Thursday, April 25, 2013

Online Giving Revenue Up, But E-mail Response Dips

The good news for online nonprofit fundraising is that overall online revenue has grown robustly, e-mail lists are up, online sustained giving is rising, and social media audiences are soaring. The bad news: E-mail response rates, dragged down by steep declines in click-through, have fallen. Those are the findings reported by MarketingProfs from the "2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study" by M+R Strategic Services and NTEN, which is based on 2012 e-mail and online donations data from 55 nonprofits across appeals sectors. Online revenue overall rose 21% in 2012 compared with 2011, with international groups the only ones recording online giving declines, according to the study. And monthly online giving grew 43% in 2012, twice as fast as one-time giving. E-mail lists for nonprofits across the board also rose an average of 15% from 2011, with wildlife and animal welfare groups showing the strongest growth, up 32%. But social media audiences grew even faster: Facebook, still the primary social network of charitable support, had an average 43% growth in fan base, while Twitter turned in a whopping 264% increase in nonprofit followers last year. Despite all the 2012 growth, e-mail metrics sagged. A 14% decline in click-through for advocacy messages and 27% drop in clicks for fundraising e-mail sent average e-mail response rates tumbling last year. Fundraising response, for example, dipped 21% from 2011, to an average 0.07% in 2012. The steepest response declines were felt by human rights and international groups. For more information and a great infographic, go to the MarketingProfs report at http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/10508/nonprofit-benchmarks-email-social-audience-fundraising-infographic

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Facebook Tests Ads Matching Store Data to Profiles

Facebook is testing new ad targeting that would market to online Facebook users based on their offline store shopping data, according to a recent Advertising Age report. Facebook is partnering with data firms Epsilon, Acxiom and Datalogix to allow brands and retailers to match data from shopper loyalty programs to individual Facebook profiles, with their demographic and interest-based targeting. The program would hypothetically let Facebook ads from Coca-Cola target teenagers who've bought soda in the last month, or serve Pampers ads to North Carolina residents who've recently purchased baby products. The targeting will function through anonymized matching of loyalty-program members and Facebook users through e-mail addresses and phone numbers, according to sources cited in the article. However, adoption of the new ad targeting will still be contingent on acceptance by corporate legal departments wary of consumer privacy issues. For more, see the story at http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-partner-acxiom-epsilon-match-store-purchases-user-profiles/239967/