March 2022: A donor journey, dissected

A lot has happened since last month’s edition of The Good Stuff. If you are Ukrainian or have family or friends in Ukraine, I am thinking of you and thinking of them.

Like many of you have done, I made a donation last week in an effort to help. This gift took me on a pretty interesting donor journey that I want to share with you, to illustrate my beliefs on what should happen during and after a donation. 

I’m going to walk you through the donor experience I had with UNICEF, pointing out ⭐ what I liked and 🚩 areas for improvement along the way.
 

On February 27th, I donated $100 to UNICEF’s Ukraine Fund. 

⭐ This is a beautiful example of my favorite fundraising platform, Fundraise Up, in action. Here is UNICEF’s Ukraine Fundraise Up campaign so you can experience it for yourself. 

Notice what happens when you X out of this donation form. You are met with multiple nudges to complete your gift, featuring Fundraise Up’s signature pulsing heart. If you’re interested in trying Fundraise Up for your organization, it’s free to install and I am happy to set it up for you as a Certified Partner.
 

Directly after donating to UNICEF, 🚩 I received a generic thank you email. 

I donated to the Ukraine campaign, but the thank you email I received featured a photo of an African mother and child and thanked me for saving children “around the world.”

When I donate to help a specific group of people, I want to be thanked for helping that specific group of people. I am not alone in feeling this way; it’s why designated funds are loved by donors and hated by fundraisers! 

One very cool thing about Fundraise Up: UNICEF could have set up a Ukraine-specific thank you email for people who donate via that specific campaign. This process takes a matter of seconds and doesn’t require any design work or integration with an email marketing tool. It's so easy, and so meaningful. 

After the generic thank you email, crickets. 
Digital fundraising nerd that I am, I wondered what Ukraine-specific information I might receive in the coming days. Would UNICEF make a request for a larger gift, or for monthly donations? 🚩 Alas, no Ukraine specific communication or up-level requests ever came. Nothing hit my inbox from UNICEF for six more days.

In times of crisis, mass interest spikes quickly and dies down just as fast. UNICEF’s best opportunity to hit me up with an additional ask was in the 24-48 hours after my donation, and they missed this window. 
 

Six days after my gift, I received a second email. 

The subject line read, “How to save a child’s life”. ⭐ I love this subject line. I couldn’t resist opening the email. I was invited to “take the journey” and see how my dollars are making a difference. Here’s the email:

⭐ I love that UNICEF created something donors can engage with directly after making a gift, to learn about and celebrate our contributions. I read the graphic in this email and clicked on it right away. 🚩 I completely missed the rest of this email with the "P.S." CTA to sign up for text notifications. This CTA to sign up for SMS should have been sent as a separate email, within 24 hours of my initial donation. That’s when I would have been the most likely to read it and sign up. 

When I clicked on the graphic in the email, it brought me to a landing page with a form:

🚩 🚩 🚩 Wait a minute…

I already gave UNICEF my information when I made a donation last week. Now it feels like I’m being filtered into a lead magnet designed for people who haven’t donated yet. My gut reaction when I hit this form was, “I have to do this again? Just to see where my money is going?” Current donors should be linked straight to the content, not asked to resubmit their info.

I begrudgingly filled out the form, omitting my phone number ad unchecking the sneaky pre-selected box to sign up for texts.

Here’s the link if you would like to fill out the form and follow along. >

Which brings us to ⭐ an interactive landing page. 

I was loving every second of this "journey," soaking in the information about what UNICEF does when disaster strikes. When I reached the end, ⭐ I saw my name! (Always a nice touch). In that moment,, feeling educated and wanting to help even more, I was presented with these two CTAs:

“Donate Now” or “Share on Facebook.” 🚩 🚩 🚩 These are not the right CTAs for someone who already made a donation less than a week ago. Right above the buttons, the microcopy reads, "Even a small donation can send lifesaving supplies to a child in danger." I read this and thought, "I know! That's why I donated already!"

Alternatively, UNICEF should have asked me to do one or two of the following:

• Share on social media that I donated, encouraging my network to do the same

• Share my phone number to stay involved with text updates

• Join a monthly giving program so UNICEF can achieve a specific goal or provide more/faster aid

These are requests I would have happily considered because they acknowledge my recent gift and present me with opportunities to do more.

Instead, I was guided through a lead magnet designed for people who haven’t donated yet, which made me feel frustrated, not celebrated.


Eight days after my donation, 🚩 I still haven’t received a single email specific to what UNICEF is doing in Ukraine.

These aid organizations are extremely busy. I'm not expecting daily updates. A single email thanking me for my gift, sharing sources I can follow to stay up to date on the Ukraine attacks, and listing additional ways I can help would have done the trick.

So there you have it. 

There were things I liked about this donor journey: the ⭐ use of Fundraise Up and ⭐ the interactive "journey" experience. Unfortunately, the things I really didn’t like— 🚩 the lack of Ukraine specific communication and 🚩 a one-size-fits-all lead magnet—stopped my contribution at a single gift when it could have been more. 

I hope this example helps you identify some flaws in your own donor or user journey. I find it helpful to dissect the experience whenever I make a donation, and I have unfortunately met a lot more red flags than stars. I’m in the process of developing a new donor journey for one of my wonderful clients over the next couple of months, and I will be sure to share it as a case study when it’s up and running! 

As winter melts into spring, may we all strike the balance between staying informed and staying sane, caring for others and caring for ourselves.

-Caroline

P.S. As you finish out Q1, I highly encourage you to join my favorite nonprofit learning communities: We Are For Good Pro and Digital Donors On Demand. If you would like to register for either or both, email me and I will send you a discount code!