We’ve all been there.

It took three months to launch that marketing campaign from start-to-finish.  Yes, there were many hurdles along the way, but you pulled it together with the help of your team and even launched on time. You pop the champagne and toast to a job well done.

A week goes by.  There is a little bit of action…maybe a top of the funnel (TOFU) form fill or two, but nothing to write home about.  After all, you’ve not collected nearly enough data to start compiling reports and making decisions.

A month passes. The campaign numbers still aren’t great.  Panic starts to set in.  Your client, your boss, and your team are getting antsy.  But has your campaign even run for long enough at this point to know whether or not it is performing well?  What does “long enough” mean?  Hell, what does “performing well” even mean?

Let’s get acclimated

Now, before we jump into campaign optimization or how to analyze performance, let’s make sure we’re talking apples to apples. I will start by defining what I mean by a “campaign” and touch on the evolution (and importance) of the buyer’s journey.

I appreciate the thoroughness but… I just want to optimize my campaign

Is your idea of a campaign the same as mine?

Let’s get aligned on this whole campaign idea. The word “campaign” is defined differently depending on your industry and your typical marketing practices.  To set a baseline, here is a definition that I like to use:  

Campaign (n.): A multi-touch digital ecosystem, aligned with the buyer’s journey, that helps marketers capture lead information, nurture and qualify leads, and finally empowers both the lead and the salesperson for a sales conversation.

Here are the key parts:

1) Multi-touch:

Your campaign should live across the various channels where your target personas spend their time (i.e. your website, paid advertising platforms, social media platforms, etc.) and include multiple touch points per channel.  One form on a single landing page is not a campaign.

2) Digital ecosystem

All pieces of your campaign should work together and constantly communicate with one another.  Ideally, the pieces are strategically managed via a clearly defined marketing-technology stack.  Check out the example below:

3) Aligned with the buyer’s journey

Your campaign should facilitate a seamless buyer’s journey, and more importantly, a journey that a consumer actually wants to go through.

 

4) Capture lead information

A typical lead capture transaction occurs when the marketer provides something of value to the potential lead in exchange for their contact information.

5) Nurture and qualify leads

This is the most complex part of a campaign (so we found a video to better explain below).  A good measure of how well you are doing with nurturing is the quality of your sales conversations.  The golden rule is: not everybody is ready to buy because they gave you their email, and you shouldn’t sell to somebody just because they are interested in your product. 

6) Empowers both the lead and salesperson

Primarily, your objective as a marketer is to prepare the lead for a sales conversation.  Secondly, to prepare your salesperson to have an effective sales conversation catered towards the potential buyer’s objectives (depending on your average sales cycle this process can take a day or several months).

If your campaign meets the above criteria, fantastic!  We are aligned.  If it doesn’t quite match up, no worries, I promise there are still plenty of valuable takeaways (including a free campaign optimization checklist).

Why should you care about the buyer’s journey?

If your campaign does not support the way your target persona wants to buy, it will be nearly impossible to see positive results.

The buyer’s journey has fundamentally changed.  Think about it, compare how you would buy a car today compared to ten years ago?  Or even how your parents bought their first car?

Things are changing in the world of buying and selling, and they’re changing at an exponential rate.

But why?

Two words: access & information.  One of my favorite marketing/sales influencers, Daniel Pink, sums it up nicely in his book “To Sell is Human.” 

Pink sums up his argument with the term “information asymmetry.”  Essentially, the cause of the change in buyer behavior is a result of the gradual shift of an informational advantage from the seller to the buyer.  In today’s economy, the buyer has all the power! 

What does this mean for our marketing?  Well, we need to ensure that our campaign is aligned with the way modern consumers make purchases.  If not, it is destined to fail.  So, before you worry about optimization, ensure your campaign assets and tone reflect this “seller beware” world.

For more information on how the buyer’s journey is evolving, and what we should do as marketers and salespeople, take a moment to watch the video below:

What should I do before my campaign launches?

Before a campaign ever launches it’s imperative to get our ducks in a row from an expectation standpoint.  Aligned expectations will improve the likelihood of a successful campaign.

The first step is to establish your campaign benchmarks—what you expect/desire to happen. These are your “expected values.” There are a several sources you can use to determine those benchmarks.

1) Your company’s historical campaign data (preferred)

No two businesses or industries are the same, so what better to use as a benchmark than your own company’s past performance?

2) Your closest competitor’s data

If you are fortunate enough to have access to this information, it’s a huge competitive advantage.  There are also tools out there, like SpyFu, to help you gather some key data points.

3) An Industry Standard

While industry averages are often grossly simplified, they are better than nothing at all!

Bonus: HubSpot recently launched a great tool that allows you to get benchmark data for email open rate across various industries.

4) Your best guesstimate

This is your last resort, but if necessary, make your best guess based on heuristics and what you know.  Here is a cool article on how heuristics can be applied to marketing.

What should you benchmark?

You should establish benchmarks for all key campaign metrics.  Some examples include: email open rate, form conversion rate, social media impressions, average time on page, etc.  However, they will vary based your specific campaign’s infrastructure. 

The golden rule: If a metric can be analyzed and potentially contribute to the success of a campaign’s objective, benchmark it!

Speaking of Campaign Objectives…

Yes, it’s true that most businesses market with the intention of increasing revenue.  But, not all campaigns are designed with this as the primary intention.  Other campaign objectives include increasing brand awareness, event attendance, asset downloads, and more.  Before determining the tactics and building the campaign infrastructure, ensure that all the stakeholders are aligned on its objectives.

Now, there are a few different values that will help you determine if you’ve reached your campaign objectives:

1) Goal values – ideal (but achievable) campaign performance metrics

2) Expected values – an accurate prediction of your campaign performance metrics

Hint: these are your benchmarks established in the “What should I do before my campaign launches?” section

3) Observed values – the real-world metrics you observe from your campaign

Let’s put numbers two and three aside for now, we’ll need them for statistical analysis later, and discuss establishing goal value statements.  Although it may be a little cliché, assure your goal statements meet the criteria of the tried and true S.M.A.R.T acronym.

Long story short, if your goal value statements match the S.M.A.R.T framework, you are off to a good start.  Rather than bore you with the gory details (here is a crash course on SMART goals), I’ll provide you with a quick example instead.

A bad goal value statement is: Achieve a good email click-through-rate for campaign nurture emails.

A good goal value statement is: Achieve a click-through-rate of 2% on nurture email #3 within 90 days of campaign launch.

After you have established all the necessary goal value statements, be certain your stakeholders are also aware of them.  You can do document these in your marketing automation software portal.  If you are a HubSpot customer, you’re in luck – there is a built in goal setting feature for campaigns.

Get your campaign optimization checklist 

Now can we see if my campaign needs to be optimized?!

Yes, let’s get to it!  First, you need to determine if your campaign needs optimization by comparing our observed results to what we expected (our benchmarks).  We are going to use the chi-square goodness of fit statistical test to compare these two values. Here’s the formula to calculate Chi-square:

Assuming you already launched your campaign (and completed the recommended pre-launch work) you should have all the variables needed. (O is observed value and E is expected value, or your benchmark)

For more in depth coverage of using this test you can watch the tutorial below.

Let’s jump into an example to make this more concrete.  We’ll use the same numbers in the video walkthrough below for consistency. As a marketing strategist, you want to know if a recent campaign email is performing well, or if you should take action to optimize it. 

Let’s say you sent a campaign related email to 1000 people and 3% of people clicked through the email to your landing page.

This gives you an observed value of 30 or O = 30

Since this is your first campaign, you are comparing your email performance to industry benchmarks.  After doing some research, the industry benchmark you found is 1.1% for email click through rate.  If we sent an email to a 1000 people in our industry, we would expect 11 to click through.

This gives you an expected value of 11 or E = 11

Now, plug it into the formula and solve!

Get 33.18?  Great, but we’re not finished yet.

Now, to see if the campaign email needs to be optimized, we need to compare our observed chi-square to a critical value for chi-square critical.  Looking at those old handy chi-square distribution tables I see the critical value is 3.84 at with a significance level of .05 (recommended).

33.18 > 3.84

Result: Your email is significantly outperforming your established benchmark so you should not focus on optimizing it at this time and spend your resources elsewhere.

Luckily, there is a savvy chi-square goodness of fit tool from Social Science Statistics that does the calculations and compares them to critical value for you (especially if you are like me and just hate distribution tables).

Understand that you only analyzed one specific part of your campaign, but this methodology can be applied to nearly any measurable campaign statistic with a discrete outcome (i.e., convert vs did not convert).

Now you can be confident that you are spending your resources on optimizing the right campaign piece.

OK, I have a list of what I should optimize, where do I start?

With our nifty campaign optimization checklist of course!  You may be thinking, “but I have several underperforming pieces, how do I prioritize them?”  A good place to start at the beginning of the buyer’s journey, starting from from left to right.  Or, in HubSpot terms, optimize the campaign assets associated with the Awareness Stage first, then the Consideration Stage, and finally the Decision Stage.  Which makes sense. If your awareness stage is broken, most people aren’t converting to the Consideration Stage in the first place.  Why optimize something for such a small subset of your potential leads?

Another way to think about optimization priorities is to order them by potential positive impact on campaign results.  While this is good in theory, it doesn’t account for other important variables such as the time and effort it would take to complete the task. Fortunately, to set priorities, you can use a process that is simple as P.I.E.

P.I.E stands for Potential (what is the potential positive impact on the campaign results), Importance (how critical is it to your overall business objectives), and Ease (how difficult is the task to complete).

For more information on PIE or to learn other prioritization methods check out ConversionXL’s comprehensive article on the subject. 

In order to determine the priority order of your campaign optimization task list, assign each letter of P.I.E. a score of 1-10, then take the average of those three numbers.  Organize those averaged numbers by activity from largest to smallest, you will have your list of priorities!

Campaign Optimization Checklist

When analyzing campaign performance, it is easy to get lost in the weeds.  Always remember the big picture!  If you are worried about your campaign’s performance, likely you are experiencing one of the following challenges:

1) You do not have enough eyeballs on your campaign.

2) You aren’t converting those who do engage with your campaign into leads.

3) You aren’t properly nurturing and qualifying leads for sales conversations.

The Campaign Optimization Checklist was built, and even color-coded, with these three challenges in mind.  As a bonus for making it all the way to the end of this article, I have included the first pages here.  There are even more tips and tricks in the full version!

Remember that pressing the launch button is never the final step in a campaign. There is always an email subject line to improve, a form to optimize, and a nurture workflow to refine.

Now what are you waiting for, get the full checklist and start optimizing!

When I graduated from college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Sure, I knew that I wanted, you know, to be employed. I knew I wanted to put my English degree to good use. And I knew I wanted some aspect of the written word to be involved. But what did that look like?

“I dunno,” would’ve been my honest answer.

It’s not that I received anything less than a great education. In fact, I have almost nothing but good things to say about my undergrad alma mater. It’s just that the school had fallen into the same problem that most universities do — the coursework, while excellent, didn’t address what has turned into a pandemic marketing and sales skills gap.

Granted, that was more years ago than I’d like to admit, before much of the technology essential to marketing and sales jobs was as prevalent as it is today. But according to research conducted by Boston Consulting Group, companies still continue to fall short on the level of digital skills on their marketing teams. And as the consumption of products, services, and information continues to rely more on technology — that’s not good. 

But what are you supposed to do about it? You’re busy enough trying to do what you can to make up for this skills gap. How could you possibly also resolve how to actually fill it? Well, as it turns out, you have two major options: To build talent, and to buy it. Don’t worry — neither option is as overwhelming or as expensive as it sounds. In fact, both really boil down to providing the right resources for both your current and incoming employees. What do those look like? We’ve got a few ideas.

How to Get Better Marketing Talent

When You’re Buying

Bringing in new hires is not a simple process. There are the measurable variables, like the cost of onboarding — an average of over $4,000 per new employee, for most companies — and expensive employee turnover in a number of industries. So when you’re looking to add someone new to your team, you want to make sure it’s a good decision.

Part of feeling certain of a new hire is understanding what kind of training and experience that person has received, especially when it comes to new graduates. A shortage of internships available undergraduates limits their opportunities for experience. So, how can you be certain that a candidate can fill your marketing team’s needs — especially if the right skills aren’t being taught in the classroom?

That’s where you come in. See, the recruiting process goes both ways — just as you want to make sure a candidate is the right fit, you want to do everything you can to look attractive as an employer. And those efforts could include providing learning resources to prospective employees.

For example, when I was looking for opportunities in business school, I would come across many hiring pages from companies that listed the many reasons why I should work there — great benefits, great culture, and opportunities for growth, to name a few. But there was something missing. Nowhere on these hiring sites were there tips for what I could do to strengthen my candidacy for that particular environment.

So if you really want to attract the best talent, follow the mantra, “Help me help you.” It only requires a few steps.

1) Make a list of desired attributes — beyond the job description.

When I first began to look into working for HubSpot, one thing that really stood out to me was the fact that the company has a Culture Code. It didn’t just teach me about how I would be valued as an employee, but it also illustrated the must-have qualities of people who get hired here. That immediately made me realize how much I wanted to work for a company like this one.

When you begin recruiting talent, ask yourself what your company’s own Culture Code would look like. It might not be for everyone, and that’s okay — you’re trying to get candidates who are the best fit to stick around. Give them the right information to help them know who they are.

2) Collaborate with educational institutions.

This step goes beyond simply signing up for a booth at a career fair. I wouldn’t know anything about planning a higher education curriculum, but I get the impression that it’s not easy — which is why these skills gaps might still exist. However, as a marketer, I have a better idea of what kind of knowledge my own team might be seeking, and I’m happy to share it.

If you’re in the same boat, it could be worthwhile to reach out to the career development departments of nearby colleges and universities to find out what you can do to help bring some of that knowledge to the student body. Mind you, we’re not suggesting that you ask for a teaching position or request to be paid for a special lecture.

Rather, work with the school’s administration to see if you can offer a complimentary workshop on the skills that you’re seeking the most. While you might have them, you’re only one person — so see what you can do to share them. It’s an investment of time and resources, but it doesn’t come without a return. If you brand the opportunity properly, it’s a way to stand out in the minds of future job applicants, who might ultimately apply for work with you, therefore filling those gaps. Plus, it reinforces your own reputation as an expert in that particular area, and now that you’ve helped others build those skills, you’ll be able to recruit the talent necessary to meet resulting demand.

3) Share learning resources with applicants — and educators.

While you might not have the bandwidth to undertake something like teaching a workshop, there are still ways to help bring skills and knowledge to your future hiring pool. That’s why your hiring site should be built with two audiences in mind: The applicants themselves, and the people who will be teaching them.

For applicants

In addition to listing the general skills and characteristics that you seek in your new hires, it might be helpful to direct them to the resources that can help them gain that knowledge and become better candidates.

Free online courses are a great place to begin. Do some research on the ones available for the skill gaps you need to fill the most — for example, this EdX course in Digital Branding and Engagement, or this one on High Level Digital Marketing Strategy For Small Businesses from Udemy. Plus, a pre-existing knowledge of inbound marketing is always helpful, and getting inbound certified is free with HubSpot Academy.

For educators

When it comes to providing resources to educators, sometimes identifying the skills gaps is a big first step. Understanding what your strongest candidates need to know in order to succeed in the digital marketing landscape can help develop the tools for teaching the accompanying skills. Outline what they are, and give examples of the type of job titles and responsibilities that require them.

And just as there are online learning resources for applicants — there are actually some for educators, too, like HubSpot Academy’s Education Partner Program. Its mission is to help educators teach inbound marketing, and to connect their students with opportunities to apply both in the real world. Plus, the criteria for becoming an Education Partner doesn’t really go beyond the scope of what’s already required of most institutions — it’s a college, university, or institute that teaches Inbound with HubSpot Academy’s resources, or uses HubSpot software in their classes.

When You’re Building

Please forgive the cop out, but we’ll tell you right now — the efforts for building the right kind of talent within your current team isn’t really all that different than buying it.

There are many situations when one option might be better than the other one — that all depends on your budget, your scope of work, or your current client and customer demands. But when it comes to the latest and greatest skills in cultivating your current employees, all you really have to do is provide the same resources for them that you would for external applicants.

It won’t look identical. But when you go about building or revamping a hiring page like we described above, look into building an intranet or wiki that provides many of the same learning resources that can help employees build their skills and progress in their careers — without leaving your company. After all, we’ve already gone over the high cost of employee turnover. Helping to build the right internal growth opportunities for your current team can prevent those costs from becoming necessary.

Create a place where your employees can see the types of roles or skills gaps you’re trying to fill, and let them know where they can learn how to fill them. Just as you might provide a list of these resources for external applicants or lead workshops for them, do the same for your current staff. Even if someone isn’t looking into changing roles, digital marketing knowledge can be applied to a broad range of projects.

And if they do progress — well, now you know how to attract the best people to replace them in their former positions.

Talent Show

Trying to ensure that you’ve got the best people to meet your company’s demands is never an easy process. There’s so much to consider, from culture fit to necessary skills. As we said — you want to be certain, and for good reason.

But with the above-outlined steps, it doesn’t have to be quite as daunting as you might think. You can proactively take measures to attract the best talent — whether that’s coming from a pool of recent grads, or from your current team.

What are your preferred ways getting the best marketing talent? Let us know in the comments.

If you’re like most marketers, you’re always on the search for ways to reach new audiences and generate leads. 

But did you know that according to BrightTALK, 80% of marketers report their current lead generation efforts are only slightly or somewhat effective?

Typically, lead generation marketers collect information through form submissions on a website. First, the marketer promotes a specific offer — like a gated ebook or coupon — and then an interested user will fill out a lead form to claim the offer. 

While this method does work and helps get exposure to your site, it has one important problem: it requires users to leave the place where the offer was promoted to click through your conversion path.  For marketers, this means bounce-rates at every point along the process. And that’s not ideal.

Ever wish you could just reach people and collect information from them without asking them leave the social network they’re already browsing? Well, you can  — with Facebook Lead Ads.

For a full guide on how to successfully create, target, and utilize Facebook lead ads in your marketing efforts, check out this guide. 

In this article, we’ll go over the basics of Facebook lead ads: what they are, why they matter, and how you can start using them effectively in your own marketing campaigns.

What is a Facebook Lead Ad?

A Facebook lead ad is an ad type you can purchase through the Facebook for Business platform. Instead of sending users to a landing page where they fill out a lead form on your website, Facebook lead ads allow potential customers to access your offers without ever leaving the Facebook app.

This feature means you can capture lead information from the Facebook platform and avoid the friction of a longer click-through path for the user. 

Facebook lead ads allow prospects to sign up for your offers or request other types of offers — such as pricing guides, product demos, or free trials — directly within the Facebook platform. Facebook lead ads are also designed with the user in mind; when a user clicks on a lead ad, Facebook creates an auto-fill form with information the user has already submitted to Facebook. 

Image Source: Facebook

The auto-fill feature makes lead ads especially helpful for mobile users, who experience the most friction from the traditional conversion path. Convinced? Time to get your first lead ad setup.

How to Set Up Your Facebook Lead Ad

Start by preparing to set up your lead ad. You’ll need a few things beforehand:

• Admin access to your Facebook Business Page
• Your privacy policy page URL.
• An image/creative asset to make your ad stand out on a user’s newsfeed.

Next, open up the power editor or ads manager tool for your business page

Not sure which to use? The ads manager is Facebook’s classic ad tool for basic advertisers. If you’re just starting out, the ads manager is probably the tool you should use.

On the other hand, the power editor is Facebook’s more advanced tool for advertisers who are regularly creating numerous ad campaigns in bulk. It has some more advanced features and allows you to create more ads in bulk. This tool is ideal for someone with a high budget at an enterprise level.

Step by step instructions once you’re in the Ads Manager or Power Editor tool:

1) If you’re using the Ads Manager, Click “Create Ad” in the top right. If you’re using the power editor, Click “Create Campaign” in the top left.

2) Next, you’ll see a screen asking for your ad campaign objective. Click, “lead generation” and the page will pull down with the next option:

3) Name your ad campaign.

 

4) Next, set the details of your account (Country, Timezone, Ad Unit Currency). This step is part of setting up the ads account for your business, not for the actual ad you’re setting up. We’ll get to the ad setup in a bit.

5) Choose your business page from the drop-down menu and read through and “Accept the Facebook Lead Ads Terms and Conditions”.

6) Set up the targeting settings for your ad. You can customize the target audience by location, age, gender, language, and hundreds of other target settings. As you add in more targeting features, the ticker on the right will show you the total size of the audience you’re trying to reach.

7) Next, tell Facebook whether to automatically place your ad where it’s most likely to perform best, or if you’d rather customize the placement based on your own preferences. In general, it’s recommended to let Facebook place your ads automatically.

8) Next, customize your budget for the ad. Determine with your team how much budget you’re willing to spend for one ad. Facebook ads works on an auction system, so choose a budget that seems reasonable based on prior research. 

9) Choose an ad layout format from the options on the next screen, and upload creative assets to your ad to make it stand out. Don’t forget to test different creative options and layouts to figure out what performs best over time.

10) Now it’s time to set up and customize the form for your lead ad. First, customize the headline, text, and CTA for the display page of the ad. Be as specific as possible so the user knows what they will get by clicking on the CTA of your ad.

11) Next, choose which information you want to collect from from your leads on the “questions” tab. Only ask necessary questions for your funnel; the more questions you ask, the lower your click-through rate is likely to be.

• One benefit of lead ads is that they’re completely customizable. Not only can you request common form fields such as name, phone number, and email address, you can also ask an open-ended questions such as, “what kinds of information do you find valuable?” While an open-ended question might not be best for all forms, you can use an open-ended question to qualify the submissions you do receive on your lead ad form.

12) Next, check the setting for the privacy policy on your ad. This step is particularly important because it ensures the security of the user’s information. Add the link to your company’s privacy policy and feel free to add an optional custom disclaimer to the ad in addition to Facebook’s required disclaimer that will appear below the form.  

13) Finally, you’re ready to customize the Thank You Screen. Insert your website link in this option so the user can visit your site after submitting the form.

14) Check the completed ad to make sure all of your work looks like it should. Don’t ever forget to double check and proofread your work! 

15) Click “finish” to complete your form. Optionally, you can “select a CRM” to collect submission information in the Leads Setup section. 

16) The final step is to click the “Place Order” button.

How to Make Your Lead Ad Stand Out

Now that you know how to set up your lead ad, you might be wondering how to actually drive conversions. After all, you’ll be competing not only for a spot on a user’s Facebook newsfeed but also for the attention among all the other content the targeted user is scrolling through. 

How do you make sure your lead ad is compelling enough for a user to click on it? Here are some tips:

1) Make it visually appealing

Because your competing against all the other pieces of content on a user’s newsfeed, it’s important that your ad is visually appealing. Make creative assets that are colorful, bold, and/or interesting in some way.

While there are plenty of ways you can make a visually appealing ad, don’t just find the brightest, most colorful image and plop it on your ad. Whatever creative assets you use should accurately illustrate what you’re offering through the ad.

As you experiment with Facebook Ads, test out the success of different types of creative assets, and find out what works best for your target audience. Try testing videos, GIFs, and other types of images. Overtime, track the click-through and conversion rates of different creative types to optimize your ads strategy for the future. 

2) Create compelling copy 

The copy of your ad should have a clear message to your audience. When writing copy, write it so that your target audience can easily understand what you’re offering, why it’s relevant to them, and why they should request more information now. 

Because your goal is to get someone to submit information right then and there, be sure to add urgency to your ad. Don’t just say “Learn More” and hope for the best. Instead, include an offer with an expiration date so the user feels compelled to download or sign up for the offer now.

If you’re retargeting users who have previously been to your site, add context to the copy to remind them why they visited your site in the first place and how your company’s offers can help them.

3) Include a clear call-to-action.

Part of writing compelling copy is making sure the call-to-action is clear and prominent. You can’t just use a Facebook Ad to tell your target audience what you company is and expect them to click a button to “Learn More” without giving them a clear value offer. What will they get from you when they fill out information?

Facebook gives your six CTA options for lead ads: 

• Apply Now
• Download
• Get Quote
• Learn More 
• Sign Up
• Subscribe

Offer your audience something they can’t refuse. Whether you’re offering an event, discount, content offering, subscription, etc, make sure the audience knows what they will get when they “Sign Up,” “Learn More,” “Download,” etc.

4) Target the right users with relevant offers

A key piece of creating successful Facebook Ads is targeting people that are actually going to be the most interested in what you have to offer. Don’t spray and pray, instead, spend your ad budget most effectively by learning to get the most out of Facebook’s targeting features. 

In general, your goal with Facebook Ads should be to reach new audiences. However, because you’re also trying to collect lead information on the spot, it’s also important not to ask for too much to soon.

That’s why lead ads are especially useful in retargeting campaigns. Use tracking pixels on your website to find out who is visiting your website but not converting, and use lead ads to nurture them back into you ecosystem.

This blog post didn’t cover a full picture of Facebook Ads targeting strategy, but luckily, we created a free guide to walk you through it. 

Want more information on how to target users effectively? Check out our full guide — it includes additional lead generation and social media tips as well!

The lack of transparency that often occurs between advertisers and their marketing partners has reached a tipping point.

Advertisers have spoken loud and clear: They are tired of paying more and more for their digital advertising and seeing less and less return on investment from these efforts. In fact, many companies are wondering where the heck their money is going and whose interests are being represented.

Many advertisers are drawing a line in the sand. They will no longer work with agencies, networks, technology platforms, or marketing “partners” who aren’t completely transparent about their practices.

And good for them. Not only does this behavior make the good guys look bad, but it also puts the whole marketing industry at risk.

A Need for Greater Transparency

Procter & Gamble recently made an unsettling discovery. Among other things, some of its agencies were receiving kickbacks from media companies. Others made extra money by paying publishers less than the amount P&G gave them to pay out to them.

So the world’s biggest advertiser did what any smart company should do — it revisited all of its media agency contracts to ensure full transparency. What’s more is that P&G’s chief brand officer, Marc Pritchard, has challenged the rest of the industry to do the same.

In a show of solidarity, let’s call out a few tactics that some unethical agencies and marketers employ in an effort to help advertisers protect their brand and marketing dollars:

Display Ad Fraud

Fake ad impressions are on the rise. This year, bots will be responsible for up to 37 percent of ad impressions, costing companies billions of dollars. Unfortunately, as this crime becomes more profitable and easier to execute, ad fraud will take many different forms. In all cases, though, it’s a dishonest use of a company’s money, and it falsely inflates ad performance.

Agency Kickbacks

Media agency kickbacks are still a prevalent issue. To illustrate, let’s say an agency buys $1 million worth of advertising from its clients, which the agency is getting paid to do (often as a percentage of the ad spend). If it then accepts a $250,000 credit from the place it bought the ads from — when it wasn’t the agency’s money in the first place — and does not disclose this, that’s a kickback.

Tasked with purchasing the best slots for advertisers, many agencies are, in fact, buying certain times or spaces to receive kickbacks from media companies. While six of the biggest advertising agency holding companies flatly denied that claim, an ANA report confirmed that there are media agencies accepting cash rebates.

Advertiser-Agency Disconnect

The same ANA study revealed that advertisers and agencies do not always see eye to eye on the nature of their relationship. According to this research, advertisers often believe their agencies bear a fiduciary responsibility to always act in the best interest of the advertisers — even going beyond the scope of terms stipulated in the contract, if necessary.

Although some agencies share those beliefs, others say their sole responsibilities are outlined in the contract, so they have no other duty to act on the advertisers’ behalf. This disconnect opens the door for agency mismanagement and lack of transparency.

These methods hurt the entire marketing industry.

When profit is not passed on to the client, the integrity of all marketing methods is called into question. As the founder and managing director of a leading performance marketing agency, it pains me to see how a few bad apples can weaken confidence in our industry. In the long run, it hits everyone’s bottom line when advertisers choose to walk away.

Greater transparency is not just the best solution — it is the only solution. In fact, advertisers made a clear statement when they voted for “transparency” as the word of the year in a 2016 ANA poll. In this industry, you have no choice: If you want to succeed, your agency must give advertisers what they want.

The Benefits of Transparent Communication

Whether you’re an agency, an affiliate, a media company, or an influencer, providing full disclosure to your advertising partners is not just the right thing to do — it’s the ethical and moral thing to do. If you aren’t willing to disclose it, it’s probably for a reason. Of course, it keeps partners happy, but it also earns you respect and improves the value of your relationships.

Consider the increased demand for omnichannel marketing. Highly successful marketers are using this technology to provide full visibility into the consumer path to purchase across digital channels and devices with the aim of fostering better ties among advertisers, publishers, and networks.

By understanding each marketing channel’s contribution, advertisers and publishers can explore additional strategies and approaches for working together. For example, in the affiliate model, a management agency can more effectively encourage select affiliates to increase promotions by aligning incentives with the consumer behaviors they most value. In this win-win situation, transparency is profitable, and it strengthens partnerships.

Even Facebook is course-correcting toward better transparency to benefit its advertisers. After it was revealed that it had overestimated its video views and organic reach, Facebook has made a push to give its advertisers a clearer view of the platform’s metrics. Citing transparency as a primary aim, the social media giant is debuting its updated blog, rechristened “Measurement FYI,” to provide better information on metrics, partnerships, products, and research.

The Path to Real Transparency

Transparency is more than just making a commitment to your clients that you will engage in open and honest conversations with them. It needs to be woven into the fabric of your business — from the way you communicate with your clients to how your contracts are written to the core values your organization embodies and executes.

Here are four ways to get started:

1) Be transparent in your agreements.

One of the factors that led to P&G’s revelation that its agencies were engaging in corrupt behavior was its reevaluation of its agency contracts. By doing so, the company discovered that its agency agreements made few stipulations about agencies’ use of company money. In fact, P&G discovered that an agency making money on float wasn’t prohibited — it was actually in compliance with P&G’s contracts.

As an agency, if you want to build long-term, high-value relationships with your clients that are based on trust and integrity, it’s essential to lay out expectations, terms, and conditions in your agreements with them from the start.

If you don’t accept kickbacks or financial incentives, especially those that are not in your partners’ interest, put that in writing. Be sure to also address and define the role of your agency’s direct and indirect partners, including affiliate networks, affiliates, and subaffiliate networks.

2) Don’t just conduct transactions; build relationships.

The person sitting across from you is more than a client and more than a company. Take time to ask questions, listen, and get to know him or her personally and professionally. A genuine conversation not only creates loyalty and commitment, but it also helps you better understand and meet the needs of your clients.

Authentically connecting with partners builds more trust in your partnerships, and trust is the cornerstone of a healthy, long-term relationship. When you invest in getting to know people, you naturally adopt a habit of full disclosure. In turn, both partners benefit.

3) Align incentives so clients pay for performance.

Traditional models obscure marketing campaigns by requiring businesses to pay in advance for creative without considering the return on their investment. If companies aren’t able to see where the money went or how it contributed to marketing success, it fosters suspicion and resentment toward their partner agencies. Changing that model is the key to transparency.

Pay-for-performance marketing, on the other hand, depends on creating visibility into marketers’ actions. Rather than invest upfront, a company compensates the agency based on measurable campaign accomplishments or benchmarks.

This means the two must be communicating constantly about what the agency is doing for the company and how well those methods are working. Transparency is baked in.

Clients are not the only beneficiaries in a pay-for-performance model. Although it does demand a lot of work from agencies, the motivating factor is to get paid for successful efforts. This approach incentivizes marketers to refine their skills and knowledge of the marketplace, as it requires excellence.

4) Think long term and focus on performance partnerships.

The term “performance partnerships” refers to the transparent, valuable relationships that companies seek from affiliate marketing partners. Comprised of all the aforementioned elements, it’s a strategy that incorporates a system to manage those relationships at scale.

Once your partners are equally on board with open communication, have bought into building a deeper personal relationship based on trust, and have embraced the cash-on-delivery model, you can elevate that partnership through advanced tracking and reporting technology.

Using a software as a service (SaaS) platform brings these pieces together, providing a convenient system for managing and maintaining multiple relationships in which all relevant partner information (contracts, tax forms, real-time reporting, payouts, etc.) can be tracked in one place.

Performance partnerships represent what companies should strive for in all of their marketing programs, as the overarching principle is transparency. An effective system handles all the marketing data and allows both partners to see what the other is doing. When they have access to this information and complete trust in you, that strong relationship leads to smarter, more strategic campaigns.

You Can’t Outperform With Opacity

Dishonest, opaque agency practices — including the misuse of client money — only serve to foster a culture of mistrust, prompting many advertisers to part ways with their agencies. Rightfully so, companies don’t want to work with marketers or agencies who are not transparent about what they’re doing with the advertiser’s money or how they’re spending it.

Moreover, agencies must be accountable for our methods. Tighter contracts and models that stipulate payment for performance give agencies and marketing partners the opportunity to prove value and boost bottom lines all around.

Most importantly, honesty is the best policy, as the saying goes. If your agency is not being as transparent as possible, why is that? What are you hiding? Even if the answer is “nothing,” you’d better believe your partners are going ask the same questions.

Sometimes an event is so remarkably big that it completely takes over social media for a few hours, or even days. Think back to the last awards show, sporting event, or viral meme — how many tweets about it popped onto your Twitter timeline?

When more than 9,000 tweets are published per second, it can be hard to find great content on the platform. So in 2015, Twitter rolled out Twitter Moments — curated tweets revolving around a single topic or story, all in one place.

Initially, only Twitter and its editorial partners, such as BuzzFeed and The New York Times, could curate Moments. Last year, however, Twitter opened up Moments for all Twitter users. Now, all content creators on the platform can compile groups of tweets. Whether it’s about an event, a campaign, or a pop culture moment, marketers can take advantage of this feature and potentially get discovered by new followers.

In this blog post, we’ll dive into the 411 on Twitter Moments, how to create them, and how brands can use them.

What Are Twitter Moments?

Twitter Moments are collections of tweets about a topic or event. They can be tweeted, liked, pinned, and embedded like normal tweets, but when you tap to open a Moment, it shows you a collection of different tweets. Moments are published with a cover photo and introduction, so they’re kind of like a “best of” compilation article.

You can find Twitter Moments via desktop by tapping the lightning bolt icon — it’s in the top-left corner of Twitter on your browser.

You can access Twitter Moments on mobile by tapping the magnifying glass icon — this will take you to the Explore tab, where you can scroll down past Twitter Trends to find Twitter Moments.

When you tap on a Moment to read more, swipe left to begin reading tweets about the topic:

Moments are categorized under the following interest areas on a desktop: News, Sports, Entertainment, and Fun. Additionally, there is a Today tab that shares the biggest moments of the day on Twitter. Here’s what a Moment looks like embedded on a web page:

LEGO is making a Women of NASA set

And here’s what it looks like when you open it up to read on a desktop:

Twitter Moments help Twitter users find more quality content about topics they’re interested in. Moments also help brands and creators get discovered in a different way than relying on the Twitter timeline and retweets alone. Now, let’s dive into how to make Moments across platforms and devices.

How to Create a Twitter Moment

How to Create a Twitter Moment: Desktop

1) Navigate to the Moments tab, and tap “Create new Moment” on the right-hand side of your screen.

2) Choose a title, description, and cover photo for your Moment.

These will appear as a preview of your Moment on the Moments tab and on the Twitter timeline.

3) Start adding tweets you want to incorporate in your Moment.

You can choose from tweets you’ve liked, review different Twitter accounts to select tweets from a certain brand or individual, or search for tweets by specific keywords and hashtags. You can also enter the URL of a tweet you want to include. You can add tweets to your Moment by tapping the grayed-out check mark next to tweet content.

4) Customize your Twitter Moment by tapping the up and down arrow buttons to arrange the order the tweets will appear in.

You can also remove tweets from your Moment by tapping the gray x button.

5) Once you’ve added all the tweets you want to your Moment, tap “Finish later” to save a draft, or “Publish” to push it live on Twitter.

Once your Moment is published, you can share it in a tweet, embed it on your website, or share a link to your Moment.

You can also create a new Twitter Moment by tapping theicon next to a tweet and selecting “Add to new Moment,” which will direct you to the Moment creation dashboard described in Step 2.

How to Create a Twitter Moment: iOS

1) Open your Twitter app, tap the “Me” silhouette icon on the lower right-hand side of your screen, and tap the gear icon next to your profile picture. Then, select “Moments.”

2) Tap the + symbol in the upper right-hand corner of the “My Moments” screen. From there, you’ll reach a dashboard where you can customize your title, description and cover photo.

3) Add tweets to your Moment by tapping the “Add Tweets” button in the bottom center of your screen.

You can choose from your tweets, tweets you’ve liked, and by searching for tweets. Add them by tapping the tweets and then tapping the green “Add 1 Tweet” button.

4) Tap the “Reorder” button in the lower left-hand corner of your Moments dashboard to customize your Moment.

5) When you’re done, tap “Finish later” to save a draft, or “Publish” to share your Moment on Twitter.

You can also create a new Moment by tapping theicon next to a tweet and selecting “Add to Moment,” which will direct you to the Moment dashboard in Step 2.

How to Create a Twitter Moment: Android

To create a Twitter Moment on Android devices, the process is virtually the same — except you access the Moments menu by tapping on your profile picture when you open up Twitter:

Source: Addictive Tips

How Brands Can Use Twitter Moments

1) Events

Create a Twitter Moment that showcases what’s going on at an event your brand is hosting or participating in. You can share what others are saying about your brand and keep followers up-to-date about what’s going on if they can’t attend the event themselves.

Here’s a Twitter moment published by INBOUND at the kickoff of INBOUND 2016, when Gary Vaynerchuk kicked off the weeklong marketing and sales event with a keynote speech. The Moment compiled various tweets about the speech from different attendees and influencers and provided an inside look at the event for those following along at home.

Gary Vaynerchuk Kicks Off #INBOUND16

2) Tweetstorms

For those times when live-tweeting a series of related tweets is necessary, a Moment can serve to showcase a tweetstorm after it’s happened to bring attention to what a brand or individual is tweeting about.

Here’s an example from Persil UK & Ireland, a laundry detergent brand that created a Twitter Moment tweetstorm to promote its social media conversation, #DirtIsGood, about the importance of kids getting outside:

Kids spend less time outdoors than prisoners

3) Breaking News

Another great use case for Twitter Moments is breaking news. Journalists and publications can produce Twitter Moments to group together tons of tweets about an emerging story. Whether the tweets are all originals from the brand’s account or are a compilation of different voices, the Moment serves to provide Twitter users with as much information as possible.

Here’s a breaking news Twitter Moment from Bloomberg about the World Economic Forum in Davos:

Thursday at Davos has been all about Brexit

4) Behind-the-scenes

One of the great things about social media is it gives customers a window into brands they love that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Brands can use Moments to create behind-the-scenes looks at products, employees, and events on Twitter.

Here’s Allure’s Moment featuring a behind-the-scenes look at ringing the New York Stock Exchange opening bell:

This is what it’s like to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange

5) Content Promotion

A multi-channel strategy is key to successfully promoting content you publish on your blog and website, and social media channels are no exception. Try publishing insights and data from your latest blog post or research report in the form of a Twitter Moment.

Here’s an example from the team here at HubSpot. We published a Moment about our annual State of Inbound survey results:

State of Inbound 2016

Now that you’re a pro at creating Twitter Moments, try publishing one today to see how it impacts your Twitter engagement. Don’t let your clever tweets and hashtags go to waste — create a Moment and share content with your audience year-round.

How do you use Twitter Moments? Share with us in the comments below.

4) Behind-the-Scenes

YouTube has over one billion users worldwide, and they all watch different types of videos every day. What’s your favorite type of video to watch on the platform?

As it turns out, your video preferences may vary depending on your date of birth: Influenster surveyed nearly 8,500 YouTube users of all ages to learn about their viewing habits and interests.

Although younger generations spend more time on YouTube than their older counterparts, Generations X, Y, and Z all have specific preferences when it comes to how and where they want to consume video content on different topics. For example, while a significant portion of respondents said they liked watching product reviews, Generation X preferred how-to content, and Generation Z liked unboxing videos.

Check out the full infographic from Adweek below, and learn more about how to create compelling social media videos with help from our guide.

Feel like you missed the best agency projects, ad campaigns, and creative videos from this month? 

No worries — we’ve got you covered.

March brought us some delightfully unexpected ad concepts, including a floating house, a child replacement program for dog lovers, and an e-commerce version of Hamlet we didn’t even know we needed.  

We’re rounding up the best of March below.

10 of the Best Ads from March

1) Heinz

With AMC’s Mad Men celebrating the 10th anniversary of the premier this year, it seems like the perfect time to revive one of Don Draper’s memorable ad pitches: his rejected Pass the Heinz campaign.

Originally pitched in an episode of the hit drama by Draper’s fictional 1960s ad firm Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, the print campaign features tantalizing close-ups of french fries, burgers, and steak, all missing one important thing: Heinz. The folks at (real-life) ad agency David Miami ran the exact designs from the show for the 2017 campaign, with approval and input from Mad Men’s original creator, Matthew Weiner.  

Image credit: Heinz/David Miami

 

2) YouTube

To promote their new six second ad format, YouTube enlisted help from a number of top agencies and filmmakers, asking them to develop ultra-short summaries of classic works of literature. The resulting 19 video campaign proves you can cram quite a lot of plot into just six short seconds.

From this minimalist take on Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, to this delightful puppy-version of Romeo & Juliet, there isn’t a single video in the bunch that isn’t worth watching more than once. But since we had to pick just one to showcase, we chose Rethink’s clever, e-commerce-driven retelling of Hamlet. Watch it below.

 

3) Telia

This comically cynical ad campaign for Swedish wireless company Telia warns us that not everything on the internet is actually as good in real life. Take cats for example: On the internet, cats are always up to some form of hilarious mischief. In real life? Not so much. 

“Most of Telia’s competitors tell people to turn their devices off every now and then, to ‘carpe diem’ and all that crap,” Martin Ringqvist of Swedish agency Forsman and Bodenfors told Adweek. “We decided to go the other way — to embrace the wonderful life online and to wash away people’s bad conscience. Because life, at least sometimes, is way better on the mobile, isn’t it?”

 

4) CoorDown

The phrase “special needs” seems to float inevitably around every conversation about people with disabilities. This ad for CoorDown, Italy’s national organization for people with Down Syndome, wants to us to ask ourselves: Is it really fair to characterize the needs of people living with disabilities as “special?” Don’t they need what everybody else needs?

Produced by Publicis New York, the extended spot stars Glee’s Lauren Potter, who discusses some needs that would actually be fair to classify as “special”, such as eating an exclusive diet of dinosaur eggs, or necessitating regular massages from a cat masseuse. 

 

5) Leroy Merlin

In this cinematic ad for French home improvement retailer Leroy Merlin, agency BETC Shopper chose a poetic metaphor to reflect the sometimes turbulent process of renovating a home: a house floating on the sea.

The video follows a young couple as they go through the (sometimes literal) ups and downs of repairing their modest house — their triumphs and setbacks illustrated by the unpredictable waters they float on. It’s an ambitious campaign that took an expert team of divers, drones, and helicopters to execute. 

 

6) Dominos

In a resolute appeal to 1980s nostalgia, CP+B produced a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the famous running home scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Joe Keery, of the 80s-era Netflix drama Stranger Things, stands in as Ferris, racing home to greet the Dominos delivery guy. 

The ad gets major points for attention to detail, packing in every fence jump, trampoline bounce, and sidewalk sprint from the original. And although the original Ferris — Matthew Broderick — never makes an appearance (as he did in this similarly Bueller-inspired Honda campaign from 2012), we do get a cameo from Alan Ruck, who played Ferris’ reluctant pal Cameron.

 

7) Pedigree

What do you do when your beloved son or daughter leaves for college and the empty nest syndrome starts sinking in? Replace your kid with a dog, says this new Pedigree spot from Colenso BBDO.

The cheekily named “Child Replacement Program” campaign is running in New Zealand, where Colenso BBDO creative group head Simon Vicars says many members of the country’s aging population could benefit immensely from the company of a new four-legged friend. 

 

8) National Canadian Film Day

If you’re going to trust one person to give you an honest film review, shouldn’t it be someone who’s literally incapable of lying? 

Leo Burnett developed this quirky ad to promote National Canadian Film Day, and cast Grey’s Anatomy actress Sandra Oh as “the woman who can’t lie.” 

 

9) Aardman Animations

The studio behind Wallace & Gromit released this clever, animated take on client conference calls that will certainly get some knowing chuckles from agency folks. In “Visualise This,” the group debates the merits of various abstract strategies (“We need something big! Something epic!”) without ever getting into specifics or details. It’s not just funny, it’s an impressive demonstration of what Aardman is capable of. 

“I really wanted to create a piece that could showcase a variety of disciplines I’ve learnt along the way at Aardman, as well as my passions and influences in street culture,” said Aardman designer and director Danny Capozzi, in an interview with Adweek. “Around this same period, I had a series of perplexing conference calls, and that’s when the lightning bolt hit me, to merge the spitballing and often circular nature of a call with a scatter gunning of eye-candy visuals.”

 

10) State Street Global Advisors

On International Women’s Day, Wall Street awoke to a new resident: The Fearless Girl, a bronze statue of a defiant young girl facing down the famous “Charging Bull” statue.

Developed by McCann New York for its client State Street Global Advisors, the relatively small statue was intended to spark a big conversation around female leadership in business.

 “We are firm believers in the principles of stewardship,” State Street Global Advisors chief marketing officer Stephen said in an interview with Adweek. “And we want to reflect that in everything we do — especially as it pertains to our commitment in ESG [environmental, social and governance] investing. The placement of ‘The Fearless Girl’ in the epicenter of the world’s financial capital helps not only promote our commitment to women in leadership today and tomorrow, but it also establishes an interesting emotional and rational aspect to responsible investing.”

What were your favorite agency projects from March? Let us know in the comments.

 

Whether it’s International Cat Day, Pizza Day, or Talk Like a Pirate Day, it seems like almost every day, the internet is celebrating a holiday.

Whenever I log onto Twitter, I quickly scan what’s trending on the left-hand side of the screen. Have you ever had this experience — when you see an obscure holiday or observance day trending, and you think to yourself “Yup, I’m celebrating that”?

Some of these holidays might be simply too silly for your brand to engage with (and we certainly don’t suggest sharing content on social media and then tacking on a completely irrelevant hashtag for the sake of traffic — that’s just plain annoying). But others might not be. You could be missing valuable opportunities to take advantage of trending topics with fun and relevant “holiday” content on social media.

From food to politics to animals and everything in between, there is a plethora of observance days worldwide during which marketers can share content relevant to their industries, get involved in a movement, or simply generate more awareness.

To help you plan for trending holidays, we created a list that you can bookmark, as well as a downloadable calendar so you can get automatic reminders. The list isn’t exhaustive (there are a lot of food-specific holidays out there) and these dates and hashtags may still be subject to change. But this is a great starting point for social media marketers who want to learn more about what’s trending and how they can plan their content in a way that will be fun and engaging on Twitter and other social platforms.

Downloadable Holiday Calendar

National & Global Holiday Calendar: 2017-2018

March 2017

April 2017

May 2017

June 2017

July 2017

August 2017

September 2017

October 2017

November 2017

December 2017

January 2018

February 2018

Sources: National Day Calendar, Sprout Social, TrackMaven, Holiday Insights, Brownielocks, National Peace Corps Association, Sparkflow

Which national holidays does your organization acknowledge on social media? Share with us in the comments below.

January 2018

In February 2016, the U.S. magazine Bon Appétit released its inaugural culture-themed issue, in which it explored — among other topics — just how we became so obsessed with food.

Some believe it began with food permeating popular culture — for example, with televised cooking and restaurant exploration shows. Whatever it is, this obsession has left marketers from several other industries wondering, “Can I do that?”

Actually, you can. There’s a lot of advice out there about restaurant marketing — how chefs and owners of these establishments can not only brand themselves to reach celebrity status, but also how they can, you know, grow these businesses in the first place. The following infographic from our friends at Oddle is just one example. 

But as it turns out, many principles of restaurant marketing can be applied to other industries — including those within the B2B sector. After all, we want to accomplish the same things, like establishing a strong digital presence, creating a great experience (online and off) for customers, and gaining word-of-mouth traction. So which restaurant marketing best practices can be applied to your business? Read on to find out.

Inbound marketing has flooded us with information and data. Some of us data geeks have never been happier. For others, the volume of metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) can be overwhelming.

If you’re a non-profit focused on increasing donations and donors, here’s a list of the 10 KPIs, put together by Network for Good, of digital fundraising KPI’s you must have a handle on.

New donor acquisition rate

This KPI is a simple and as broad as it seems. You can look at by time frame: How many new donors come on by month, each year? You can also look at it by channel and by campaign. You can also look at new donor acquisition growth as percentage over similar timeframes or campaigns.

Donor renewal rate

The most immediate donor renewal rate is year-over-year. Get the number of donors from last year (LYD) and determine how many of those same donors gave again this year (TYD). Then divide TYD/LYD to get your donor renewal rate. So if you had 100 donors last year and 80 of them donated again this year, your donor renewal rate is 80%. The challenge here is how far back do you go to consider a donor a “renewal” or “lapsed.”

Net new donors

Net new donors looks at your new donors and renewed donors to reveal if you’re treading water, falling behind, or gathering force. Your donor acquisition rate is usually a raw number. If 100 people donated this year who’d never donated before, that’s 100 new donors. But what if your donor renewal rate is only 50% (50 people who donated last year didn’t donate again)? The low donor renewal rate undercuts the value of your newly acquired donors. Calculating your net new donors highlights this critical gap and adds context to your new donor acquisition rate. This KPI is also important for gauging the engagement level of your donor base.

While new donor acquisition rates are important, relying on them too much to fund your organization puts a lot of pressure on your development team. You’ll see when we talk about metrics such as cost to acquire donor and average donation. Repeat donations are vital to a strong, consistent flow of donations.

Time to first/second gift

This is a measure of time elapsed between a first and second gift. In essence, making sure your new donor is retained, and doesn’t become a net new donor casualty. According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s 2015 report, only 19% of first time donors donate are retained, whereas 63% of repeat donors are retained. This argues strongly in favor of keeping the time lapse between first and second gifts as short as possible. The earlier you get a donor into a habit of giving to your organization, the higher that donor’s lifetime value is likely to be.

Donor reactivation rate

Let’s say you consider any donor who hasn’t donated in the past five years to be lapsed. This is the pool you’ll use to calculate how many you’ve reactivated. If you’ve run any donor reactivation campaigns targeting them (and you should!), you can also look at reactivation rates for each one to determine which are most effective.

Cost to acquire a donor (by channel)

This formula will tell whether a fundraising campaign or channel is worth the cost of operation. Take the cost of a campaign, e.g. you spent $8,000 on a PPC ad campaign driving traffic to your donations’ landing page. Then divide that cost by the number of people who arrived at the landing page via the ads and donated. If that campaign brought in 100 new donors, the acquisition cost for each of those donors was $80.

Average gift (by channel)

Now, if the average gift from that PPC campaign was $50, that might not seem like such a great campaign. Slow down. We’ll get to those metrics touching on the life time value of a donor. But now you can also see why knowing your donor retention and reactivation rates are so important. The cost to acquire a new donor will almost inevitably be higher than that first gift.

You can calculate average gift amounts by campaign and channel. The channel average is particularly important so you know where to focus your efforts, especially when you look at the average compared to the cost. For example, you may find that people donating through a dedicated donation landing page have a higher average gift than those who donate via the “donate” button on your organization’s website.

Revenue per donor (by channel)

The raw dollars donated via each channel over a fixed time or campaign divided by number of donors. These include your different digital donation avenues, such as email and social media solicitations, as well as traditional direct marketing or ad campaigns. So if $100,000 is donated by 500 people from email solicitations last year, the revenue per donor for this channel is $200.

Gross/net revenue

Put simply, this calculation shows your donation totals less the costs to generate those donations. You can look at this by channel, such as how much you raise via Facebook less how much you spend to maintain that channel. You can also calculate this by campaign and by donor type. When you calculate this by donor type, you’ll have better insight into the different costs of acquiring new donors versus retaining or reactivating donors.

Lifetime value (by channel)

Finally! I’ve been talking about it, but here we are. The lifetime value of a donor is critical to understanding if you’re attracting the right kinds of donors. That’s why you also want to look at lifetime value by channel. Some channels may attract higher value donors than others.

To calculate LTV (lifetime value) you need some underlying metrics. To calculate a donor’s LTV, you need their total donation amount, less the cost to acquire and retain that donor. The cost number will be less precise than total amount donated. If you calculate how much you spend per year on retention donation campaigns, you can add that average to the acquisition cost for that donor.

More valuable is the LTV by channel. To calculate LTV by channel, you need to know the average lifespan of that channel’s donors, its average donation amount, the total number of the channel’s donors and number of donations. Let’s work this out with an example, say donors acquired through Facebook.

5 (average lifespan in years) x 100 (average donation amount) x [1000 (# of donations)/ 500 (# of donors)] = $1000 in LTV per donor for the channel.

Now if you know that your cost to acquire a new donor via Facebook is $100, that’s $900 in mission money. Compare that to the $80 in cost to acquire a new donor via the PPC campaign, which has a LTV of $500. The PPC-acquired donors cost less to acquire, but have only half the LTV of your Facebook-acquired donors.

Conclusion

As you can see, no single KPI is an island. Individually they offer interesting snapshots. To get a more holistic view of how your fundraising is going and whether you’re spending your development and marketing budgets to maximize ROI, you need look at the complete story these KPIs tell together. Use this as your starting point how to analyze these KPIs in context of each other.