Retargeting is a powerful tool for your nonprofit that gives your donation program the juice it needs to hit its goals.
At this point, everyone with a Facebook profile has had the surreal experience of seeing a product that you just started considering pop up on your feed. Imagine if your nonprofit could do that with people who visited your donation landing page but decided not to donate. That is the power of retargeting ads.
Why Use Retargeting for Nonprofits?
2020 highlighted the need for nonprofits to have a strong digital marketing infrastructure to survive. The lack of in-person fundraising events and face-to-face networking opportunities has made fundraising more challenging.
As your nonprofit spends more and more of their budget online, it’s important to increase your conversion rates while also decreasing your costs. That is where retargeting comes in.
Retargeting ads are notoriously more efficient than traditional ads. Many people have seen conversion rates as high as 25%.
What is a Retargeting Ad?
Retargeting serves your ads to people who have already interacted with your digital brand. Your audiences for retargeting ads are people who have commented on your posts, spent time on your website, or even people who donated in the past.
Anyone familiar with your organization is a candidate for retargeting. This means, retargeting always hits the screens of “warm leads,” or those most likely to click on them.
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Retargeting Campaign Options for Nonprofits
Let’s take a look at a few different examples of how you can use retargeting ads for your nonprofit.
Abandoned Donation Recovery
It’s estimated that between 50-70% of online donations are abandoned before completing the giving process. Retargeting allows you to convert those abandoned donations into donors. This can seriously skyrocket your website conversion rate.
Using Facebook ads as an abandoned donation recovery tool is one of the most efficient ways to start your retargeting program. You reach people who have already demonstrated an interest in giving and just haven’t completed the process. When retargeting ads reach those people with a strong call to action, they are likely to complete their donation.
Engaging Site Visitors Who Didn’t Donate
Another great use of retargeting for nonprofits is to run ads that tell a story about your organization’s impact to people who have visited your website but not donated. These are people who are familiar with you, but might not have gotten the motivation they needed to donate from your website. By showing the impact your organization has with a well-told story, you can passively lead them to become a donor.
Reactivating Lapsed Donors
You can also use Facebook retargeting ads to reactivate lapsed donors. These are people who donated in the past, but no longer support your organization’s mission. Sometimes all people need is a reminder of the good that you are doing to motivate them to support again.
Using Facebook’s Audience Manager, upload your email list of lapsed donors into your ad account. Facebook uses this list to populate a custom audience that can be targeted by your ads. Reactivating donors can be a huge facet of a successful retargeting campaign, and it isn’t nearly as hard as it may seem.
Retargeting Creative and Media Tips
If you’re new to Facebook ads, Facebook Blueprint is a wonderful free resource for those looking to learn. It’s the perfect place to get acquainted with some of the advanced features that are available to your nonprofit.
Here are some of our own quick tips on creating engaging ads:
- Tell your story. Make sure your ads are showing potential donors the impact their donation will have through storytelling.
- Have a strong call to action. Make sure that you make it clear that you’re asking for donations with clear asks.
- Consider incentivizing donations with merchandise or apparel. Sometimes giving people a gift in return for their donation is the nudge they need to become a lifetime supporter.
Once you have your site setup, your campaigns created, and your custom audiences populated, you are all set to start retargeting. Constantly monitor your campaign progress and test what works best for your organization. With these steps, you can have your nonprofit retargeting ads running on Facebook in no time, and enjoy the higher conversion rates that are crucial to your nonprofits success in the digital age.
Get Started with Facebook Ads
If this is your first time running Facebook ads, be sure to check out our blog post on “Why and How your Nonprofit Should Advertise on Facebook.” That will help you get the basics covered. Once you’re up and running, you’ll want to make sure you have a few things ready to go to set up your campaign:
- Your Facebook profile with full administrator access
- A Facebook Business Manager account
- A Facebook Ads account with a payment method set up
Make sure you also have the Facebook pixel installed properly on your website. The pixel is Facebook’s proprietary code that tracks your website visitors and connects their corresponding Facebook profile with their actions on your website. When the Facebook pixel is installed, you can create custom audiences for your Facebook ads that are composed of people who have visited your website, track those who have viewed certain pages, or even those who added a donation to their cart.
The pixel is the magic ingredient for retargeting, so you want to make sure that you have it installed properly. There are a ton of great WordPress plugins that make installing the Facebook Pixel an easy process. For your donation forms, use GiveWP’s latest free add-on to make sure your donor info is being received correctly every time.
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