Our Charity Dynamics retained strategic services clients receive weekly status updates that allow us to plan and track initiatives that help our clients reach their digital communication and fundraising goals.
Each week, we share the most innovative ideas we see in the industry and look for ways to keep our clients on the cutting edge. Here are three of our favorite ideas from the last month:
1) Add a Searchable FAQ to Your Event Sites
43% of users feel they can solve their own service issues if companies put better self-service tools in place. That number goes up to 62% for the 18-24 year old crowd. Empower your participants and donors to find answers to their own questions on your website through a searchable Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. A searchable FAQ page allows users to quickly find answers to their questions and will foster a positive experience on your website.
Your organization will receive two key benefits from a searchable FAQ.
- Reduce Cost – fewer constituent questions means less staff time spent on responding to inquiries. This can translate into significant saving in staff support for your website.
- Increased Fundraising and Registrations – participants who can quickly and easily find answers to their own questions are more likely to register, donate or fundraise – which was likely the original intent for visiting your website.
Learn more about Searchable FAQ pages here!
2) Check Your Pre-Header
Since subscribers only spend about 3-4 seconds determining whether they are going to open your email, you must grab their attention and interest immediately. Some email clients (such as Gmail, Outlook and iPhone/iPad) display a snippet of preview text next to or near the subject line. This bit of text—commonly called a pre-header— is usually limited to around 100 characters and will be pulled from the first few lines of text in your email. Consider doing a pre-header audit of your current emails and make sure you are conforming to these best practices:
- Never include the “View Online” in the top portion of your email stationery. Instead include a snippet that gives an overview of the email. Use the text to bring value to the email content.
- Add a call to action, a short summary of your email, additional text to support the subject line, or provide a promotion code for event participants!
- If you don’t include the snippet, make sure that the first sentence in your email is impactful since that is the first thing that will show up after the subject line.
- Limit pre-header messages to 85-100 characters.
- Test pre-header content by viewing it in multiple email clients for an idea of how many characters recipients see.
- Test the email and pre-header on mobile devices by viewing your content in traditional vertical view and horizontal view.
3) Become a Hub for Information Sharing
Many organizations we work with have the need to be a central source for gathering and sharing information and are looking for creative ways of displaying and making this information available online. One organization that has accomplished just that, Humane Society Silicon Valley, wanted to provide a forum where constituents could create posts looking for lost and found pets. Check out the results!
Key Technical Achievements
- Through the use of Google Map’s API, the Charity Dynamics team was able to integrate a map into this design that would allow posters to pinpoint the exact location of where animals were found.
- Submitted posts are populated on the site instantly, removing the need for any additional administrative oversight.
- Robust search module with photos that are displayed as part of the search results.
About Charity Dynamics Strategic Services Retainers:
Charity Dynamics Strategic Services Retainers are planned, hours based, ongoing engagements where project teams collaborate on the short and long term needs of the client. A strategic retainer allows for flexibility and access to the full diversity of expertise on the Charity Dynamics team including consultants, web developers, designer and UX experts. A dedicated project manager is assigned to each client retainer to ensure the proper resource is made available for the specific client needs.