Fundraising and customer relationships are hard work. While few will admit it, not many organisations are getting maximum return on investment for their campaign spend.

Some reports suggest for every £92 ($140) spent driving visitors to their websites, organisations generally only spend £1 ($1.5) converting it - meaning turning that traffic into actual paying supporters or customers. Whilst 77% of fundraisers fear their causes could lose supporters due to "not communicating with them effectively".

This is where conversion paths come into action. Understanding how your conversion paths are working - or not - and optimising them, can be the major success factor for lasting engagement, revenue, and most vitally, retention.

What Is A Conversion Path?

Simply put a conversion path is the steps a user takes to complete a desired goal. No matter what the desired goal is the conversion path typically has four steps:

1. Awareness - The first time people learn about your campaign and visit your website. This could be driven by an email, paid advertising, social media outreach or search engine. Messaging should focus on educating the user about your cause.

2. Interest - At this stage they want to learn more. They may have subscribed to a newsletter or signed a petition. Now we know they care about your cause the focus can be on differentiating your message.

3. Desire - Possibly the most important stage, where a visitor is thinking about making a donation. Here personal relationships are key; appeal to their own values and establish one-to-one contact to make them part of your cause.

4. Action - This is when they decide to donate, and a visitor gets out his or her credit card to actually start filling in the form. Having a clear donation page, action specific content and easy to understand stages is key.

Of course, this is only the start. By defining a conversion path, and having the right digital infrastructure in place to measure it, you're able to begin analysing where you're losing potentials and why. This information allows for constant re-optimisation of the process to grow and retain your online donor or customer base.

How Can We Help?

Brand Response now offers end-to-end ‘Relationship Building as a Service’. You provide the campaign brief and set the parameters, we’ll work with you to:

• Set goals and co-create your conversion path
• Design the user journey and execute creative content
• Develop campaign web pages, email templates and other assets
• Automate the conversion path beyond the ‘interest’ step
• Manage one-to-one supporter contact at the ‘desire’ step (by voice or email)
• Provide regular data reports with re-optimisation actions and recommendations

Get a free 30 minute consultation. Fill out the form below or call UK 020 7112 9180 or US (501) 708-4553 and we’ll be in touch.