Published before February 2009
A major new report finds charities are not exploiting the opportunities of website and email marketing.
A new benchmark study released by dotMailer - the digital marketing agency - finds that even in the light of the current climate, major charities with significant budgets are not proactively exploiting all the opportunities available to them through the relatively low cost channel of digital marketing.
15 top charities
dotMailer analysed the website homepages, some content pages (including donation paths) and email follow-ups of 15 major charities. Set tasks were undertaken on each of the websites' homepages, including online credit card donations, and each scored according to dotMailer's 26 key success factor guidelines, under the headings of: Homepage content; Homepage design; Accessibility; Usability; Donation; Email follow-up.
CRUK and Save the Children top the leader board
Generally the charities scored well in some of the corner-stone areas of successful charity websites: content that is up-to-date, inviting and engaging. Some charities, such as Cancer Research UK (81%) and Save the Children (80%) scored particularly highly in demonstrating how to engage, capture and convert their website visitors.
However, crucial areas such as collecting permission based email signups and contact data, trading donors up in the donation path and following donations up with relationship building emails, saw charities score surprisingly low in many cases.
In the case of sending follow-up email campaigns to donors within 30 days of the transaction, not one single charity surveyed scored a point.
2009 will be a challenging year for the charity sector. There are charities that will rise to this challenge by focusing on the most cost effective channels and techniques for acquiring, retaining and upgrading donors. These are the organisations that will succeed in these challenging environments, and website and online marketing will play a crucial role in that success.
To download the full Hitting the Mark report, go to www.dotmailer.com/hittingtheheart