Warming up an audience with SMS before a big ask
Supporters aren’t ATMs! Give them the attention they deserve before you ask them for the next donation.
2 min read | Illustration by Jorge Carvajal
DIGDEEP is a non-profit organization working to ensure that every American has equitable access to clean, running water forever. At a moment when so many organizations and groups are asking for money at the same time, DIGDEEP needed to make a big splash to hit their goal of funding the Navajo Water Project.
Problem
Dig Deep needed to stand out
Giving Tuesday was a pivotal milestone in Dig Deep’s fundraising effort for the Navajo Project, an indigenous-led and community-managed initiative to bring clean running water to Navajo families.
Solution
Text messages that associate DIG DEEP with positive emotions
Supporters are not ATMs. No matter how passionate your subscribers are about your cause, back-to-back text messages that ask them for donations can come off as pushy, and cause your hard-earned to unsubscribe.
In order to keep subscribers and engaged, Banter designed an outreach strategy that would associate Dig Deep with positive emotions. The sm included a lot of thankful messages and positive coverage of DIGDEEP’s work and its positive outcomes. Instead of asking for a donation, the messages served to remind supporters what they were a part of.
Donors were able to ask questions and learn more about what the impact that their donations were having.
These messages were sent in the weeks leading up to Giving Tuesday, warming up their audience and connecting them to the actual human being on the other end of the fundraising effort.
We were thrilled to work with Banter—what a seamless, effective, and streamlined process and what a phenomenal team! We're so happy with our increased ability to engage with our supporters and meet them where they are, and we can't wait to work together in the future.”
— Annie Lascoe, Chief Relationship Officer
Result
DIGDEEP exceeded their fundraising goal by $50,000
When DIGDEEP finally messaged people for Giving Tuesday, they saw the results. 25% of all donations, and 20% of donors that day came from SMS.
All in all, DIGDEEP exceeded their goal by $50,000 thanks to the addition of conversational text messaging to their toolkit.