Our Fundraising Appeal Program template is designed to automate your outbound fundraising appeals.
Before you start, you should be familiar with:
TIP: If you can't find this template on your Dotdigital account, get in touch with our support team.
Why set up a Fundraising Appeal Program?
Running a fundraising campaign can often be a manual, time consuming process. Using the Fundraising Appeal Program template, you can save time by automating your Donation asks whilst also providing a personalised experience for customers.
The Fundraising Appeal Program is aimed at prospective donors and targets them with a series of emails inviting them to donate to your organisation. By identifying customers with a high likelihood of donating, your campaign is already designed to succeed.
You can use the Fundraising Appeal Program for a stand-alone fundraising campaign, such as a Holiday Appeal or End of Year Appeal.
How does it work?
The Program is triggered by manually sending an Integrated Email Campaign to a targeted Customer List of prospective donors. Once the first email is sent, the customers are then added to the Program where they’ll receive a series of subsequent emails encouraging them to donate.
Customers who make a Donation in response to receiving one of the emails are identified using an Auto Tag in Spektrix which is synced as a Custom Data Field in Dotdigital. These donors will then receive a “Thank You” email before being removed from the Program.
Customers who do not make a Donation after the first or second emails will continue through the Program. If, after the second email is sent, a customer has neither made a donation nor clicked a link in the previous two emails, they will exit the Program.
Unlike other Dotdigital Program Templates, this automation is time-limited, meaning that it does not run continuously. Once all of the customers have exited the Program, it will stop running. The Program can then be copied and used again for any future appeals.
Before you start
Before you start to build this Dotdigital Program Template, you’ll need:
- A Synced Address Book. Contact Support if you need to set up a new Synced Address Book.
- A Synced Tag Group. Contact Support if you need to set up a new Synced Tag Group.
For the Fundraising Appeal Program, you’ll also need to prepare the following elements:
- Create a Customer List which identifies your prospective donors. Consider which metrics of engagement you want to use and the Contact Preferences you have on your system. For example, you might want to look for customers who have booked at least two Events in the last year AND donated at least once.
- Set up a dedicated Fund for your appeal. Using a Fund, you can clearly report on the success of your appeal.
- Generate a link to the Donate page on your website. You can use this to ask your customers to donate to your Fund. To separate this Fund from any other Funds you have visible to customers, consider using a Fund Attribute. You can use the iframe URL generator to find the link for your Fund.
- Create an Auto Tag and add this to your Synced Tag Group. The Auto Tag should identify customers who have made a Donation to your appeal. Create a Custom Data Field in your Dotdigital account for the Tag.
You’ll then need to set up four different email campaigns:
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Fundraising Appeal Email #1
One Integrated Email Campaign. You’ll manually send this email campaign to your Customer List of prospective donors. This email should contain a Donate button and a call to action asking your customers to donate.
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Fundraising Appeal Email #2
One triggered email campaign for customers who received the first email, but did not yet donate to the Fund. This email should contain a Donate button and a call to action asking your customers to donate, building on the first email with compelling messaging.
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Fundraising Appeal Email #3
One triggered email campaign aimed at customers who have clicked a link in the first and second emails, but have not yet donated to the Fund. This should contain a Donate button and a call to action asking your customers to donate.
TIP: Consider using Dynamic Content and Personalisation to make your emails more effective. For example, you could try personalising the subject line based on whether the recipient is an existing member/supporter or not.
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Fundraising Appeal Thank You Email
One triggered email campaign aimed at customers who have donated to your Fund. This email should thank the customer for donating to your appeal and explain the impact that their donation will have. This email will be sent to all customers in this Program who donate.
WARNING: You may already have an existing automated thank you email sent via a Customer List Schedule. Be sure to exclude your appeal Fund from that Customer List to avoid customers receiving two thank you emails.
How to set up a Fundraising Appeal Program
Before making changes, make a copy of the Fundraising Appeal Program Template.
- In your Dotdigital account, go to Automation > Programs.
- Check the box next to the template and then click Copy program from the MORE ACTIONS dropdown:
Give your Program a new name and then click CONTINUE:
REMINDER: When building your Program, don’t forget to regularly click Save to save your progress.
1. Create a Start Condition
Click on the blue start node:
Work through steps one to three to configure the start condition:
Enrolment Scheduling
- Click on SET SCHEDULE
- Choose On a set date
Select the date and time you would like the program to begin.
This should be a date after the first email (Fundraising Appeal Email #1) you have sent out.
- Click Apply
Enrolment Rule
- Click Set Rule
- Choose Segment
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Click Create New:
-
Drag and drop the Sends metric to the Include contacts that match all the rules in this group section:
- Click on have not been sent any email campaign:
- Select Sent specific campaigns from the dropdown. Then, select the name of the Integrated Email Campaign you have already sent (Fundraising Appeal Email #1).
- Click OKAY and then Apply twice.
Enrolment Limit
- Click Set Limit
-
Choose Enrol contacts in program only the first time they meet the start criteria:
- Click Apply twice.
2. Create a Decision
Click on the purple decision node under step 2 of the Program:
Then, configure the Condition and the Maximum Wait Time:
Condition
- Click on CHOOSE CONDITION
- Choose Contact Data Field Rule
-
Select the tag contact data rule you created to identify customers who donated to the Fund:
Maximum Wait Time
- Click on the RETRY WITHIN A WAIT TIME button
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Select 5 days:
3. Add an Email Campaign
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Click the green email campaign node under step 3 of the Program:
- Select or create the triggered email campaign you want to send to customers who have donated to the appeal, your Fundraising Appeal Thank You Email. This will be sent to all those who have donated to the appeal.
4. Add an Email Campaign
- Click the green email campaign node under step 4 of the Program:
- Select or create the triggered email campaign you want to send. This should be Fundraising Appeal Email #2.
TIP: Experiment with different subject lines to grab attention and boost your open rates.
5. Create a Decision
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Click on the purple decision node under step 5 of the Program:
-
Then, configure the Condition and the Maximum Wait Time:
Condition
- Click CHOOSE CONDITION
- Choose Contact Data Field Rule
Select the Tag contact data rule you created to identify customers who donated to the fund:
Maximum Wait Time
- Click on the RETRY WITHIN A WAIT TIME button
-
Select 5 days:
6. Create a Decision
- Click on the purple decision node under step 6 of the Program:
- Then, configure the Condition and the Maximum Wait Time:
Condition
- Click CHOOSE CONDITION
- Choose Present in Selected Segment
- Click CREATE NEW
-
Drag and drop the Clicks metric into the Include contacts that match all of the rules in this group box
- Click the link have not clicked any link in any email campaign they were sent link:
- Select For selected campaigns and They have clicked any link from the dropdown menus:
- Choose the first and second email campaigns you have created, Fundraising Appeal Email #1 & Fundraising Appeal Email #2
7. Add an Email Campaign
- Click on the green email campaign node under step 7 of the Program:
- Select or create the triggered email campaign you want to send to customers who have not donated to the appeal, but have clicked on a link in the previous emails, Fundraising Appeal Email #3.
TIP: For the second email, you may want to try different content. We know these potential donors are interested, so try alternative visuals or calls to action to see what resonates and drives donations.
8. Create a Decision
- Click on the purple decision node under step 8 of the Program:
Then, configure the Condition and the Maximum Wait Time:
Condition
- Click CHOOSE CONDITION
- Choose Contact data field rule
- Select the Tag contact data rule you created to identify customers who donated to the fund:
Maximum Wait Time
-
Click on the RETRY WITHIN A WAIT TIME button
-
Select 5 days
Activate the Program
To start your Program, click Activate:
WARNING: You will not be able to start your Program if there are any validation issues.
Validation issues will be listed under the Validation menu:
You can't edit a program while it is active, but you can deactivate the Program at any time to make changes:
Launching the Program
To launch the Program and start enrolling customers, you’ll need to manually send the first Integrated Email Campaign you created.
-
In Spektrix, navigate to the Customer List you have
built
to identify the prospects for your appeal.
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Under the Choose an action dropdown, select
Use in integrated email:
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Give your mailing a name.
-
Choose if you’d like to send the email immediately or schedule it for
later.
REMINDER: The send date of this email must be before the date in your first start node.
-
Select the first email campaign from the dropdown list:
- Click the send button to send or schedule your Email Campaign.
Once customers receive your initial email, they’ll then be automatically enrolled into your Program.
Further Reading
To continue learning about Dotdigital, take a look at the Communicate with your Customers category on the Support Centre.