Co-Authored by Katie Zupancic Wymer, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Event 360, and Jamie Arneson, Account Director, Wpromote
Welcome to 2019! We hope you had a wonderful holiday, but as everyone in the peer-to-peer fundraising industry knows, there is no such thing as downtime. Our teams are excited to ramp up for the 2019 event season and put the plans we started working on last summer into action!
In order to maximize a peer-to-peer fundraising event’s success, we are continually looking for ways to lure past participants back and attract new participants via digital marketing efforts. By applying these five digital marketing tips to your peer-to-peer fundraising event’s marketing plan, you too can make 2019 your best year yet.
1. Leverage your existing customer base.
Don’t forget your past participants! These supporters know your mission and have already experienced the magic of your event. Create dedicated campaigns to drive repeat participants with imagery and copy that evokes the feeling and memories of your event. You can also use lists of past participants to create lookalike audiences via social media advertising to find new participants who have similar online behavioral characteristics to your current participant base.
2. Show the WHY.
Whether you are using mission- or impact-based messaging or highlighting the unique qualities of your event, make sure that the imagery, videos, and content you share are compelling. Your event and mission are special, so make sure that comes through in the ad content. Use the ads to tell your story and drive viewers to action!
3. Do not be afraid of video!
While creating a video from scratch can feel overwhelming and out of reach, using cell phone, GoPro video content, or animation using an online tool can be effective ways to promote your event via video. User-generated content is also a great way to tell your event’s story via video. For one of our projects, we collected first-person video of a participant’s day at the event, taken on her cell phone. Her raw excitement and passion were a compelling way to tell the story of the event, without requiring an expensive film shoot.
4. Track your efforts, so that you can use data to optimize and innovate.
Figure out how you will quantify and evaluate performance and when you will make changes based on those results. Before you launch your campaign, test your tracking pixels and do a full review of your Google Analytics and any other reporting platform.
5. Remember, not all participants are created equal.
A select group of loyal returning participants, top fundraisers, and team captains have attributes and behaviors that make them more “valuable” to your organization from a customer lifetime value perspective. This means that over their lifetime relationship with your event and/or organization, their efforts will make a greater impact than other participants, who may join your event only once, without fundraising or developing a connection with your mission. Event 360 and Wpromote work together to use survey responses and registration data to understand patterns of past participant behavior with custom models and data visualizations in a customer lifetime value analysis. We can use this data to help us find new participants with similar characteristics to these valuable constituents, furthering our mission and bringing new constituents to our events.
The start of a new year brings with it a chance to be bold, reevaluate what is working, and implement new ideas to maximize success in the new year. If you consider these five digital marketing tips for your peer-to-peer fundraising event, you will find renewed success in retention and acquisition, supporting your bottom line and making 2019 your best year yet.
Intrigued by how your organization might be able to explore customer lifetime value modeling? Overwhelmed by adding another five items onto your to-do list or SOP? We are here to help! Contact us here. Cheers to the new year!
Katie Zupancic Wymer (LinkedIn, Twitter) is the Senior Manager, Digital Marketing at Event 360. She manages digital marketing strategy, social media strategy, and sponsorship for MuckFest®, the FUN mud run in support of a world free of multiple sclerosis. She also manages digital marketing for other fundraising events including Bike MS. Newly Minnesotan, she enjoys exploring the Bold North with her tiny dogs, Annie and Charlie.
Jamie Arneson (LinkedIn) is an Account Director on the Strategic Account Management team at Wpromote. Jamie began her career in ticketing, event production, and event marketing, most notably in the UCLA Athletics Marketing Department where she focused on driving event attendance and new donations. At Wpromote, she focuses on developing marketing strategies for large Ecommerce brands like Zenni Optical and Z Gallerie in addition to continuing her work in the non-profit event marketing space for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and Susan G. Komen. When not developing marketing strategies, she can be found watching gymnastics, scuba diving, and trying new restaurants.
