SPN. 132: Action Required in 2025 - Tactics, Channels, Approaches
Learnings from this year that will inform next year
A very Happy Holidays and warm welcome to all the new subscribers.
You’ve joined a brilliant community of 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.
Org’s that use Fundraise Up will make this End of Year so easy for donors wanting to access and download tax-compliant PDF donation receipts.
How so? It’s one of the many useful features sitting within Fundraise Up’s self-serve Donor Portal.
Donor experience matters. And it translates to higher revenues for your Org!
Game changer? It is for me.
In this week’s SPN →
Fresh Approaches in 2025 across Experiences, Audiences, Creative, and Technology
Different Channels: Mobile Ad Networks, Advertorials, Live Auction, CTV
New Tactics: Incrementality, Video 2.0, AI
Learnings from this year that will inform new tests
and, Jobs that took my fancy this week
Let’s jump in!
Reads From My Week
I switched the run of play this week in the hope that your Ad and Email sequences are automated, and you’ve a little time for RR&R - rest, recuperation and reading!
Among other links below, a great science-based LinkedIn post on the effects of advertising, some decent material on doing cohort revenue and retention analysis for marketing teams, cool product development happening at Fundraise Up, and some fascinating Board level insights from Russel Reynolds.
Will ‘Multisensory’ Ads Cast A Spell On Theatergoers? (Media Post)
How long the effects of advertising really last (John James, LinkedIn)
Apps unwrapped 2024 - fave apps of the year (a16z)
How are agents being used in production? (Crew AI)
The Most Impactful Innovations from 2024 (Fundraise Up)
AI's impact on industries in 2025 (Google)
Cohort Revenue & Retention Analysis (PyMC Labs)
Fostering innovation across WFP: Driving impact from the field (World Food Program)
Navigating the Future of Board Leadership: Insights from 2024 APAC Board Leadership Forum (Russell Reynolds)
Klarna Stopped All Hiring A Year Ago to Replace Workers With AI (Bloomberg)
These 6 Parent Companies Are Stewarding Some of Our Most Iconic Brands (Fast Company)
Growth in 2025 - Channels, Tactics, Approaches
New Channels
As you experienced earlier this month, things can get real expensive and fast. CPMs can go up astronomically at this time of year - doubling, even tripling, as every brand across B2B/C, D2C as well as the non-for-profit landscape compete for eyeballs on Google, Meta, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
However, on January 1st, all the big players’ ad dollars go to zero, and you have the lowest CPMs of the year. This is the best time to start testing new channels.
If you’re just focused on Meta and Google, but looking to scale further or crack the code of building more top of funnel, have a think about view-through channels.
When tracking conversions, there are two main types: click-through conversions and view-through conversions. Click-through conversions happen after you click an ad, like on Instagram or Pinterest. View-through conversions happen from knowing somebody saw an ad impression, and then eventually donated within a period of time, usually 1, 7 or 30 day windows.
Because view-through channels are hard to track, most Org’s stick to Meta, Google, YouTube, etc. Here are some view-through channels to test out:
Mobile ad networks - AppLovin is all the rage for consumer brands right now. And as an Org with significant scale on Meta, it’s worth a test. In my experience it’s not as efficient for new donor acquisition, but that will quickly change if AppLovin adds exclusion capability.
Advertorials - whether you do them with publishers directly (which can be overpriced), or you do it with an agency, running advertorials can be valuable for driving new awareness.
Many of yours and my favorite performance marketing brands are all leveraging sponsored editorial content, often leading with entertainment and then educating. Interestingly on Meta it’s now accounting for ~22% of ad spend and helps to balance out the nCPA.
Live Auction - another one I’m really intrigued by especially seeing how so many brands were leveraging TikTok Live during BF-CM-GT. What we’re seeing with TikTok Live shopping, for example, is QVC, tailored to you, based on what TikTok knows about you.
It feels like an easy tilt into auctioneering “for good.” ~700 people concurrently watching and bidding, all contributing something to the Org.
CTV - you can likely use existing assets to create a great first CTV commercial. CPMs on CTV are low, they bring validity and personality to your Org, and once you find a winning creative, you can run it for months.
New Tactics
In addition to new channels, there are some tactics I want to play around with in 2025. Here’s what I’m thinking about:
Video 2.0. Meta, Snap and TikTok are all going to leverage video Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) much more heavily in 2025.
What does that mean for us? Those DPAs are ecomm focused but the key is to have a modular set of visuals, text snippets, and calls-to-action so creative automation tools (like a HubSpot or an Adobe) can mix and match based on the donor segment or campaign objective you’ve got running.
Think quick-impact stories (e.g., 15-second testimonial clips from beneficiaries, short impact highlights, volunteer insights), simple text overlays (call-to-action, a key stat, etc.) that can be swapped in and out as needed, B-roll from events that can serve as the “base” for dynamic editing.
Incrementality Testing. Has incrementality become the new buzz word for SPN?! It’s perfect when you have multiple points of advertising (Meta, Google, YouTube, TV, Snap, billboards, etc.), and multiple points of giving or engagement (corp partnerships; third party fundraising platforms; licensed merch and co-branded partnerships; peer-to-peer or crowd-sourced fundraising; workplace giving programs; galas, runs/walks, silent auctions).
In 2017, I ran my first incrementality test to understand how Facebook ads affected Target’s in-store sell-through of UNICEF Kid Power bands. Today, while MTA and MMM trot through being in and out of vogue for attribution purposes, I’ve had plenty of conversations with folks who are coming around to incrementality as another measurement option.
Org Collabs. Launching a new program always works in your favor to drive new Supporters to the Org and find new audiences. But, leveraging the brand equity of a similar-minded Org or a for-profit product can add so much legitimacy, social proof, content-ability, and excitement to both brands. Collabs are fun for everyone, and another reason to talk about the brand everywhere.
Leveraging More AI
I want to see where I can begin to leverage AI more. Putting my REACT framework cap on that I shared in SPN #131 here are some areas I want to explore and play:
Within Ads Manager. Can AI understand patterns of ads that find success/scale and be quicker to identify winners/losers earlier? Can I have a daily creative brief written based on what ads are performing well across the account or multiple business managers?
Within Creative. I don’t think AI will replace the brains of a creative strategist and talented performance ad video editors... but I do believe tools will speed up the ability to generate ads and generate high volumes of them.
Within Site Optimization. How can I use a trained AI agent to tell me exactly what to update on my site to maximize conversion rate, based on traffic patterns and conversion data? How can I have an agent who replicates the top 100 ways a prospective donor interacts with the site and go through it daily to test for bugs or glitches before donors see it?
Within Email and SMS. How can we send proactive text or email messages, all personalized 1:1, based on everything we know about a donor? This is also why collecting donor zero-party data (more info/traits to attach to their donor profile) is so important.
Within Personalization. How can we achieve a double digit email opt-in rate from site visitors? How can we use AI pattern recognition to understand, based on how a Supporter interacts with the website, when the best time to show them a pop-up is; and then have that tool optimized to maximize opt-in conversion rate?
Within SMT and at the Board level. How can CEO’s/Exec Director’s iterate on sending Board papers ahead of time for the meeting and hoping everyone reads them, comes prepped and ready to go? How can we empower SMT to be fully briefed on a subject matter with full context and queryable data before their meeting even takes place? An active, informed SMT and Board means much greater efficiencies and more informed decision making for everyone.
How else are you think of leveraging AI or any new innovation in the new year? Reply here and I’ll share an updated article with any additional ideas I receive.
New Approaches
Today’s omnichannel donor lifecycle can be a curse if mismanaged or, worse still, not understood at all by your teams.
That REACT framework has helped me build enormously successful fundraising funnels across major-mid-individual-corporate fundraising: Reporting, [website] Experience, Audience [targeting], Creative, and Technology. They’re also five dimensions in their own right ripe for testing.
If we do a little mental math and add to those five dimensions five channels (Paid Search, Paid Social, Display, Email, Video) and we look at a donor journey over the course of 12 months… what we have at the very least is a boat load of donor lifecycle testing that can and should be deployed.
Here are some learnings from this year that will inform 2025’s approach:
Creative: Testing every new concept in prospecting before introducing it to current donors. This one is counterintuitive. I used to first serve new creatives to existing donors to advance them and increase recurring donations. I then gauged/used performance indicators to decide whether it’d be worth running a new message against a larger pool of prospective donors.
Writing this down it of course feels obvious now but drawing insights from existing donors to target new audiences consistently led to using the same old messaging, which muddled prospecting performance. Also, the prospecting audience is exponentially broader - so hello much faster iteration and decision-making…
Audience: Do the opposite with Audience testing → always start from existing donors. Overlap audience targeting over a keyword set for a Paid Search campaign targeting existing donors. Add the “AND” statement to a Display or Paid Social one to test the new segment your Brand team created. Leverage any new email list and cross-run it against your existing donors. And relentlessly compare conversion rates to the “default” campaign without that overlapping segment.
Only if the slice of “existing donors that ALSO match this new profile” works better than just “existing donors” should you graduate the segment into a stand-alone prospecting audience.
Touch Points: For every test pre-donation, do at least one post-donation. The main goal of looking at the Donor Lifecycle through a 12-month lens is to allow yourself/team to increase the value of those high-cost, $20-value new donors before deeming them unprofitable. The only way that will happen is by investing the same effort in increasing a donor’s value as in acquiring new ones!
Channel: The first post-donation touchpoint for each audience should be in the same channel that drove the donation. If somebody donated through Paid Search, don’t show them a Display ad asking to increase the donation or upgrade to a monthly donor. Instead, set up an RLSA (Remarketing List in Search Ads) campaign targeting all donors initially attributed to paid search. A “thank you” email post-donation is still fair game, but it shouldn’t include any donation requests.
Creative: Test higher-cost creative assets only after breaking even on a donor. Videos should be part of the mix only after Month 7 of the donor lifecycle when ROAS is above 1.5:1. Original audio assets should be used only after Month 4 when ROAS breaks even. Until that point, prioritize less expensive assets (paid search, images, and gifs in paid social and display) and channels that do their creative work (Performance Max, Advantage Plus).
Site Experience: Shamelessly mirror your Creative and Site Experience testing hypothesis. If a particular image works in the creative, use it as a hero image on the landing page. If increasing the donation amount from $25 to $30 or getting rid of a dollar sign works on the website giving form, do the same on the creative and use it instead of a mellow “donate now” CTA. It won’t create the best website experience or creative, but it will get you to the point of a profitable donor lifecycle much faster.
Channels: “Age gate” Paid Social platforms to start. Dedicate TikTok as a testing platform for donors under 25, Instagram for 25-30-year-olds, Facebook for 30-40-year-olds, and LinkedIn for donors above 40. Test new creative concepts, targeting ideas, or donation amounts only in one dedicated platform - and then test into expanding the winning option across all platforms.
Channels: Dedicate Display as the only channel to test images. Deploy direct head-to-head imagery testing only in Display as the cheapest option to get results fast and for any audience, and expand into other channels thereafter.
If you’re thinking of experimenting with a headline image for your email drop - run it for a day in Display beforehand, targeting existing donors. Developing a new video asset and selecting a still-screen for donors to click through? Run a display test first.
Bonus thought: Automation.
Treat all platforms like you treat email. All Org’s use an email automation tool one way or another - email sequencing and triggered sends are probably the two most common use cases. However, very few use the same automation principles in other channels. Play around with doing so to build a donor lifecycle instead of a collection of campaigns competing against each other:
Every Ad Server (Google’s Campaign Manager, Flashtalking, Smartly, and others) has the capability of Display, Video, and Audio creative sequencing to build a cohesive donor experience across those channels. Meta Ad Suite allows you to do the same within Facebook. While aligning between them is a close-to-impossible task, two non-integrated lifecycles are better than 4.
Email triggers can be replicated with low-reach paid media campaigns. For example, a Google Ads campaign targeting only “new donors with a 1-day recency” and frequency set to 1 is effectively a thank-you campaign in Display or Search.
Going into the New Year is always exciting, although no doubt the first two weeks we’ll be inundated by Planet Fitness ads ;)
Even with that, testing and unlocking new channels and tactics are going to be huge for another successful year of fund raising in 2025.
HAPPY HOLIDAY’S!
OK, that’s all for today.
I hope you’ve found one thing in today’s SPN that you can make your own and run hard with in 2025.
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And huge thanks to this Quarter’s sponsor Fundraise Up for creating a new standard for online giving.
Jobs & Opps 🛠️
NASCAR: Senior Manager, Community Impact
The Boston Foundation: Senior Director, Impact Investments ($165,000 - $185,000)
Lumos: Director, Fundraising (£90,000)
RIVET: Director, Donor Engagement ($120,000) this looks like a cool opp!
AARP: VP, Direct Response Fundraising ($184,500 - $205,000)
Save the Children International: Global Donor Acquisition Lead
Lincoln Children's Museum: Chief Marketing Officer ($80,000–$110,000)
Americans for Responsible Innovation: Digital Communications Director ($135,000 - $150,000)
→ More jobs updated daily to SPN’s sister website: www.pledgr.com