By Heather Mansfield, founder and editor-in-chief of Nonprofit Tech for Good
According to the 2022 M+R Benchmarks Report, nonprofits pay an average of $3.31 to secure a lead [i.e., capture an email address] through digital advertising. Most small and medium-sized nonprofits can’t afford to experiment with digital advertising for lead generation, but there are other means of securing new leads for a fraction of the cost – namely, your nonprofit’s website empowered with any of the following unique call-to-actions (CTAs).
1) Top bar opt-ins and links
The red newsletter opt-in top bar on Nonprofit Tech for Good is the best-performing newsletter CTA on our website. Over the last six months, the top bar has resulted in 973 new contacts compared to 476 new contacts from a (now removed) popup form that appeared 20 seconds after load to non-subscribers. At a cost of $13.99 a month, MailMunch is an exceptional value for adding top bars and other CTAs to your website. See also OptinMonster.
Top bars can also be links to pages on your website. For example, the Nature Conservancy uses a maroon top bar to send visitors prompted by TV ads to their monthly giving donation page.
2) Slide-in “Donate” prompts
Approximately 20 seconds after landing on the website for the Colorectal Cancer Alliance website, a small “Donate” popup slides in featuring a recent donation. Clever!
3) Embedded opt-ins and donation forms in blog and news content
A growing trend is to add large, visually prominent CTAs to the body of blog posts and news articles approximately halfway down the page. Nonprofit Tech for Good embeds a newsletter opt-in at the bottom of each post (see below) which surprisingly results in 5-10 new subscribers daily.
1) Embedded newsletter opt-in on the Marshall Project blog
2) Embedded donation form on the Human Rights Watch blog
4) Top of homepage donation forms
The ACLU has had a donation form featured at the top of their homepage for almost a year and while there is no public data on its performance, the form must be performing well or it would have been removed months ago. The concept is worth experimenting with! It’s worth noting that after you click the “X” to close the form, it is no longer visible for 24 hours.
Earn a Certificate in Social Media Marketing & Fundraising!
Our new Certificate in Social Media Marketing & Fundraising program covers the fundamentals of social media marketing and fundraising for nonprofits. Participants will learn how to create and maintain a content strategy, current best practices for the top-performing social media sites, and how to be an early adopter of emerging social media trends.
Based on 101 Digital Marketing & Fundraising Best Practices for Nonprofits, the certificate program requires the completion of four webinars. The program only costs $100 USD so that nonprofit professionals worldwide can earn the certificate without having to make a significant financial investment.
