How a Nonprofit Organization Increased Conversions By 600%

Challenge

Donations are like lifeblood for a nonprofit, funding critical missions and unlocking the necessary resources to truly make a difference. Yet, this particular large nonprofit had a problem with online donations. The issue wasn’t getting people to open their wallets per say, rather in actually completing the transaction. In short, they had donation cart abandonment issues.

Any donation left behind is a missed opportunity to make a real impact on their mission…the whole reason non-profit organizations exist. So, what would compel these people to go down the donation track, only to pull back at the last moment? And how can you gently guide these visitors back to their donation carts?

Reminding people that they were about to give you money, but didn’t, isn’t the easiest road to walk. Come off too aggressive, and you risk sounding opportunistic. Too passive, and you could be leaving money on the table.

Conventional retargeting wasn’t solving their problem. The cart abandonments kept happening, and they kept losing out on money from donors who had already demonstrated that they were ready to give.

Outcome

The issue ended up being one of personalization– they weren’t speaking directly enough to their site visitors even while using a platform as powerful as Marketo. Part of their problem was that they weren’t using Marketo to their full advantage, so they began searching for solutions to close this gap.

MERGE, working in collaboration with Marketo’s technical team, co-delivered a custom javascript to give them better lead scoring and solve shopping cart abandonment issues, enhancing Marketo’s overall Web personalization capabilities in the process. With web personalization, the client was able to deliver the right ad message to visitors at the appropriate funnel stage– including the critical stages surrounding a donation cart.

Results

With the addition of web personalization, the client was able to learn more about their site visitors, which enabled them to tailor messaging to speak more directly to them. The results were immediate— and impressive: