Create Personalized NFP Landing Pages: Not for Profit Transformation Series

Learn how implementing a tailored page for each initiative can help maximize your marketing and advertising investments.

Previously in this series, we discussed that donation growth comes from personalization driven by the right first-party data strategy, how NFPs can develop initiative “flags” in their marketing warehouses to enable personalization through data, and the importance of ad creative personalization.

In this article, we will address the importance of landing page personalization. Landing pages should reflect the initiatives or “interest” themes that you will define for each donor in your core database—and high-performing, tailored landing pages help monetize the click you just paid for. 

Example: Landing Page Personalization

Let’s use the example of UNICEF USA to explain how we see landing page personalization as part of an NFP’s first-party data strategy, using a donor journey as the framework:

• A donor visits UNICEFusa.org, and signs up for a newsletter.
  UNICEF USA will ask the donor which initiative she’s more interested in. In this case, let’s assume it’s Equity for Girls.
• UNICEF USA will place that donor record in their core file.
  An “initiative” flag that ties the donor to Equity for Girls will be added to the file.
• UNICEF USA will optimally send to this donor:
  • Direct Mail that speaks about Equity for Girls
  • Email that focuses on Equity for Girls 
  • Digital ad creative for search, social, display, and other forms of digital, all speaking to Equity for Girls
• When this donor comes back to UNICEFusa.org:
  She will see content about Equity for Girls as the hero image on the home page.
• The landing pages for all digital channels will also speak to Equity for Girls.

High CTRs without a corresponding high CVR doesn’t deliver the donation funding you need—or a solid return on ad spend (ROAS). Additionally, the insights that you gain as it relates to landing page conversion can be applied across all of your campaigns (including email and direct mail) where a conversion landing page is used as part of your CTA. Essentially, your ad testing can inform your non-advertising campaigns.

Common Challenge: Lack of Efficient Creative Production at Scale

Dynamic creative and tailored landing pages go hand-in-hand as they are part of the same experience path for donors. It’s one thing to capture their interest with a well-crafted ad that speaks to their heads and hearts and generates clickthrough, but the real battle for their attention (and their wallet) happens on the landing page after the ad click. 

As with dynamic creative, many agencies and NFPs they service lack the flexible tools to create effective landing pages at scale. As most marketers know, landing page conversion is contingent on multiple variables such as visual creative, headline and copy, social proof, form size and placement, value exchange and more. Effective design for conversion is challenging for a single landing page. Now multiply that by a dozen (or dozens) of landing pages to support broad ad testing across multiple interest-based audience segments. 

Getting it Right

Landing pages offer more real estate than a display ad or social media ad to tell a compelling story—whether through copy, images or embedded video frames. Creating the right balance of emotional connection to evoke empathy is crucial to triggering a donation response. This includes visual images aligned with donation impact statements. It sounds difficult—but it doesn’t have to be with an experienced partner and the right tools: 

• Create landing pages for each cause or need that is being featured in the ad creative
• A/B test the traditional “one size fits all” landing page against the cause-specific landing pages for conversion performance
• Align images to impact statements for maximum emotional appeal
• Provide multiple giving levels to fit donor preferences and to collect valuable data
• If the interest-specific landing pages win, double down by creating more version to maximize conversions 
• Never stop iterating and testing 

When executed correctly, aligning landing pages to personalized ad creative and then testing combinations as part of ongoing conversion optimization should result in higher click-through rates (CTRs), higher conversion rates (CVRs), and ultimately higher return on ad spend (ROAS).

In Summary

Personalized landing pages play an important role in NFPs connecting with their donors at an emotional level. If the landing page speaks to the needs of the donors who view that landing page, the conversion to a donation generated from that landing page should be much higher than if the click went to a generic donation page.

If you’d like to to delve deeper on NFPs, we encourage you to read our NFP Manifesto as well as our latest research on reaching Millennial Donors.

Ready to get started? Contact us today at begin@delvedeeper.com.