Last week’s Institute of Fundraising Technology Conference included a presentation from James Barker of Shelter, who spilled the beans on some of the charity’s work online. Gareth Jones reports.
Barker, who is senior direct marketing executive at Shelter, spoke about the charity’s Christmas digital campaign last year as well as some of its work online more generally. Here are just a few highlights I’ve picked out.
The Christmas campaign
- Shelter created several online products – namely Housebling, Santacam, Festify, as well as continuing to allow using to send branded e-cards.
- According to Barker, the light-hearted Facebook app Festify (pictured) “surprised a lot of people” as it showed that Facebook can be used to fundraise.
- Three-fifths of visits to Housebling came on the day Stephen Fry tweeted about it, causing the site crashed. “It came out of nowhere, we weren’t expecting it”, says James.
Results
- A 49 per cent increase in online donations in Christmas 2009 compared to 2010
- Increased Facebook referrals to donate page by 269 per cent
- A 43 per cent increase in donations from Google AdWords
- Improved ROI
- Over 50 per cent of the online donations come at Christmas
- E-card revenue hit £26,000, compared to £7,000 three years ago
Other online tactics
- Shelter uses Facebook advertising and has found it successful, though its initial tactic of targeting the advertising to users who ‘liked’ other charities was not successful (and in fact only served to generate negative press publicity!). He also warned that Facebook requires advertisers to spend at least £4,000 a month, and that this transaction has to be paid for by credit card, which can be inconvenient.
- Elsewhere, paid search is Shelter’s biggest means of directed people to its donation page and online products. As Barker puts it: “Paid Search helps charities direct supporters to the right place on their site and increase online donations.”
- Barker also feels that banner ads are also a good way of raising awareness although he admits that it can be difficult to track their success.
