117. SPN (Some Personal News)
How to test a new channel: framework + YouTube example; and Where in the donor lifecycle can social channels drive the highest returns from the get-go; nonprofit jobs
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In this week’s SPN:
Shopping trends and behavior informing Direct Response
How to test a new channel: framework
YouTube/Podcast example
Where in the donor lifecycle do social platforms stand the highest chance of driving positive returns from the get-go?
Jobs that took my fancy this week
Let’s dive in!
Social Commerce
The new 26-page Trends report from TikTok is useful - using their Speed of Culture methodology they predict What’s Next in Shopping.
The Bending Reality concept feels a little manufactured but they support it with stats and some useful case studies.
Everything I’ve learned and shared in 2 years of writing SPN is that Org’s need to understand the grammar of a medium, and there’s no substitute for spending time on a platform (more below).
TikTok seem to publish a trends report every other day but they continue to underline the shift being made by social platforms to focus on shopping.
I read them for inspiration. There’s a ton in social commerce and audience experience to inform any nonprofit’s Direct Response efforts.
Jobs & Opps 🛠️
American Kidney Fund: Director, Special Events ($100,000 - $105,000)
Solar Aid: Supporter Engagement Officer (£27,300 - £31,500)
Disney: Senior Manager Community, Corporate Citizenship
UNICEF UK: Director, Communications (12 months fixed contract)
World Food Program: Senior UX & Design System Specialist
Mind: Fundraising Manager, Products (£52,973 - £59,368)
Animal Care Centers of NYC: Director, Development ($90,000 - $100,000)
UNICEF: Chief, Private Sector Fundraising and Partnerships (P4)
NRDC: Senior Vice President of Membership & Development Operations ($300,000 to $320,000)
Doctors Without Borders USA: Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Advertising ($101,800 - $152,700)
—> Many more #nonprofitjobs can be found on Pledgr.com 🎉
New-Channels Launch Framework
September is the time to be thinking about driving more upper-funnel marketing for EOY. It’s too late in November.
So how do you launch new channels, and how can you measure them?
The Testing Process
When I think about launching a new channel, I really grapple with why I believe this channel is worth it for the Org.
Is this something I’m going to make a real effort to try out, invest dollars into contextually-native creative (aka the creative feels like it belongs in the medium), and continue to test until I crack the code?
Or am I just inclined to set this up because a Board Member went to a random dinner and someone had asked why we’re not on Telegram, and that’s why we’re going to test the channel now? If it’s the latter, that’s your sign to not.
You need to make sure the channel you’re testing into has an audience for you, has the scale you’re looking for, and that YOU have the resources to properly test it, both with media costs and creative costs.
If it’s a digital channel (YouTube, programmatic ads, Taboola, etc.), then aim for a test budget of $10-15k. There are some instances where you might need a bigger testing budget (podcasts) but with digital, and especially performance-based channels, you can always cut the test if it’s not looking good after $15k.
You might be looking at higher minimums if it’s a direct buy with a media company. For publishers, minimums usually start around $25k to $50k. For podcasts, it depends on the audience size - you want to be able to test multiple shows with different messaging.
Lastly, I’m a fan of using agencies to test a new channel. Regardless if you buy all your media in-house, testing new channels with agencies makes a ton more sense. They can be faster with the 0-1 of a new channel, have more creative capabilities, and can crack the code before you scale it. Then bring it in-house once they find scale.
Messaging
Once I’ve identified the channel I want to test, I look at what funnels and messaging are doing well for me on other channels, and figure out how to amend them for the channel I’m going to test.
If you’ve funnels and donation match offers that work well on other channels, you can likely leverage them on new channels, and have them act as a control.
For digital ad platforms, you can check their Ads Libraries to see what other Org’s are doing and how they’re approaching their creative or funnels. You can use AdBeat to spy on native and programmatic ads. For TV, you can use iSpot TV to look up TV commercials (judge their performance based on how long they’ve been airing).
Production
After understanding what your creative will look like, along with your budget, it’s time to produce your ads. This is where an agency is invaluable - having the channels’ experience as well as a creative team. You just can’t match the output, and if you did, it wouldn’t be efficient.
You want to launch with various creative tests to understand what drives the best performance and balance that with your budget to ensure you reach statistical significance. Measure your results with an incrementality testing platform, then plot your path.
The beauty of digital ad channels is that almost everything can be tested fairly quickly. Within 2-4 weeks, you will understand how well a new digital channel may perform for you. If you’re running channels like direct mail, out-of-home ads, or TV, you’ll have to use a longer window to judge performance.
So let’s get into how this plays out in practice. I chose using influencers on YouTube, which I feel is pretty similar to podcast ads - they’re interchangeable below.
Example: YouTube Influencers and Podcast Ads
YouTube influencers and podcasters have the strongest audience pull I’ve ever seen.
With either of them the best way to approach a test is as follows:
Build out a proven funnel or landing page experience.
Make sure you’re doing the best job of collecting first-party data from high-intent traffic.
Write out a brief explaining the best angles, hooks, or ways to talk about your Org’s programs and what the Mission is.
Get a pool of 10-15 influencers/podcasts who are the right fit as a brand ambassador but also with their audience.
Ensure your Programs or Mission can be shown in action within their video.
Create a spreadsheet tracking the following columns:
YouTuber/Podcast
URL to video with the ad
Views
Cost for placement
Link clicks
Conversion rate
Donations
Cost/Donation
CPM (Cost per 1,000 views)
A viable YouTube or Podcast test should be around $30-50k. This will help you test a number of creators to understand what can work best for you. The beauty of YouTube organic is that the URL stays in the video forever.
If the video continues to get views, which they do, then you’ll be generating donations forever!
The only downside of organic YouTube and Podcasts is you can’t isolate geographies. Instead, you have to measure success by looking at the last-click donation data.
Next week I’ll build on the above and double click into measurement, attribution and incremental channel lift.
Explore: Nonprofit Tools (link)
Searching for new nonprofit tools or trying to trim down your tech stack? Play around in this infographic. I add to it most weeks.
Driving Positive Returns
Let’s get tactical!
Paid Social is actively taking the crown away from programmatic as a channel where you can spend lots of money fast, possibly even with no meaningful return. There are just too many platforms – and all of them feel relevant.
Social is a fantastic playing field for viral brand activations.
But if paid social media is part of a limited fundraising budget, rather than a brand budget, where in the donor lifecycle do social platforms stand the highest chance of driving positive returns from the get-go?
Here’s how I’ve approached answering that question across 4 paid social channels, all with slightly different audiences.
Meta
TikTok
LinkedIn
Snapchat
Meta: The most potent look-a-like capabilities for prospecting and learning about your audiences.
It’s got the broadest audience reach across generations and the longest-tracked history of ad performance across all platforms. Granted, impressions are expensive and competition is too fierce to count on virality or broad organic reach but Meta is the only paid social platform that directly competes with Google in the performance marketing world. And its tech is superb compared to any other rival.
Structure your current donor lists in the CRM. Segment them out by age groups (18-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65+), gender, the topic they donated to last time, total lifetime value (<$99, $100-$999, $1,000-$4,999, $5,000-$24,999, $25,000+), and recency since the last donation (<30 days, 30 – 89 days, 90 – 365 days, 365+ days).
SPN Tip: This segmentation can mean up to 480 unique audience lists. Consolidate dimensions to ensure every list includes at least 1,000 unique donors. When consolidating, widen the range of options for a dimension (e.g., have 18-49 and 50+ age groups) instead of eliminating any one dimension.
Upload all these audiences to Meta and create a unique Look-a-Like / Audience Expansion campaign for each. This is a resource-intensive structure to set up, but it will pay off later. Don’t launch campaigns, and do not use the Advantage+ campaigns for this step – they will come next.
In parallel, create just a few Advantage+ campaigns based on the number of topics donors donated to from previous steps. Combine all audiences into these campaigns and feed them all the creative assets relevant to a particular topic.
Launch the Advantage+ campaigns with a low budget of ~$1,000 total for a few days. Once they stop running, compare performance by topic. Even though Advantage+ algorithms won’t let you see actual best-performing assets or even categorical insights, such as whether video creative worked better than audio and carousel, this structure will let you see which donation topics tend to outperform the rest.
Enable the unique campaigns from step 2 associated with the best topic, allocating all your monthly paid social fundraising budget to these campaigns.
In month 2, launch other topics - one every month - going from best to worst performing as identified in the Advantage+ campaigns, allocating ~20% of the budget to each new topic.
If you start this now then by January you can also use audience insights to understand your donors better, leveraging Meta’s capabilities to drive positive returns and inform targeting in other platforms.
TikTok: A perfect retargeting tool for donor drop-offs.
Video is the most engaging content type, and short videos are cheaper to serve than long-form YouTube or Netflix content.
Create a library of all short-form (<15s) video assets you have – donor-generated and not - and organize it by donation topic.
SPN Tip: If you lack short-form content, cut your longer-form videos into short segments.
SPN Tip2: While mobile-optimized, vertical videos are better than horizontal, desktop-optimized ones (using desktop ones with wide black stripes on top and bottom is better than having none).
Create and launch evergreen TikTok campaigns, one by topic, for prospects who visited the website but dropped off after at least seeing the donation page. Assign it no more than 5% of your average monthly fundraising budget.
Don’t add an aggressive donate CTA to videos; instead, focus on reminding prospects of your Org and limiting frequency to no more than 5 impressions total, 1 impression per day.
Of course not all of your donor prospects who are dropping-off are on TikTok, but for those who are I’ve found it to be the best retargeting channel.
LinkedIn: Increase LTV and cross-pollinate your Corporate Partnerships.
LinkedIn has the best (implied) income targeting and the most accurate employment targeting of all paid social platforms.
For lifetime value – create evergreen campaigns targeting those who donated more than once, last time in the last 90 days (use LinkedIn pixel instead of CRM lists so these settings always stay up to date), and overlap that with a Director seniority level or above. Assign this tactic 2-3% of your monthly fundraising budget.
SPN Tip: After the first 2-3 months, experiment with lowering seniority one level at a time.
For Corporate Partnership cross-pollination, create a campaign targeting Director+ employees of select companies your Org partners with or receives corporate donations from. After 2-3 months of running the campaign, experiment with lowering that seniority level and assign at most 1% of your total fundraising budget.
SPN Tip: See if these companies are open to matching their employee donations up to a certain amount. Even if that comes out of the pool of money they donate directly, it will drive incremental revenue from their employees.
Snapchat (and WhatsApp): Next generation email.
Use these channels for one-to-many communication with current donors, with softer donation asks.
Create campaigns targeting your existing donors using the CRM list, refreshing it once a month.
SPN Tip: overlap CRM list targeting by using Snapchat pixel donations as well – it will allow reaching donors who didn’t leave their email addresses in the form, and the frequency cap will ensure no duplication.
Use your email creative to adapt it to Snapchat format, refreshing it every two weeks.
Set the frequency limit at one impression every two weeks.
In the above setup, Snapchat effectively replicates email communication to your existing donors – covering the group that’s least likely to open their email but is likely to be active on messenger apps.
That’s all for today!
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Reads From My Week
Much of the data that drives so much modern marketing is worthless (Ad Age)
TikTok Helps Drive Users to the Movie Theater - a third of moviegoers on the app say that TikTok was the reason they went to watch a new movie in theaters. (Hollywood Reporter)
Viral and deadly: When music goes bad on social (Reed Smith LLP)
101 media buying on social - you can learn anything on TikTok!
Qualcomm says it’s working on mixed reality smart glasses with Samsung and Google (The Verge)
How to Create the Perfect Digital Poster (System1 Group)
Apple Loses It’s Podcasting Lead to YouTube and Spotify (Bloomberg/Reddit)
Google’s Gemini Live AI Sounds So Human, I Almost Forgot It Was a Bot (WSJ)
Paris Olympics: Here’s what Peacock Got Right and What It Didn’t (Forbes)
How Agency Search Consultants Are Evolving As Marketers Lead More Reviews (AdAge)