136. SPN: 3 Proven Brand Building Tactics That Fueled My Fundraising Success
Plus, your creative is your targeting; whitelisting + personalized funnels; and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week
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You’ve joined a community of 2k+ 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.
If there’s one thing every CFO loves, it’s predictable revenue.
Fundraise Up gives donors a simple way to adjust or pause their monthly gifts - instead of canceling outright. Donor experience matters. It may sound counterintuitive, but by making cancelation options easy to find, you actually reduce cancellations.
At this point I’ve saved tens of thousands of dollars in recurring donations this way, and your Org could too. It’s time to upgrade your donor experience.
Game changer? It is for me!
In this week’s SPN →
Your creative is your targeting.
Donation forms are long overdue for a video-first evolution.
Building brand equity in 2025.
Whitelisting + personalized funnels.
and, plenty of Jobs & Opps that took my fancy this week.
Let’s jump in!
Creative
I posted this in SPN #135 last week and realize we all nod, but it can be hard to turn the internal tide and do much about it:
Creative Quality has a 12x multiplier effect on profitability versus 1x for Audience Targeting.
There’s a very clear opportunity for marketing and fund raising leaders here to take real accountability of Ad Creative in managing to revenue outcomes and positive returns.
→ Creative quality (excellence) is what’s going to drive Supporter engagement and ultimately revenue, especially in today’s AI-driven landscape.
So it was satisfying to receive so many replies and to read some informed LinkedIn commentary quoting SPN during the past week, particularly this example shared from the Canadian Red Cross.
Personalization at scale is key here
The AI tools that platforms have - and smart firms like CreativeX, Vidmob and Smartly - have made great progress. They take us forward by testing variants of ads and promoting the best performers.
But we need to go beyond anagrams and industrialize analogies too - ads that make a similar point but using different elements. CPGs are always light years ahead and well positioned to explore possibilities like this but even during my UNCIEF days we could show profound effects.
One of the sentences I find myself repeating often is the best way to double the effectiveness of a media buy is to halve donation abandonment. But it’s rare Donor Experience or Donor Support teams ever talk with the Digital Media team. That’s changing and the opportunity to use AI to create more effective - read “more personalized” - Donation Pages is surely a win for everyone.
Boston Consulting Group has a team dedicated to delivering personalization and has run over 100 projects on leading brands around the world. In fact I’m reading Personalized: Customer Strategy in the Age of AI at the moment, written by the person who leads this BCG team. He was just interviewed on the latest (excellent) Uncensored CMO podcast - definitely worth a listen.
I’ve mentioned before that Direct Response fund raising is very similar to e-commerce. By extension the PDP in ecomm (product display page - the web pages that display all the content about the t-shirt you’re eyeing) should resemble some strong similarities with a donation form.
Donation forms are long overdue for a video-first evolution
I don’t think it’s a stretch to envision a world where donation forms have better video content so we don’t just have to read globes of text. This could be where creator, brand, and donor content cement their place in information and discoverability. And AI has so much potential to transform personalization on donation pages - for both efficiency and creativity.
I’m getting a little obsessed with SBVs (sponsored brand videos) for similar reasons. It’s such a powerhouse tool to quickly serve engaging video content while tying performance back to fundraising revenue. Integrating creator, brand, and donor content not only enhances trust but also creates a feedback loop for learning and improving discoverability.
Anyway, what’s the takeaway? Audience targeting costs you money.
More targeting = higher CPMs. But creative targeting doesn’t. In fact, it reduces costs by engaging people based on interest, not force. I’m consistently seeing creative unlock new audiences rather than targeting.
This has big implications for your planning this year. Your creative is your targeting.
Jobs & Opps 🛠️
WWF-UK: Senior Fundraising Innovation Manager - Mat Cover (£43,851 - £46,000)
Macmillan Cancer: Head, Strategic Engagement Planning (£66,000 - £74,000)
The Adventure Project: Director, Development ($80,000 - $100,000)
Greenpeace UK: Fundraising Innovation Lead (£61,416 - £67,656)
Anti-Cruelty: Director, MarComms ($75,000 - $85,000)
St. Jude Children’s Hospital - ALSAC: Sr Director, Marketing Operations
CaringKind, The Heart of Alzheimer's Caregiving: Associate Director, Development ($70,000 - $90,000)
International Justice Mission: Sr. Manager, Strategic Partnerships
USO: Donor Retention & Cultivation Specialist
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières - USA: Associate Director, Community Fundraising ($124,346 - $186,518)
IRC: Associate, Global Donor Operations
Adobe: Corporate Social Responsibility Specialist ($76,800 - $150,600)
NYC Kids RISE: Chief Development Officer ($200,000 - $260,000)
Playworks: Chief Development Officer ($200,000 +)
→ More jobs updated daily to SPN’s sister website: www.pledgr.com
Brand Matters. Whatever You Do.
When I analyzed a lot of Org’s that started to make great headway in 2020 to 2023, many either were already dialed-in with their digital fund raising, or they had started to find a great balance between building brand equity (what I mean when I say “building brand”), and performance marketing or more lower-funnel-style donor acquisition.
Managing the marketing effort at UNICEF Kid Power back in 2016, I had a phrase I used to describe how I liked to do customer acquisition, which was “Performance Branding.” It was the middle ground between straight brand marketing and pure performance marketing.
The idea with performance branding was that if you start with the ad creative, the messaging, and the content, you can build brand equity on the back of your working performance media dollars. And convert customers into donors.
For a sub-brand of UNICEF that was doing $1M to $5M depending on the year, this strategy worked really well. As I moved into different roles and the revenue numbers had a few more zero’s, we absolutely needed to invest more into brand building, but it didn’t always require a lot of dollars to have a big impact.
For today’s longer post, I wanted to share a list of some tactics, ideas and strategies on how I go about brand building (that contributes to fundraising revenue). Shout out Sir John Hegarty too who recently shared we should remove the word ‘brand’ and say ‘reputation’ instead. They’re certainly intertwined. If I missed anything you had in mind, reply with it!
Whitelisting + Personalized Funnels
Most Org’s run the same standard ads to a Home- or Program-page. Instead, try these 3 things: Advertorials, Creators, and Landing Pages.
An “Advertorial” is just a combination of an ad and editorial piece. Story first, fund raising after. It allows you to “sell” a Program, for instance, but lead someone in through a sponsored-editorial-style or affiliate-article-style article. Yes, it’s technically a landing page, because it’s a vehicle to drive a donation, but given it’s an article, it gives you an opportunity to bring a new donor in with a story.
I started running advertorials + whitelisting publishers and creators (Mom’s) for the ads with Kid Power, and it drove more attention and revenue than anything else. Now, 8 years later, this strategy still works. On social media, people are there to be entertained, so earn their click with a story they find relevant/interesting, and use that opportunity to weave your Org’s “pitch” in.
These aren’t just ads, advertorials can be a part of a Supporter’s primary content consumption. Find a good hook or story, test it, and lead people to a landing page with a donation ask or Match offer. Put this on the “to test” block this quarter.
Whitelisting creator handles for donor acquisition is similar to advertorials in the sense that you’re leveraging third-party validation/social-proof with whitelisting, but your content is different. With whitelisting, you’re usually leveraging content made with that creator, and then, in my perfect world, driving people to a landing page with a curated donation offer and messaging that reiterates the creator’s involvement with your Org.
When running ads from a verified creator on Meta or IG, you can expect your CPC to cut by 30-50%. To be completely honest, you don’t even need to create much original content with the creators. You can leverage some of your best ads with a creator handle or find ways to make static ad templates that are on-brand for your Org and the creator.
In a perfect world, the traffic from a publisher advertorial or a whitelisted creator would go to a landing page. I did a deep dive into landing pages in SPN #57. The main two reasons why a landing page is better than a standard donation form:
1. Your donation is likely not that built out — most donation forms are the bare minimum, modeled off a template, and don’t go into great detail on a Program, the WHY, how it compares to peers, social proof, etc.
2. You can’t truly curate a personalized experience on a donation form today. On a landing page, even if it’s simple and not super built out, you can still add some surrounding information and curate an ask to get someone to commit to your monthly donation program.
Advertorials and white-listed content allow you to focus on donor acquisition in a very performance-marketing-oriented approach while building brand equity.
Aligning with good stories, creators, and generally valuable content builds brand more than anything. On top of that, creating digital red carpets (landing pages) only adds to the aura of your Org.
Putting Out Content
As you know, and as I’ve mentioned many times, the easiest place to get eyeballs is by jumping on a free ride aboard 3 bullet trains.
As long as you can make something that feels like it belongs on the platform, they will drive you thousands of eyeballs for free... all because the content that you make feels native to their platform, keeps more people scrolling, and makes them money.
For the win - make content that fits the confines of the 3 main platforms (Reels, TikTok (it’s not going anywhere), and YouTube Shorts), and you’ll easily save over $100k on eyeballs you’d otherwise pay to reach with ads.
Show Up Where People Search
Most people read on-site reviews, but they’re not as “strong” or impactful as what you would read on Reddit, see when searching your Org on YouTube, or when you Google the brand. Press articles have no relevance, people know they’re all affiliate pieces. But Reddit posts can’t be bought, TikTok unboxings of brand swag can’t all be paid for and you can’t censor those platforms as a brand, either.
I touched on this last week in SPN #135. If someone comes across your Org on Instagram, they go to TikTok search or plug it into Google to see what people have to say. Show up in more places people are searching, not just where you can serve them content (like Meta ads).
No matter how good your ads are, if you aren’t showing up positively in these places, people won’t get over the fence. You’ll inspire them to donate but then they’ll actually donate to an Org that has a better Google or IG presence.
Wrapping up
Organic traffic, new followers, more social media tags, unpaid unboxings of Monthly Pledge program swag, etc. all are green flags that point to the north star of revenue. If you host in-person events, all of this only adds incremental dollars and keeps you top of mind (a key component to lifetime value).
OK, that’s all for today.
I hope you’ve found one nugget today that you can put into play next week.
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And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for online giving.