5 Nonprofits That Are Succeeding With Personalization
Customers are expecting personalized, relevant experiences whether they are shopping, consuming content—or making a charitable donation.
Customers are expecting personalized, relevant experiences whether they are shopping, consuming content—or making a charitable donation.
In fact, 44% of donors told Accenture in 2017 that they would be willing to donate up to 10% more for a personalized experience. And that number increases to 62% for Millennials.
Nonprofits have taken note. In the spirit of Giving Tuesday, we take a look at five nonprofits that are heeding the personalization call for a variety of causes.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
St. Jude, which has long been committed to understanding, treating, and defeating childhood cancer, launched an educational advertising campaign to raise awareness about the realities of the disease. As part of this campaign, the 56-year-old organization created Together by St. Jude, an online destination it is referring to as the “home base to face cancer.”
The site uses technology such as dynamic online media, advanced targeting, and big data analytics so that visitors can easily find the help they need via personalized content based on where they are in their journey: just diagnosed, in treatment, and life after cancer. (For more details about St. Jude’s efforts, click here.)
The Truth Initiative
The Truth Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness among young adults and teens about the dangers of smoking, is building unique audience profiles and targeting them with personalized campaigns. Since employing this strategy, Truth has had three times higher digital ad conversion compared with other digital tactics.
One example of Truth personalization in action is the #CATmageddon effort in which the nonprofit targeted cat owners with information on how cigarette smoke affects their pets.
“We focus on youth and young adults broadly,” said Eric Asche, Truth’s CMO, in an interview with CMO.com earlier this year. “There are some universal truths about the audience. But there’s an opportunity—and a need—for us to personalize and individualize the message in a way that’s most relevant to each individual story.”
American Cancer Society
Relay For Life is a community-based annual fundraising event for the American Cancer Society. Its participants are asked to download a mobile fundraising app for collecting money and managing their fundraising efforts. The app sends personalized push notifications to participants to show them how what they’re doing is making a difference.
For example, on National Cancer Survivors Day, the organization sent messages to volunteer fundraisers when they raised over $100, showing how this money can pay for one night in a “Hope Lodge” for a patient who needs care. Since implementing the personalized push notifications, the app has seen a 34% increase in funds raised through it.
Girl Scouts Of The USA
The Girl Scouts traditionally used booths and door-to-door sales to promote their cookie program. Digital Cookie, the organization’s digital sales platform, helps the girls enhance their entrepreneurial and interpersonal skills—while making more sales through personalized messaging. They are able to develop and personalize their own online digital business and communications outreach.
About 200,000 girls today are learning valuable, real-life lessons about online marketing, personalization, app usage, digital commerce, social networking, leadership, and financial literacy on the Digital Cookie platform.
Charity: Water
Charity: Water, a nonprofit that is committed to bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries, sends personalized emails to its donors to highlight the outcomes of their individual donations. This personalized communication makes donors feel good about their contributions and makes the donations feel more real—a surefire way to get people to donate again.