Smart Appeals: Anniversary Donors

We know that LYBUNT retention is one of the most important things schools can do to maintain and grow their base of support. That's why we created Smart Appeals: Anniversary Donors, a low-lift way to renew your most loyal donors and capture those who just lapsed.

What is Smart Appeals: Anniversary Donors?

Anniversary Donors is a type of Smart Appeal focused on donors who are up for renewal next month or this month, as well as donors who just lapsed. GiveCampus generates an appeal list for you based on a donor's most recent gift and, in a few clicks, allows you to send hyper-personalized solicitations en masse to encourage renewal. 

How do I access Smart Appeals?

If you have access to GC Social Fundraising or GC Giving Forms, you will find Smart Appeals in your Fundraising Dashboard > Smart Appeals. Anniversary Donors is a Smart Appeal available to all partners with access to the Fundraising Dashboard.

🛑🚨 STOP, DROP, AND DATA UPLOAD 🚨🛑

Smart Appeals are powered by the Data Importer, which allows you to easily feed regular data into GiveCampus! We recommend refreshing your data before executing any Smart Appeals (or automating a nightly feed) to ensure the most recent giving information is reflected and to avoid soliciting someone who just gave!

• Learn more and get started with the Data Importer.

Preparing to Solicit Anniversary Donors 

There are a few necessary steps before you start leveraging Smart Appeals!

• Add Physical Mailing Address: 
  • Who: Necessary to email anniversary donors through GiveCampus
  • Why: We will automatically append this to your email footers for Smart Appeals in order to stay compliant with CanSpam laws.
  • How: Fundraising Dashboard > Content and Settings > Other 
• Set Which Gift Types Should Inform Donor Statuses: 
  • Who: Necessary for any use of Anniversary Donors
  • Why: Ensures GiveCampus only counts types of gifts you wish to inform Anniversary Donors. For example, if you upload gifts that are "pledges" that we aren't counting a pledge as a donor's "anniversary gift" unless that is actually your intent!
  • How: School Dashboard > Settings > Select which Gift Types should inform your Donor Statuses 
• Refresh Donor & Gift Data Files: 
  • Who: Recommended before any use of Smart Appeals, especially Anniversary Donors
  • Why: Ensures your data is up to date and lists are accurate!
  • How: School Dashboard > Data Import > Import Files (or File Import History to verify!)
• Set Up a Giving Form or Social Fundraising Campaign:
  • Who: Necessary for any use of Smart Appeals
  • Why: Allows you to specify the form or campaign a donor will support. This may change month over month! For example, during the month of your Giving Day you might point them to your Giving Day to renew their gift, but the rest of the year you send them to a Giving Form! 
  • How: Fundraising Dashboard > Giving Form OR Fundraising Dashboard > Campaigns

Pro-Tip: Establish a retention focused Giving Form. Keep the content and visuals be really donor centric and help these returning donors feel known. Check out this example!

Understanding Anniversary Donor Statuses

These statuses will tell you who is coming up for renewal next month, who is currently up for renewal, and then who lapses once their 12 month anniversary passes! Check out the FAQs below for more information on how Donor Statuses for Smart Appeals are defined.

• Upcoming: An ‘Upcoming’ anniversary donor is a donor for whom the anniversary of their last gift is coming up in the next month. 
  • For example, a donor who made their last gift in April 2022 will show as ‘Upcoming’ in March 2023. 
• Current: A ‘Current’ anniversary donor is a donor for whom the anniversary of their last gift is this month! It’s been 12 months since their last gift. 
  • For example, a donor who made their last gift in April 2022 will show as ‘Current’ in April 2023.
• Lapsed: ‘A Lapsed’ anniversary donor is a donor for whom the anniversary of their last gift was last month and didn’t renew their gift during that prior month. 
  • For example, if a donor made their last gift in April 2022 and they did not give in April 2023, they will show as a lapsed donor in May 2023. 

Time to solicit your anniversary donors!

Track sends and view Smart Appeals reporting

Smart Appeals reporting is available in the Smart Appeals section. Use Smart Appeals > Reporting to verify that an appeal was sent and to review its performance.

What the reporting dashboard shows

• Email send status: The reporting tiles display the number of emails sent in each batch, confirming that your appeal was dispatched.
• Performance metrics: Aggregate counts and basic statistics help you monitor each appeal batch.

How to confirm a Smart Appeal was sent

1. Go to Smart Appeals > Reporting.
2. Locate the Anniversary Donors appeal batch by name or send date.
3. Check the reporting tiles. A nonzero value in the Emails Sent indicator confirms that the emails were sent.

Quick tips

• Emails appear in the dashboard immediately after they are sent. Use the tiles to track performance over time.
• The reporting data reflects what was actually sent. If a batch does not appear, verify that you completed all the Smart Appeals steps and check again.

If soliciting anniversary donors via GiveCampus (recommended), you will want to follow all of the steps below. If, instead, you prefer to send solicitations using a different email marketing system, you can follow the steps to generate lists and then export a CSV with personalized giving links. In that instance, you can still use our sample email copy here! 😉

Step 1: Create Email Templates 

• Head to Smart Appeals > Email Templates
• Select Template to Create / Modify
  • Upcoming
  • Current
  • Lapsed
• Add Email Template Copy
  Pro-Tip: These are the email templates – think of them as your starting place and content that’ll be helpful for most of the year. You will be able to adjust the content each month when sending your emails to reflect seasonal content, point to different giving forms, etc. For example, during the month of September you might have content that reflects nostalgia around the start of the school year and in December, you point to a special giving form that notes a Calendar Year End incentive, but you’ll start from the same base template each time.
• Define Your ‘Custom Link’ Experience: Check out FAQs below for more information on Custom Links.
  • Before you Embed Custom links into your email templates, define the link experience for each template! 
    • Select which Form / Campaign it should point to
    • Customize the custom link text (ex: “Give now!” or “Renew Your Gift!”)
    • Decide whether to include an auto-filled ask amount. Should that pre-filled amount be the same as their last gift or scaled up by a certain percentage?
      

Step 2: Email Anniversary Donors! 

• Option 1 (Recommended): Email Anniversary donors within GiveCampus. 
  • Use the ‘Filter’ selection to determine which group(s) you’d like to email
    
  • Select All or hand select the constituents you’d like to email
  • Click ‘Email Selected Donors’
    
  • Select the relevant email template.
    • If you’d like to make any adjustments to make this month’s outreach feel timely and unique, you can make those edits! This will just adjust that particular month’s content (not the template itself). 
  • Send yourself a test. 
  • Send email!

• Option 2: Export a list to solicit anniversary donors using your own email marketing tool. 
  • Use the ‘Filter’ selection to determine which group(s) you’d like to export
  • Select All, or hand select the constituents you’d like to export and click ‘Export Selected'
  • Determine your export parameters:
    • Do you want to include a Custom Link?
    • Which form or campaign should that link point to? 
    • Do you want that link to pre-populate an ask amount? 
    • If so, should it be the same amount as their last gift or scaled up a certain amount?
  • Export! 
    • This will give you a spreadsheet with the donor’s name, email, last gift date, last gift designation, last gift amount, their anniversary donor status, and a Custom Link link

Additional Questions

Are Anniversary statuses informed only by gifts made on GiveCampus?

Great question. No! Anniversary statuses are informed by gifts you import via the Data Importer. We will then use that data AND GiveCampus data to remove constituents from the smart appeal list if they are no longer an "anniversary donor". For example, if a donor is in their ‘current’ anniversary month, and they give on GiveCampus they will automatically show as ‘converted’ and will be pulled out of the renewal list!

What is a Custom Link? 

Custom links are similar to GiveCampus' Personalization functionality. They create a tailored, easy giving experience for returning donors using the data you have about them

• Greets the donor by name: “Hi Jane”
• Pre-populated suggested ask amount: This ask amount will be based on the gift that prompted the solicitation opportunity – their last gift. 
• Pre-Selected Designation: First populated from the first designation of the last imported gift. Otherwise, it uses the first designation from the last online gift. Note: In order for the designation to pre-populate from your Custom link, the designation name from your imported gift must also be a designation option on the Giving Form or Campaign that you point to. 
• Payer name: We’ll pre-populate the payer name and not require the donor to fill this out. This is based on the person’s name from your data importer if present. Otherwise, it uses the payer name from the last online gift. This will display on the payment form only, not the pre-payment form.
• Email, Country, Zip: Instead of re-asking for the person’s email, country, and zip, we’ll suppress those fields but pass through the data into your reports. This passed through data will be based on your data upload – if there is no data present for these fields, we’ll look at the country and zip code from their last online gift. If there is no preferred email uploaded, then we will use business email, then their other email, or the payer email from the last online gift.

What types of analytics will I get on these emails?

Great question! Stay tuned for your Smart Appeals analytics dashboard coming soon.

What do I do if I'm having trouble setting up or sending Smart Appeals?

Reach out to support@givecampus.com and we'll lend you a hand!