5 Easy Ways to Engage with Your Digital Audience

Happy New Year (and happy surviving year-end fundraising)! So you just spent the past one to two months laser focused on revenue goals, response rates, and average gifts. You are just about tapped out — and let’s face it, so is your audience.

What do you do now?

Well first, take a deep breath and congratulate yourself and your team for making it through. And second, start planning for the new year. Here are five easy (and fun) ways to engage with your audience after a full-force fundraising campaign.

Quizzes

Quizzes are a fun way to interact with your audience, and the possibilities are endless! You can do personality quizzes that relate back to your mission. They can even be as simple as one-question quizzes. Or you can do knowledge-based quizzes to test how much they know about your organization or mission. This will also help educate your audience in a fun way. 

Voting

Is your organization getting new swag or gear for the new year or for a new campaign? Have your creative team come up with different designs and let your supporters vote on their favorite. It can be as simple as the designs for new membership cards or T-shirts for an event. Once the poll has been cast, you can close the loop with your audience, letting them know which design won and prompt them to purchase the item.

Surveys

Using surveys can help inform your organization as to who your audience is, but also remind your audience why they support you. You can ask a number of different questions about their interest, what they love most about your organization and mission, or a personal story as to why they support your organization. You can even close the loop with your audience and share some of the best stories, but make sure to keep personal information confidential.

Cards

If your organization or someone in your organization has a special occasion coming up, let your audience help you celebrate. Maybe it’s a good luck card for a competition or a birthday card for your chairperson. Have your audience sign the card to feel more like a part of your community. This is also a great way to add new subscribers to your email file.

Giveaways

Sometimes it’s great to just reward your supporters. If you can acquire a cool or fun item (or items) use them for a free giveaway contest. You can make it as easy as asking them to enter their information (name, email, etc), or you can connect it to a survey and ask them for input on why they support your organization to enter. You can also use giveaways as a thank-you campaign to your supporters.

Bonus Tip: Build Community

While this one can take a little more work, it often yields high results. For more on how to build community engagement, check out this blog post.

These tactics are not only fun but also let your audience know that you care about them as more than just financial supporters, and it also deepens their connection with your organization. You can also use these across multiple digital channels—in email, social media, on your website, etc. And remember, you can always add a subtle upsell to the end of each of these in a thank you or submission page or a follow-up email with a donation ask. Say something like, “Thanks for participating, we appreciate your input. To continue to support us, will you chip in $10?”

Best wishes to you and your organization this year!

Want to learn more about engaging your audience? Drop us a line!