81. Some Personal News (SPN)
Perhaps a good North Star for 2024?
A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers. I’m thrilled to have you as readers and truly appreciate your feedback and support.
In today’s SPN:
Introducing Q1’s sponsor
When to push forward and when to pull back - media investments
How to make better Ad creative
What’s the first step in leveraging AI for your Org?
Quick plug - during the Holiday’s Noah invited me on to his podcast “Good Marketing Unplugged” to explore building growth plans for 2024. You have permission to listen to it on 1.5x (because I’m the one being interviewed!) but he asked interesting, thought-provoking questions and was a superb conversationalist and host. Hopefully the answers and discussion that ensued offers some value too. Give it a listen while you sip your January mocktail one evening this week.
Let’s dig in!
I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I do believe in setting high-level goals.
This year, I want to build the go-to resource for nonprofit operators building high growth marketing and digital fundraising programs. It will require me to balance hands-on technical content with more high-level thinking. I doubt it will be easy but it’ll be fun, and that’s a huge reason I write SPN.
Which is a helpful segue! Some of the most fun and whip-smart people I’ve met in our sector also built a fundraising platform called Fundraise Up. And marvelously they’re our Q1 sponsor.
I adopted Fundraise Up at UNICEF for the US market and they’re the first name I write down whenever I’m asked to outline my preferred Tech Stack. They powered us to 2X’ing our digital fundraising revenue to tens of millions of dollars and 3X’d our digital net-new monthly pledge revenue.
Game-changing platform? It was for me. Check them out here.
Media Push-Pull
First we had digital ad networks whose inventory wasn’t particularly unique but we gambled on their targeting prowess and maybe we got outcomes at a cheaper price. Programmatic came along and brought us some whizz, bang, pop - but not of the transparent kind. And fast forward to 2024, Retail Media Network’s (RMN’s) are the latest in-vogue Ad tech play, which I wrote about with some excitement in SPN #69.
As Noah and I talked about on his podcast there are some 40-50 political elections this year, which means eyeballs and attention will be priced at a premium. And Ad tech isn’t going to stop evolving. The desire for transparency, measurement and incrementality across our media efforts should become even more hardened.
Transparency - where are your ads really appearing? If you read my analysis in SPN #77 of the AMA’s excellent study “Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency” you’ll know that sadly they’re not prancing around exclusively on premium retail sites.
Measurement - our attribution models are far too joyously positive, showing brilliant ROI almost always. Granular, domain-level measurement has to turn from an ask to a demand.
Incrementality - the art of robust incrementality testing is as rare as disagreeing agreeably in political debating circles.
As we kick off this new year I’d like to propose a digital advertising re-set, among ourselves at least.
For many of us, we’ve been down this road before - a new year, new brand marketing campaign ideas, a renewed focus on donor journey’s and aiming for more connectivity between brand positioning-fundraising asks-and donor experience.
But here’s the hard bit - it’s time to apply the lessons learnt from last year.
We know, for instance, that Ad tech and especially RMN’s armed with first-party shopper data aren’t just tools. They’re potential game-changers that could make for explosive growth. BUT… they require masterful oversight.
Proper due diligence and governance are the best ingredients here.
A re-set isn’t just about keeping a watchful eye on your investments.
Invest time into understanding how these Ad networks operate (don’t just rely on your agencies).
Give yourself the headspace to ask and learn about the intricacies of a network’s data usage (again, don’t just rely on your agencies).
For the sake of your brand and your mission you need to ensure transparency and ethical practices are more than just buzzwords. Make them the the foundation of your strategy.
Our Supporters need us to evolve from being passive participants who occasionally check the dashboard, to active, informed investors who understand the field and make strategic moves. It’s about knowing when to push forward and when to pull back.
So, before you make any drastic moves with your media investments this year, take a moment. Assess not just the ‘tactical how’ of your strategy, but the ‘what’ and the ‘why.’
How to Make Better Ad Creative!
IMO, great ad creative has always been and continues to be the main variable for paid social success. These nuggets come from SPN #68 “Redefining ‘on brand’ creative.”
I previously shared 11 tactics in total, but here’s 5 nuggets that I revisited during an annual planning exercise last week.
Create ads that YOU would screenshot or share. If it won’t perform well organically, don’t make it into an ad. You might remember my post about the ‘Content Playbook of Sorts’ from SPN #33: create content, test it organically, and then push it into paid. Content that won’t get shared into the group chat, isn’t content worth putting out.
Let the data help you decide. There’s nothing worse than a CMO saying “That’s not on brand,” and then having their “On brand” creative perform 10 times worse. Until you’re doing $50M in digital fundraising revenue, your “brand” is built by getting your mission into the heads and hands of donors who can become recurring donors and advocates for your Org.
Hire actual creators to make your content. Want amazing video creative? Go search for creators who do this for a living and contract them. If they’ve built their own audience online making content like the ads that you want to see, they can make strong creative for your Org. If you work with content creators, don’t try to tell them exactly what to do either - you hired them, let them do their job.
Experiment with all mediums and formats. You absolutely should be doing a “media mix” of stats, videos, studio shot, donor-generated-content, comparisons, testimonials, story based creative, ads that are emotion-driven, ads that are education-driven, founder stories for younger nonprofits, fully animated ads, advertorials, articles, season-themed creative, influencer creative and more… to see what works best for your Org. The learnings from testing all of these formats will be worth their weight in gold.
Build a “creative reference bank.” Every time I see an eye-catching ad from another brand or creator online, I take a screenshot or save the link. Obviously I don’t want to copy the ads directly. What I’m doing though is building creative references that can help inspire agencies and teams with elements for future campaigns. Maybe you like a color, font, hook, or something else. Save it to spark ideas for future ads.
H/T to an SPN reader who shared that their team created an Instagram DM group for Ads inspiration. Whenever one of them sees something good they share it there with 1 sentence on why and what they like about it. Inspired idea!
Adopting AI in 2024
Without a plan to adopt AI this year you risk a trap filled with pitfalls - misaligned goals, wasted resources, and investing into technology that creates more problems than solutions. A bit like adopting Salesforce Marketing Cloud when you’re a 5 person team ;)
Curiosity about AI is fantastic – it’s a gateway to innovation and progress. And this interest needs to be channeled into well-thought-out steps that align with your fundraising and marketing goals.
And the best way to make a deliberate decision is to have options. I’ve sketched out a few below.
Proven Patterns for AI by Org Function
Here are some proven patterns where AI can help grow your Org and what I’ve seen work firsthand beyond any concept stage.
They’re based on my own experience with Org’s raising funds for different causes, operating at various sizes, in different markets and they share one thing in common: they’re all in the nonprofit world.
Can you use these as inspiration for applying AI in your own Org’s context?
Let’s walk through a few of them.
Proven Patterns for AI in Marketing and Fundraising
AI offered a massive opportunity in marketing and fundraising even before ChatGPT existed. And with Generative AI, there’s just more fuel to the fire!
Pattern 1: Content Production
Problem: Marketing teams often struggle to consistently produce new and engaging content.
Solution: AI tools are helpful topic ideators prompting a wide variety of suggestions or playing devil’s advocate providing a contrarian POV.
AI Involved: Generative AI (Large Language Models e.g. Jasper, Image generation e.g. Midjourney), Audio (Speech-to-text e.g. Otter.ai).
Pattern 2: Website & Email Optimization
Problem: Keeping websites and emails optimized for donor engagement and conversion is an ongoing, expensive challenge.
Solution: AI can check and overhaul your materials for common best practices and optimize them according to your specific analytics.
AI Involved: Generative AI (Large Language Models), AutoML.
Pattern 3: Fundraising/Donor support
Problem: Nobody ever likes to fill in a CRM.
Solution: Let AI listen to your donor prospecting calls and extract relevant info to pre-fill your CRM. After the call, give the AI’s work a once-over (check it) and it’s done! Let the person know you’re recording/ask their permission - don’t assume they’re comfortable with it.
AI Involved: Generative AI (Large Language Models, Image generation), Audio (Speech-to-text).
Pattern 4: Donor Segmentation
Problem: Personalized communication performs much better, but it’s hard to execute.
Solution: AI can help you create both the segmentation, as well as the content adaptation needed for these segments.
AI Involved: Generative AI, AutoML.
Here a two others that stand out as low hanging fruit:
First-level Chatbots
Problem: Donor support staff need to focus on the trickier cases.
Solution: Use interactive chatbots so donors can get first-level support on their own without talking to a human.
AI Involved: Generative AI.
Automated Data Analysis
Problem: Lots of data sources could easily be analyzed but the analytics team of half a person doesn’t have capacity to do it!
Solution: AI writes code to quickly analyze large volumes of data in simple structures (log files, transactional datasets).
AI Involved: Generative AI.
Wrapping Up
Experiment (AI), learn (media), and grow (attention). Perhaps a good North Star for 2024?
Align your AI curiosity with your goals for real impact. AI is a transformative tool that when leveraged properly will grow your brand, amp your performance and deliver a better donor experience. The key is to choose your battle before it chooses you - otherwise the sheer breadth of use cases and solutions will boggle your mind to a debilitating extent.
The patterns I’ve laid out aren’t meant to be prescriptive but serve as a starting point. See where things overlap with your Org’s pains and bottlenecks. Double click and explore further if you see a fit.
This year I’ve told myself the journey is as much about the destination as it is about the path we take.
2024, let’s do this.
And now onto the fun stuff!
Interesting Reads from my Week
The WSJ asks ‘Will 2024 Mark the End of the ‘Digital Agency’?
Luke Littler’s ridiculous run to world darts final made children of us all.
A former Amazon ads exec has lots of advice on how Amazon could get (even) better at selling ads: “If Amazon Ads get their act together, they will eat our lunch”, anonymous Meta manager.
This BI interview with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is a good read.
This Year Next Year: 2023 Global End-of-Year Forecast - GroupM.
Experian: data giant has dug an effective moat.
Look and ask with Meta AI on Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Silicon Valley eyes reboot of Google Glass-style headsets (interesting follow up to SPN #80’s exploration of Apple Vision last week).