Introduction
Since 2012, Giving Tuesday has been a key day in every fundraiser’s calendar. And when you knock it out of the park, Giving Tuesday can get you a long way towards meeting your overall annual giving goal.
But how can you ensure that you meet your goals? An omni-channel approach is key. As former fundraisers ourselves, our team is here to help you lock in your texting strategy so that the day runs smoothly, your communications are well-layered and paced, and you can impress your entire team by using P2P texting to meet your goals—without breaking the bank.
If you’re a veteran of P2P texting for fundraising, you know that texting amplifies your efforts and lifts up existing channels without dragging you down with a ton of extra work. And if you’ve never utilized P2P texting before or it hasn’t been a big part of your strategy, you might not know where to start—but we’re here to help. Let’s get to it!
Why ThruText?
GetThru’s P2P texting tool, ThruText, empowers you to have real, two-way conversations with your donors where they are: on their phones. ThruText is a powerful fundraising tool for many reasons. We’ll highlight just a few:
- Texting has a 95% average open rate.
- ThruText’s MMS capability allows you to add photos, videos, or gifs to your initial messages.
- ThruText’s custom fields allow you to personalize your text messages with variable text. We highly recommend including fields like last gift amount, ask amount, and designation so that your donors know that you’ve done your homework before making a solicitation.
- ThruText’s data upload tool scrubs your phone numbers for you, removing anything that isn’t a textable cell phone. You can export that data back and update internal records.
- ThruText’s recommended replies allow you to pre-write your script but customize responses along the way as needed, ensuring authentic conversations. Additionally, it’s exportable data collection tool lets you track conversation data such as who plans to give, opt out reason, or refusal reason—the sky’s the limit.
- Most importantly: ThruText facilitates real conversations between real humans.
Planning, strategy,and messaging
As a fundraiser, you know how important it is to create a solid plan and stick to it when launching a Giving Tuesday campaign. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when defining your strategy:
- Who do you want to reach on Giving Tuesday?
- How will you segment that data for texting?
- What’s your messaging for each segment?
- Who will send the texts?
- When will you send texts? How will texting fit
into existing Giving Tuesday strategy?
Let’s workshop that and create a sample plan!
Who do you want to reach on Giving Tuesday?
We want to make sure to reach as many donors and potential donors, and Giving Tuesday allows us to cast that wide net while being strategic with messaging.
How will you segment that data for texting?
LYBUNTs
SYBUNTs/Acquisition/Lapsed donorsMonthly donors - second ask
Stewardship
What’s your messaging for each segment?
LYBUNTs → Renew your gift today—emphasize gratitude for loyal donors
SYBUNTs/Acquisition/Lapsed Donors → Make a gift on this important day & be part of something special
Monthly donors → Thank you for being a loyal supporter! Will you make an additional gift for Giving Tuesday?
Stewardship → We noticed that you’re a longtime supporter of our organization. In the spirit of Giving Tuesday, I wanted to say thank you! We’re also curious: what inspires you to give?
Who will send the texts?
Our Development Associate will manage the day-of send, with an assist from our volunteers
When will you send texts? How will texting fit into existing Giving Tuesday strategy?
We will send one save the date text to the full list prior to the big day. Our day-of texts will complement our email and social strategy, with a first text being sent at 10AM local time and a reminder being sent at 5PM local time.
Your turn!
Use the guide to sketch out your texting plan for Giving Tuesday.
- Who do you want to reach on Giving Tuesday?
- How will you segment that data for texting?
- What’s your messaging for each segment?
- Who will send the texts?
- When will you send texts? How will texting fit into existing Giving Tuesday strategy?
Getting your message out
Having a solid plan is half the battle. Now, let’s talk about crafting engaging messaging that will get your donors excited and ready to support their alma mater on Giving Tuesday. Here are our four top tips:
- Be professional, but make it fun. Texting isn’t like a direct mail piece: you don’t need to address people with prefixes or use formal language (unless your donors have indicated this preference.) At the same time, it’s still best practice to fully spell out words and avoid acronyms.
- Brevity helps. In order to grab and keep people’s attention, the name of the game here is keeping it short and sweet. While ThruText does not have a character limit, we recommend aiming to stay at 160 characters or below.
- Use an authentic voice. This relates to our first tip—when texting your donors, think about the types of messaging that you might respond to via text.
- Tell your donors what they need to know to help them get excited and engaged. Along with being a key part of your annual strategy, Giving Tuesday can be super fun. Make sure you’re sharing information with your donors that will help them feel part of the excitement—whether matching gift opportunities, progress to goal, or the impact of gifts made.
Start off strong
But what types of messaging works best? We’ve found that the best performing initial follow a simple structure:
- Introduce yourself and why you’re reaching out
- Personalize your messaging with variable text
- Ask a question to prompt engagement
Here’s an example!
Keep the conversation going
When setting up your texting campaign, lean on ThruText’s recommended reply tool to ensure you have a strong script built out in advance. Here are a few examples of what types of replies to include:
- Yes, will give: “Thanks so much, FIRST NAME! Here’s a link to give: {link}.”
- No, won’t give: “I understand, FIRST NAME! Here’s a link in case you change your mind: {link}.”
- Already gave: “Thank you so much, FIRST NAME! Your generous support makes a difference.”
- Why should I give today? What does my gift support?: “Great question, FIRST NAME! Your gift supports {examples from your institution here!}”
Picture this: Giving Tuesday is over. You crushed your goal, and texting was a huge success. What next?
Time for reporting! Here are a few ideas for ensuring that you can collect meaningful data.
- Track folks who pledged to give via text in case later follow-up is needed.
- Examine data & trends on response rates, pledges, and fulfillment. This data will help guide your texting strategy in the future.
- Don’t forget to do your contact reports! (Hint: use ThruText reports to pull a list of everyone you texted.
Your Advancement Services & data friends will thank you!) - Share your success with your colleagues and higher-ups so that they can congratulate you on a job well done.
Ready to try it for yourself?
Write to us at sales@getthru.io and a member of our team will get in touch.
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