The holiday season is upon us, and that means the busiest time of the year is in full swing, with Giving Tuesday and End-of-Year campaigns running full speed ahead.

Fresh from the insightful Mini-Con conference hosted by DMAW in Washington, D.C., and reflecting on our own experiences during prior holiday seasons, I’m zeroing in on the topic that is generating some interesting debates — attribution.

Understanding Attribution

At its core, attribution in our industry is about identifying which touchpoints drive engagement and, most importantly, donations. But the complexity arises when a donor’s journey spans multiple channels.

Picture this: A donor or prospect first learns about your Giving Tuesday campaign via a mailed postcard, then interacts with your follow-up emails and reads a blog on your site, before a Google search finally cements their decision to donate. If only the final touchpoint is credited, the significance of the preceding interactions can be overlooked.

The Art of Being Strategic Without Being Siloed

“Correct” attribution guides how you allocate your budget, but it may only tell one story — the story of revenue per channel — not the entire journey that drove each donor to give.

While we advocate for a judicious approach to budgets, recognizing the value of an omnichannel strategy is equally critical for fundraising success. As discussed during the Mini-Con, it’s vital to combine campaigns, channels, and departments to make attribution all-inclusive versus using direct revenue as the only KPI to determine success. This holistic approach requires a shift in mindset: resetting expectations, conducting regular matchbacks, and measuring efforts in real time.

Moreover, assessing channels in silos perpetuates the outdated attribution that keeps channels at the center of your campaign strategy rather than your audience. For example, display results might seem underwhelming when looked at in a vacuum, but when you consider how their presence has lifted response to your other channels and the quality of donors they have brought in, suddenly they tell a much different story about the health and future of your program.

What Can You Change Today To Make Attribution Easier Tomorrow?

Know your donor and their preferred channels! There are more than 20 channels available today, so it’s not possible or realistic to deploy a campaign in all of them. With that in mind prioritize which channels to harness based on insights about your donors, where they consume content, and your own content availability — if you don’t have video content, for example, YouTube ads may not be the best use of your budget this year.

First impressions matter! Prioritize the channels that introduce your campaign. If you send out a Giving Tuesday postcard first, which we have found to lift GT results, consider adding personal touches, such as live stamps or handwritten fonts. The following touches in other channels can echo the messaging and creative of this introductory touch to boost the surround-sound effect of your campaign. Furthermore, there are many (often small) elements you can improve upon within email communications, which you’ll see have immediate, positive impacts. While we’ve seen these tried-and-true methods work for multiple organizations, here are some stats shared at Mini-Con to bring back to your team this Giving Tuesday:

• Subject Lines that start with brackets can increase your open rate by 17%!
• CTA Buttons written in the 1^st person increase CTR by 28%!
• Odd From Lines (ex: A message from the CEO…) increase RR by 27%!
• The presence of a P.S. increases CTR by 14%, so make sure it’s an included piece in your emails!

Test, test, test! If there’s a surplus budget, test a high-ranking but previously untried channel. For instance, have you explored paid Google Ads for Giving Tuesday? You could randomly segment your file in such a way where 50% are targeted across three different channels and the other 50% is targeted in four. The results of this test can help determine your channel investment for your year-end campaign.

Plan Your Attribution Strategy

If you haven’t before, this is the year you should…

• Create landing pages connected to each touchpoint for each audience segment.
• Plan for a post-campaign “matchback” of all donors who give between your effort’s start and finish, to establish who gave vs. who was asked. This attribution effort will help you identify key variables to monitor moving forward for attribution metrics.
• Pre-plan the necessary steps required to complete this “matchback” to ensure smooth execution so you can leverage the learnings for the next campaigns. (We know this can be tricky — we’re here to help if you need it!) We actually heard many people talk about how they were not going this far, and instead intuitively deciding where to invest their channel budgets. We measure every action and repurpose budget for the next campaign based on those findings.
• Monitor your campaigns daily and pivot in real time during the campaign — for example, shifting ad spend budget from one channel to another if the engagement and/or donations warrant it. This allows you to maximize your revenue each day of your campaign.

After Giving Tuesday, in the spirit of a more progressive and holistic approach to evaluating campaign results, consider the following angles when reviewing results:

After completing your data matchback and establishing audience engagement by channel, analyze your new prospects vs. your current and lapsed donors, discerning commonalities and differences in behavior and engagement.

• Benchmark your results against your past performances rather than industry averages, a salient point highlighted during the Mini-Con.
• Identify tactical testing results by audience, messaging differences that drove engagement or giving, subject lines, sender names, FWD tactics, etc., as we have found there to be a significant difference between what it takes to engage new donors in 2023 and what will trigger your current donors to respond.

By capitalizing on learnings from Giving Tuesday and focusing on insights deeper than email metrics, you will be equipped to refine your approach. This will help both in the end of this year, and also when planning for a successful 2024 — ensuring every fundraising dollar invested during this season is more impactful than the last, and that your program continues to grow, enabling your organization to meet its mission! Good luck, and we hope you will let us know how you do!