On-demand webinar:How to create compelling digital journeys

 

Digital journeys allow charities to engage more effectively with donors, volunteers, staff, service users, or anyone who finds you in the digital space. Smooth and simple digital journeys often prove the difference between onboarding potential donors or driving people away.

 

But how do you actually improve a digital journey? How do you ensure smooth and simple audience interaction on digital channels? In this webinar, digital marketing expert Helen Olszowska teaches attendees to develop audience-first thinking, create messaging that meets the needs of your audience, and produce seamless journeys between digital channels.

 

Unanswered questions from the webinar

 

Could you give us any examples of user journeys you have seen that have been done really well in the sector?

 

I really like this one from the Red Cross. It caught my eye as something a bit different on social media - it was used as an ad and organically, I believe and the follow up email journeys were really spot on and personalised depending on your score and whether you donated.  

 

If you want to attract a new younger audience (GENZ) do you need to challenge yourself to think about new platforms though?

 

Possibly! I think sometimes we say ’young’ when we mean not 50+ and there’s lots of variety in how Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z engage with social media. For example, you’ll find almost all of them on Instagram which may be a platform you’re already using. 

 

I’m aiming to create out door/ urban art installations/ interventions with a digital activation as a New medium to direct people to a central artist website to drive that initial engagement and call to action to social impact on a grass root level, do you see this as a good new medium?

 

The revival of digital activations like QR codes as a result of lockdown and the contactless economy has been really striking. Campaign had a great piece on it at the time.

 

Our target audience are people aged 65+, many of whom do not use social media. Do you have any advice on how we reach them?

 

Definitely speaking to them to find out what media they are using. What newspapers and magazines do they read, for example or what radio stations do they listen to? Radio ads also had a real moment post-lockdown and are still effective for some organisations. You might also find that they do use Facebook, but only for short periods each day, so investing in advertising to catch them when they are online can work. 

 

We have automated email supporter journeys going on right now, how would you recommend converting these supporters to donors?

 

I’m a fan of engagement/re-engagement campaigns that aim to identify audience interests. You can ask audiences to tell you what they’re interested in using a preference centre and test what they respond to using dynamic content. Your mailing software should already be recording who is the most engaged, so you can begin to test appeals on highly engaged segments with an interest in X to see who converts. 

 

How do you incorporate accessibility into your personas? Do you explicitly incorporate disabilities and physical/mental health challenges into your personas?

 

By using the spectrum persona approach. Microsoft has written about it here. (File will go into downloads). 

 

Our audience is mainly from the UK. But we are an international development charity and are looking to globalise our digital channels. How do we make sure we cater for everyone, without our journeys becoming too complicated or negatively impacting the connection we’ve established with our UK audience?

 

I’d do some research with non-uk audiences to find out what their interests are and create some more targeted content for them that you can use in a more segmented way. At Human Rights Watch I’d argue that globalisation of the team so that in-country advocates and researchers became spokespeople for the organisation in the country they worked on was really effective at globalising the messaging, along with launching French and Arabic language channels. 

 

Are you aware of any sources of funding we can apply to to hire more staff to do all this!?

 

I’m not, but having worked with or at charities with turnovers between £100K and $89 million I’d say the important thing is to capture what you want to achieve - the dream - and then chip away at it, tiny project by tiny project. You don’t have to do it all in one annual strategy cycle.