands of various sizes can gain an edge, along with the pitfalls and powerful potential of creator-led ads.

In short-form skippable media there’s a brutal reality. To build more branded memories with as many people as possible, integrating brand assets within the first few seconds of an ad remains global creative best practice.

But does that early branding come at a cost to attention? Contrary to popular belief, early branding on digital ads doesn’t automatically lead to declines in attention. (Donors) are savvier than ever and expect advertising to include branding as long as it feels natural vs forced.

It’s over 50 pages so merits proper attention. Time to book that London-Paris Eurostar for 2 hours of peace and quiet, and System 1 thinking.

Weekly Reads 📚

Vibe Marketing: How I Built A Fully Automated Marketing Machine (Garrett Rysko)

Zuckerberg’s macho makeover (FT)

McKinsey just released their 2025 State of the Consumer Report (McKinsey)

Software is Changing Again… If you have 39 minutes, this is a great video to watch. Enter Software 3.0.

The Real Message Andy Jassy Is Sending to Employees on AI (WSJ)

Performance Max vs. Search Campaigns: New Data Reveals Substantial Search Term Overlap (Search Engine Land)

10 AI Tools That Transformed My Workflow in 2025 (Charles Ross)

The Reebok x MANORS Collaboration Lights Tradition on Fire (Hypebeast)

How to Find A Unicorn Idea By Studying AI System Prompts (Techcrunch)

What Does PDK Stand For and How Does It Work? (Jalopnik)

The 97% You’re Probably Ignoring - and Why It’s Costing You

As we approach EOY strat planning - I know, I’m early, but now’s the time - most Org’s focus on optimizing their conversion rate for an immediate gift.

Yet 97%+ of traffic doesn’t convert.

Few Org’s I speak to have a plan for those would-be donors. No capture strategy. No re-engagement flow.

If we do simple math: spend $200K on a year-end paid campaign, drive 50,000 visits, at a 2% conversion rate, you’ll get 1,000 donations. But what about the other 49,000 people who visited and left?

Most Org websites aren’t built to capture or follow up with them. That’s hundreds of thousands of potential future dollars left on the table.

The List is the Lift

Capturing emails and phone numbers from non-donors isn’t just a marketing tactic it’s a strategic growth lever. Especially now. The best nonprofit operators I know are building “pre-donor” lists year-round, not just collecting gifts at the moment of peak intent.

They’re testing:

Personalized popups and lead captures (offering exclusive online event access, matched gift alerts)
Intelligent triggers based on behavior (visited a campaign page? clicked a story? opened a giving calculator?)
Nurture journeys that convert intent into action over time

Because once someone opts in, everything changes. Now you can bring them back. You can tell a story. You can offer relevance. You can actually build a relationship.

What Happens After the Opt-In is What Actually Drives Revenue

Here’s a sample email flow that works for donation intent re-engagement:

“Still thinking about supporting X?”
Sent 1–2 hours after the web visit. Reinforce impact, remind them of what they saw.
“See why others gave”
Use social proof. Highlight donor testimonials from similar supporters. Show them how the gift fits into a larger story.
“We saved your match”
Create urgency with a matching gift or campaign deadline.
“Only a few days left”
Scarcity works. Be honest about timelines and outcomes.
“What if it’s not the right time?”
Emphasize flexibility. Monthly giving. Pledge options. Trust-building matters here.

This sequence alone can bring back a surprising percentage of nearly-donors but only if you have their contact information in the first place.

The Case for Starting Now

→ The reason this matters in June (not October) is compounding.

Build your list now, and you’ll have 3–4 months of identified, warmed-up, high-intent supporter contacts you can activate at year-end. Even small gains in opt-in rate can snowball into major revenue impact:

2% capture = 1,000 prospects
10% capture = 5,000 prospects
Across multiple campaigns, that adds up fast

Retention Is the Second Half of the Game

Most Org’s celebrate donor acquisition and then neglect the relationship. A CXO of a very large bank shared the same dynamic with me when she worked at AOL back in the day.

→ But high-performing fundraising teams know: when a past donor revisits your site, that’s a signal.

The best flows recognize returning supporters and meet them with relevant reminders, updates, or new offers of engagement. And yes, that kind of infrastructure takes work to set up but once it’s running, it turns passive interest into real retention lift.

What I’m Seeing

The Org’s who are thriving in this environment are treating email capture and behavioral flows not as “growth hacks,” but as core infrastructure. They’re running like media companies.

They’re measuring lifetime value, not just cost per acquisition. And they’re building systems that treat every touchpoint - even a bounce - as a chance to re-engage and re-inspire.

If you want a bigger year-end, it starts by building a smarter Q3.

OK, that’s all for today.

I hope you’ve found one nugget today that you can put into play next week.

If you enjoyed this SPN, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience.

Now onto the fun stuff!

Jobs & Opps 🛠️

KIPP Foundation: Vice President, Marketing and Communications ($190,000 - $227,000)

Sesame Workshop: Sr. Manager, Brand Marketing (Publishing & Editorial)

Generosity X: Donor Experience Strategist ($70,000 - $90,000)

Children’s National Hospital: Marketing Director ($137,000 - $229,000)

National Museum of Women in the Arts: Marketing & Communications Leader

Lincoln Center: VP, Education ($190,000 - $227,000)

Goodwill SoCal: Chief Marketing Officer ($200,000 - $250,000)

ParkRun: Head of Digital & Transformation (£80,000 - £90,000)

Global Citizen: VP Content

British Asian Trust: Executive Director, Fundraising & Comms

→ Many more job opportunities listed on SPN’s sister site: Pledgr

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SPN. 158: How to Build Your Data Strategy

Plus, Cannes winner; TikTok AI tools radically changing the nature of content and influencer marketing; plenty of Jobs & Opps

Some Personal News

Jun 22, 2025

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. And apologies if you received a draft of this late last night! I’ve added some jobs since.

You’ve joined a community of over 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

In this week’s SPN:

Short “2025 guide to…” data use and collection with 5 must-have categories
New Zealand Herpes Foundation wins Cannes!
TikTok release 5 new AI tools that will radically change the nature of content and influencer marketing.
and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

Let’s jump in!

Security that inspires generosity
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Fundraise Up is built to earn that trust. The platform is engineered with enterprise-grade security, privacy-first infrastructure, and full compliance with the world’s most rigorous data protection standards, including SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS Level 1.
✔️ No PII stored on your site
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For your finance team, your IT team, and your donors, Fundraise Up is the most secure choice for your digital fundraising.
👉 Talk to Fundraise Up.

Cannes Grand Prix Winner: Glass Lion for Good

A New Zealand creative agency Motion Sickness and New Zealand Herpes Foundation landed the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the Glass Lion for Good category.

The Grand Prix was awarded for “The best place in the world to have herpes”, which also picked up Gold in the Health and Wellness Lions category too.

Click to watch: thought these quotes nailed it ^

The core campaign asset is made up of a 90-second spot, which leverages tons of dry humor and features former rugby union (star) coach Sir Graham Henry as its spokesperson. Every single person in NZ knows who he is - rugby is life there. Henry announces that New Zealand has lost its purpose… so he challenges people to make New Zealand the “best place in the world to have herpes”.

The goal of the campaign was to destigmatize herpes in New Zealand by talking more openly about the subject.

The Glass Lion for Good Grand Prix is a specialist award, meaning it’s a category that can’t be entered directly at Cannes. Work becomes eligible to be considered if it’s awarded a gold Lion, or an equivalent Lion like a Titanium Lion, and is created for a nonprofit org.

There’s a cracking quote from the jury president of the award Judy John, global chief creative officer at Edelman Global from the press conference where she just gushes about how the campaign is so “brave, outrageously creative, wildly ambitious, educational, not the usual combinations of words you will find to describe the Grand Prix for Good.”

→ Hat tip to the Foundation. That kind of risk-taking is brave AF and to pull it off - woah! The creativity is off the charts. The execution is truly flawless. It takes the notion of marketing “effectiveness” to a whole other level. Bravo 🇳🇿 👏 🇳🇿 👏 🇳🇿

Last year’s Cannes SDG winner was Renault - covered in SPN #107 last June - scroll to the headline “Proving the Value of Creativity”.

Changing the Nature of Content and Influencer Marketing

Big news from TikTok. They’re releasing 5 new AI tools that will radically change the nature of content and influencer marketing.

@tiktoknewsroom Introducing TikTok Symphony: our new Creative AI suite that blends human imagination with AI-powered efficiency to help marketers scale content development, creativity, and productivity on TikTok.

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1. Image to Video: instantly transforms static images of campaign, program shots and brand messages into legit engaging TikTok-style videos.

2. Text to Image: generates full motion videos with a single prompt, just from describing a creative concept you have in mind.

3. Virtual influencers: generate digital avatars to create donor-generated content (UGC) style content, selecting from authorized stock influencers or by customizing your own. This is massive.

4. Showcase products: get your digital avatars to showcase a product, whether it’s a piece of brand swag they try on, a bucket they hold up, or a mobile app they demo on their phone.

5. AI dubbing: translating videos into 10+ languages, allowing global assets to be localized at speed.

I’m pretty sure that out of all the features, the virtual influencer is the one that will attract the most discussion. It’s hard to overstate what a game-changer these tools are.

Worth noting that TikTok says the avatar influencer content will be clearly labelled as AI generated, to make sure it’s not confused with “real” creators. Blurred lines.

Which poses the question → is it helpful to think about digital avatars as an extension of influencer marketing? Or should we think of them more like interactive mascots, or fictional characters that star in ads?

It’ll be fascinating to see which Org’s experiment with these features first, and how you position each to your donors.

Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Johnson & Johnson: Director, Social Impact ($146k - $251,850)

Fundraise Up: VP, Customer Succes ($196,000 - $210,000)

Feed the Children: Director of U.S. Foundations, Organizations and Institutions ($110,000 - $120,000)

NYC Outward Bound Schools: VP, Marketing, Development, & Communications ($180,000 - $220,000)

Twilio: Social Impact (they have a “Sr. Director of Marketing, Social Impact” role open too but not listed. Tap Erin https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinreilly2)

National Geographic: Senior Manager, Paid Media

Crisis Text Line: VP, Philanthropic Partnerships ($170,016 - $200,000)

NextGen America: CEO ($212,000 - $220,000)

Peninsula Open Space Trust: CFO ($279,990 - $311,100)

Visit Napa Valley: Director of Communications

University of Minnesota: Chief Communications Officer ($200,000 - $245,000)

National Domestic Violence Hotline: VP Communications ($150,000)

National Museum of Women in the Arts: Marketing & Communications Leader

Goodwill SoCal: Chief Marketing Officer ($200,000 - $250,000)

Global Citizen: VP Content

British Asian Trust: Executive Director, Fundraising & Comms

→ Many more job opportunities listed on SPN’s sister site: Pledgr

Privacy-Compliant Data Strategy

The 2025 version.

→ What to collect, where to get it from, and how to use it.

The data landscape has shifted - the entire industry is moving from “deterministic” (precisely identifiable) data to “probabilistic” (estimated) data.

Google Analytics 4 was a canary in the coal mine, with a move away from “cookies” and “sessions” to “events” and “users”.

And the most recent announcement from the Google Marketing Live conference is that Google is slowly moving GA4 away from attribution – a pinnacle of deterministic measurement and a report that we all got so used to – to Marketing Mix Modeling, based on… who knows what Google will base it on! Most likely some “proprietary model”, taking into consideration even more “proprietary data”.

Google is increasing its partnerships across the industry to include more data straight into the models. Whether it will prove accurate or not is the question to be answered. But the pattern is clear.

At the recent Cannes Festival, probabilistic measurement, machine learning-driven segmentation, and Generative AI for creative were the talk of the show. All major for-profit advertisers are claiming the pivot towards privacy-preserving technologies, underscoring the role of AI as the sole enabler of euphemistic 1:1 marketing - but this time, unlike before, with no visibility into what’s happening behind the curtain.

This is becoming a new reality – more modeled data, with less insight about what that data “is”.

How can Orgs adapt, make sense of the data they have or can get access to, and use it to increase the dollars raised?

Here’s a short “2025 guide to data use and collection”, with 5 must-have categories:

1. Direct Donor Data Collection (First-Party Deterministic). The most useful dimensions are:

Email address
ZIP code (or city, if ZIP is impossible)
Donation frequency (one-time vs. recurring)
Donation amount ranges
Donation topic or mission pillar
Donation timeframe (EOY donor, emergency donor, post-paycheck donor)

Use Cases:

Enrichment: use Email and ZIP codes for enrichment with other data types below.
Google and Meta (same application): Create Customer Match audiences to retarget existing donors and build Similar Audiences for prospecting, broken down by donation dimensions to inform creative assets.
Google-specific: Use donation dimensions in paid search ads, overlaying them with RLSA targeting. Only serve Paid Search ads with language aligned with each donor’s donation topic.

2. Behavioral Website Data (First-Party Deterministic & Probabilistic). The most useful dimensions are:

Specific page views (donation form, "About Us", "Our Impact")
Donation form abandonment (yes/no, how deep in the form)
Engagement depth (number of pages viewed, video views, PDF downloads)
Number of sessions on the website
For donors, tie this data to the dimension in category #1 using the Transaction ID.

Use Cases:

Remarketing across platforms: Build lists based on users who visited the donation page but did not complete a donation. Align the creative with the depth of the donation form activity before drop-off and adjust CTA accordingly (“finish your donation”, “consider giving again”).
Prospecting: Apply increased bid modifiers to look-alikes of those with deep engagement on the website.

3. COOP Data (Second-Party Deterministic). COOP is not going anywhere anytime soon. While it’s hazardous for prospecting since COOP databases include only those already donating to at least some Orgs and inadvertently have no “true” prospects, it still has use in your Org’s fundraising tactics to improve performance amongst “core” donor audiences. The most useful dimensions from any COOP your Org is partnering with:

Affinity segments (e.g., causes previously supported, environmental vs. health causes)
- Work with the COOP provider – Data Axle, Wiland, etc. – whenever possible to get the source data instead of already heavily modeled data. Their models tend to underperform against the Google or Meta ones.
Donation amount ranges
Most recent donation time
Number of Orgs a person is donating to
Donation share of wallet out of annual HHI.

Use Cases:

Look-alike prospecting: Use COOP data for direct targeting and LAL modeling in your Org’s prospecting efforts. Be unapologetic about RoAS – COOP data comes with strings attached, and the only way to justify these strings is if you are getting at least 20% better performance on first-donation RoAS against your other, “pure” prospecting efforts.
Enrichment of your donor file: Use the COOP database to add unaltered, non-modeled attributes to your Org’s donor file. Segment your donors based on the COOP donation dimensions to better understand who your donors are and their share of wallet and differentiate by age group to spot the generational trends and predict a profile of “new” donors that aren’t in any of the COOPs yet.

4. Machine Learning-Modeled Data (First-Party Probabilistic).

Predicted donor lifetime value (LTV) from Google Analytics 4
Likelihood to churn from Salesforce (other CRMs are starting to include it, too)
Predicted upgrade potential (more and more CRM tools start including it, also disguised as “likelihood of next purchase”)
All these dimensions can also be modeled by your in-house data team or an agency based on the 3 data types from above.

Use Cases:

Remarketing: Use the Churn and Upgrade dimensions to create targeted campaigns to your existing donors. Experiment with tiers of likelihood - e.g., target campaigns to “90%” vs. “85%” churn probability audiences, cross-excluding them from one another.
Prospecting: Apply bid increases based on the predicted lifetime value. Create separate CPA targets by pLTV buckets, always keeping the Target CPA at 30% of the pLTV value.

5. Contextual Targeting and Cohort-Based Data (Probabilistic)

Content categories consumed
Broad audience cohorts based on Affinity and In-Market segments

Use Cases:

Across all tools, use these categories with ZIP Code-level targeting. This way, your campaigns can later be merged with the CRM data to act as free enrichment data, but not at the individual level.

OK, that’s all for today.

I hope you’ve found one nugget today that you can put into play next week.

If you enjoyed this SPN, please consider sharing with your network. Thank you to those that do.

If a friend sent this to you, get the next edition of SPN by signing up below.

And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for donor experience.

Now onto the fun stuff!

Weekly Reads 📚

A.I. Might Take Your Job. Here Are 22 New Ones It Could Give You (NY Times)

The CMOs comeback - good McKinsey thinking (McKinsey)

Why YouTube is trying to replace your favorite TV shows (BI)

The FT interviewed Samsung’s European marketing chief Benjamin Braun on emotional storytelling in the age of AI and got into their Olympic product placement: “I can’t just give out 17,000 phones. It needs to return value.” (FT)

The AI Monetization Dilemma: Beyond Keywords and Clicks (ExchangeWire.com)

Data in the age of AI: A conversation with Mark Birkhead of JPMorganChase (McKinsey)

How the culture war is remaking advertising (FT)

The Effectiveness Equation (Google)

How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class (The Atlantic)

Britain says Google's online-ad commitments no longer needed (Reuters)

Why brand desirability is key to longevity (FT)

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SPN: 157. How to Generate $100k Incremental Fundraising Revenue This Week

40 ways to raise more, tell better stories, and move donors to act.

Some Personal News

Jun 15, 2025

A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers.

You’ve joined a community of over 3k marketing and fund raising operators at mission-driven Org’s. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.

In this week’s SPN:

Consumption of new consumer media
40 tactical improvements for good copy
Donor psychology and persuasion
and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week

Let’s jump in!

The Missing Link in Your Donation Form? Local Payments.
Donors are more likely to give - and give more - when they can use the payment methods they trust.
Fundraise Up supports local payment methods and currencies in 40+ countries, helping Org’s capture more fundraising revenue by meeting donors where they are. Whether it’s iDEAL in the Netherlands, or digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, Fundraise Up ensures your donation experience feels familiar, fast, and frictionless.
No dev work required. Just more completed checkouts and higher average gifts.
Global reach starts with local relevance.
👉 Discover how Fundraise Up helps you unlock international giving.

Chart of the Week

Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Stand Together: Fundraising Campaign Director

NetHope: Director, Strategic Partnerships and Philanthropy

Feed the Children: Chief of Staff and Sr. Vice President of Executive Operations

ALSAC/St Jude: VP, Insights

The Moth: VP, Development ($155,000 - $175,000)

Climate Lead: VP, Philanthropic Advising ($300,000 - $400,000)

HeartShare Human Services of New York: VP, Communications ($140,000 - $150,000)

Rainforest Trust: VP Philanthropy & Marketing ($180,000 - $230,000)

Center for AI Safety (CAIS, San Francisco): Director of Public Engagement ($140,000 - $170,000)

Music Center Foundation: President and CEO ($350,000)

→ Many more job opportunities listed on SPN’s sister site: Pledgr

Improving Funnel with Good Copy

Good copywriting can be the difference between raising $5M and raising $15M. And a heavy travel week means list writing. SO! There’s eight places where exceptional copywriting is essential, and I’ve tried to include five tips for each.

It’s (hopefully) easy to follow and should help you identify improvements. If you have any questions, just reply to this email.

Tactical Copy Improvement for your Funnel

40 ways to raise more, tell better stories, and move donors to act.

1. Headlines, Angles and Hooks

Where all great fund raising campaigns and emails start.

Make Supporters Lean In
Pose intriguing questions that pique interest - e.g., “What if your gift could double someone’s chance of surviving cancer?” Discussing or demonstrating a relatable problem or issue can increase CTR and also help ad platforms when you’re “broad” targeting.
Lead With Impact
Highlight the human outcome of giving, not the mechanism. “Your donation feeds a family tonight.” Keep it concise.
Odd Numbers Work Best
In content or appeal headlines - “7 reasons monthly donors make the biggest impact” - odd numbers still perform best. This is a classic BuzzFeed trick. This article is dated, but it remains helpful.
Powerful “How-To” Headlines
Useful content still wins. “How to make your year-end gift go 3x further” or “How to talk to kids about giving.”
Create Urgency
Incorporate deadlines or limited availability to encourage immediate action. Just like writing out goals, if you don’t set deadlines, it doesn’t create any sense of urgency for the reader or donor visiting your website. “Only 48 hours left to double your gift for clean water.”

2. Copy That Converts

Clarity, energy, and empathy matter more than polish.

Keep It Short
Brief, punchy sentences improve readability and maintain engagement. Don’t get too fancy… short is also easier to read. See? Exactly.
Active Over Voice
Use active voice for clarity, strength, and direct donor engagement. “Your gift saves lives” is stronger than “Lives are saved by your gift.”
Be Conversational
Talk like a human, not a grant application. Make your tone donor-first, not org-centered.
Cut the Nonprofit Jargon
Nobody outside your org knows what “programmatic services” are. Use language your donor would repeat at dinner.
Focus on Outcomes
Explicitly state the transformation: “You gave her shelter - now she has safety.”

3. Write Compelling CTAs

This can make or break a campaign.

Be Specific
Clearly state exactly what action donors should take. If the action is higher up in the funnel (like on the homepage or on an ad), consider and test not using lower-funnel CTA copy (like “Donate Now!”).
Build Urgency
Use urgent phrases like “today,” “now,” or “limited match funds.” “Give before midnight to unlock the full match.”
Try First-Person CTAs
“Use personalized language, such as “Yes, I’ll help!” or “I want to make a difference.” Test these especially on landing pages and email buttons.
Leverage Power Verbs:
I like to use as many variations as possible to keep it fresh.“Protect,” “Rescue,” “Equip,” or “Fuel” have all performed better than “Support” for me, but test with your audience.
Make CTAs Visually Obvious
Use contrasting colors, spacing, and sizing. Don’t hide your donation button.

4. Psychology and Persuasion

Tried-and-true tactics that inspire generosity.

Use Social Proof
Ensure that the social proof you display matches the consumer coming to your website. A press publication won’t work with Gen Z. A TikTok review screenshot won’t work with a Boomer, either. Share donor stories, testimonial quotes, or how many others have already given. “2,500 people have joined - will you?”
Use Loss Aversion
Highlight potential losses or missed opportunities if supporters don’t act. “Without your help, we may have to turn people away this winter.”
Anchor Your Ask
Show what $150 does first - then suggest $50. Donors see greater value.
Tell Stories
Start with an individual: “Meet Samira. One year ago, she was…” Stories convert more than stats.
Create a Sense of Belonging
“Join our Circle of Hope” or “Be one of the 100 who fund this initiative.”

5. Optimize Your Copy

Editing is your secret weapon.

Cut Ruthlessly
Trim every extra word. No sentence should live rent-free on your donation page. Fewer is better.
Use Editing Tools
Grammarly or Hemingway are useful for clarity and tone - especially if you’re repurposing boardroom-speak.
Read Aloud Test
Reading your copy aloud can identify awkward phrasing or unnatural flow. If it sounds robotic, it reads that way too. You’re writing to real people.
Optimie for Skimmers
Use bullets, bold subheads, and one idea per paragraph. Donors don’t read walls of text.
A/B Test Everything
Try 2 versions of your CTA, subject line, or story framing. Track what moves fundraising revenue or engagement.

6. Email Fundraising Copy

Your most important retention channel.

Short Subject Lines Win
Keep subject lines concise, ideally under 50 characters. Think lock screen length. Will it prompt enough interest to swipe it open? Then think about how the email looks on a desktop Gmail view or iPhone Gmail/iOS mail app - what fits in there? What catches attention and sets it apart from the thousands of other emails?
Personalize When Possible
Include personal details like recipient names or content based on their past donation. This is why it’s so valuable to collect as much zero-party data as you possibly can, through as many apps/methods, and centralize them in a single CRM. Even time-based segments like “As a 3-year supporter…” can work.
Preview Text = Free Real Estate
Treat preview text as a secondary headline to further entice readers. This is what comes up underneath the subject line, and usually gives you a sentence of copy. Use it as your second subject line - “Every dollar you give today is matched 2x.”
Send “Dinner Story” Emails
Give supporters content they want to share - a story they’ll retell to friends because it moved them.
Clear Next Steps
Every email should end with: “Here’s what you can do now.”

7. Ad Copy That Drives Action

Whether it’s Meta, Google, or YouTube - these rules hold.

Frontload the Information
Start with the most compelling outcome: “You can feed a child for a week — for less than lunch out.”
Use Specifics
Numbers and detailed outcomes build credibility and attract attention. “Over 15,000 donors made this possible last year.” Concrete details build trust.
Message Match
Make sure your ad copy and your landing page say the same thing. One promise, one story.
Refresh Weekly or Bi-Weekly
Regularly update your ad creatives to maintain audience interest. Even small budget campaigns benefit from regular creative testing. This is easier written than done, but shouldn’t the impact shouldn’t be underestimated.
Answer Questions Upfront
Anticipate and address common concerns proactively to reduce hesitation. You can get a lot of inspiration for this through your donor service DMs or Instagram DMs. If donors always ask “Is this tax-deductible?” or “Where does the money go?”, build it into the copy.

8. Landing Page Copy Needs

Where inspiration meets action.

Consistent Messaging
Ensure the landing page content and the email-capture pop-up mirror your ad copy. Don’t pitch one angle or hook with your ad, another with the pop-up, and a third with your landing page. While they all may be true, you’ll confuse the donor. If your ad promises “double your impact,” your landing page better say the same.
Lead With Benefits
Showcase the primary advantages of your programs in detail.
Strategically Place Social Proof
Match your traffic source: If you’re driving traffic from YouTube, your social proof should be more video-first, and maybe feature YouTubers. If coming from TikTok, include screenshots of TikTok comments, embed TikTok video reviews, etc.
Optimize Forms
Don’t not collect information, just do it in a better way. The best pop-ups have an opt-in to participate, then email form-fill, then SMS, and then they ask additional questions to collect first-party data.
Optimize Load Times
A 5-second load time means lost donors. Especially on mobile. Optimize your donation pages for everyone - including a supporter with a 6-year-old phone (my iPhone 13 mini) on public Wi-Fi with 2% battery life left.

Hopefully you can take this 40-check-long checklist and run through your funnels, identify areas to improve, make those improvements, and generate an additional $100k this week in revenue. It’ll make the 4 minutes you just spent so worth it - $25k a minute!