35% of Donors Give More When Faced with Engaging Content: Kentico Non-Profit Survey
35% of Online Donors Say Compelling Website Content Inspires Them to Give More
Nashua, New Hampshire, September 8, 2014 – Kentico Software the Web Content and Customer Experience Management provider, today unveiled the findings from a survey of online donors, the latest installment of Kentico’s ongoing Digital Experience research series.
According to the survey, 35% of those who donate online say they are sometimes moved to give more than planned when presented with compelling website content. But while visual content is commonly credited for amplifying many of today’s digital marketing efforts, when it comes to charities, donors are much more likely to respond to personal stories (35%) and statistics (32%).
Upgrading Repeat Donors with Compelling Content
67% also report mostly giving to the same charities, underscoring the need to upgrade donors whenever possible. With 44% preferring to give via a charity’s website (vs. in person or via mail) and 47% claiming to visit the same non-profit websites regularly, non-profits do appear to have a sizeable opportunity in connecting with their repeat donors through the content on their sites.
“While charities continue to face an uphill battle in attracting new donors, our survey suggests the right digital content can encourage greater generosity among repeat donors,” said Kentico CEO and Founder Petr Palas. “Regardless of the cause or need, non-profit sites need to combine the human and emotional elements along with the hard facts that show how widespread the problem might be.”
Attracting New Donors with Creative, Shareable Content
With 75% of Internet users claiming to give throughout the year and only 12% questioning the impact their donations will have on the given cause, Kentico’s survey suggests the web is teeming with generosity and trust, but generating awareness among new donors and convincing them to give is a challenge for even savvy non-profit digital marketers. When asked how they heard about charities that were previously unknown to them, only 36% report learning about a non-profit organization online. 35% hear about them mostly offline through family and friends, 17% on television, and 12% via periodicals, telemarketing and other ways.
Respondents also for the most part do not seem interested in receiving email newsletters from non-profits with the majority (31%) of survey respondents receiving 1 to 2 newsletters, 13% receiving 3 to 4, 9% receiving more than 5, and 46% receiving none. Similarly, while 20% report following 1-2 charities on Facebook or Twitter, 70% admit to not following any.
“New donors can be extremely difficult to reach—even online, which is why non-profit digital marketers must be incredibly creative,” continued Palas. “The ALS ice bucket challenge is a perfect example of how a non-profit organization can use creative, compelling, and inherently shareable content to introduce itself to millions of new potential donors.”
The Kentico Non-Profit Website Survey is the seventh installment of an ongoing Kentico Digital Experience Research series that was kicked off last year with the Kentico Customer Experience Survey and continued with the Kentico Mobile Experience Survey, Email Marketing Survey, Website Marketing Survey, Digital Brand Interactions Survey, and Content Marketing Survey.
332 US Internet users 18 years old and over participated in the Kentico Charities Survey, conducted online during the month of May, 2014.
More on Kentico’s specific offering for nonprofit organizations can be found here.
About Kentico CMS
Kentico CMS is an enterprise Web Content Management System and Customer Experience Management solution that provides a complete set of features for building websites, intranets, community sites and e-commerce solutions on the Microsoft ASP.NET platform, on-premise or in the Cloud. It supports mobile websites, SEO, document management, online marketing tools, multilingual websites, and multisite management, and comes out of the box with 70 ready-to-use modules, 400 configurable web parts, and source code available by request.
About Kentico Software
Kentico provides an affordable, award-winning integrated marketing solution that’s easy to use but also highly customizable for powerful real-time customer-centric marketing across multiple channels, on-premise or in the Cloud. Founded in 2004, Kentico is headquartered in the Czech Republic with offices in the US, UK, and Australia. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with 1,100 digital agency partners, Kentico powers more than 18,000 websites in 90 countries. Customers include Great British Chefs; Gibson; Mazda; Mighty River Power; Sony; Vodafone.
Jade Carter
Jade is a content writer for CMS-Connected, facilitating the needs of the company blog. Bringing 10 years of Search and Digital Marketing to the table, he strives to build informative, relevant and fun editorial posts for the blog feed. Jade is an ultra distance (26.2 miles+) trail runner and lives to run trails in and around his home town of Victoria, BC.