The clocks are about to change and we’re counting down to festive times (plus Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday). With many charities vying for attention, your appeals need more than “we’ll send an email and hope” to stand out.
They need to work smarter by pulling together strategy, experience, creative and optimisation.
You’ve likely covered many of the basics already (if you followed our previous series of posts: Part 1: prep and outreach, Part 2: welcome and convert and Part 3: thank and nurture). But to give your appeal that extra edge this year, here are the must-have elements plus several advanced tactics you can still implement in time to impact your results.
1. Focus on a single emotionally clear ask
Your appeal should centre around one specific, compelling ask: e.g. ‘Help 10 families receive a Christmas meal’. Avoid vague language such as ‘support us this Christmas’ without an outcome or timeframe. This builds clarity and urgency and extends what we covered in our first post on outreach and preparation.
2. Consistent terms and urgency
Use consistent terms (‘gift’ or ‘donation’ but not both as well as ‘support’ / ‘payment’), and emphasise immediacy (‘today’, ‘now’, ‘before midnight’). Small wording changes like ‘my gift’ vs ‘your gift’ can shift the donor’s mindset so they are worth testing.
3. Festive, audience-segmented landing and donation experience
Create an appeal-specific landing page (or pages) carrying your festive look-and-feel, with shared messaging and visuals across all channels. Tailor the experience for warm vs cold leads (for example, use PURLs / personalised greeting / custom gift arrays for your warm contacts).
When it comes to the donor experience, aim for:
- Minimal fields, no pages of copy / terms, mobile-first design, a fast page-load time
- Clear CTA (‘Give now’) and trust marks related to security / SSL and payment service provider
- Smart default amounts (ideally just 3; possibly 5)
- Obvious social proof (most popular amount, recent donors, feedback from donors)
- Welcome digital wallets (Apple Pay, PayPal especially) for frictionless mobile giving
These are extensions of our previous welcome and convert strategies.
4. Multi-channel outreach
Don’t rely on a single channel. Combine email, SMS, WhatsApp (where permitted), DM, organic social and ads. Create strong and consistent ‘hero’ assets (video, still or animated carousel) and repurpose across channels.
Encourage donors to share their support across social or into their IM groups (via stickers, share prompts) to expand reach peer-to-peer.
Make sure you have tracking (plus UTMs) in place as best you can, consent management and ideally performance dashboards. You can see more about this here.
5. Rapid optimisation
Monitor performance at least weekly to spot issues with conversion, acquisition, average gift or in-form drop-off. Ideally start the appeal season with a collection of test hypotheses ready to learn quickly as traffic increases toward January.
Not got a plan yet? Try eDM subject lines, hooks in your ads, elements of your hero content, button labels, gift arrays or impact statements. This ties into our post where we explored funnels.
6. New for 2025 – it’s not too late for quick wins!
Here are 5 fresh elements to consider that can still be implemented in time to make a difference:
a) Enable one-click giving for returning donors
With increasing mobile usage, it pays to take advantage of tokenised payments (where offered by your payment service provider) plus e-wallets to help warm leads and returning donors to continue their support as easily and quickly as possible.
Got an online shop? Offer a micro-gift upsell
While large gifts are lovely, micro donations (e.g. £10/$20 and under) drive volume, engagement and lead qualification. Offer an array of small ‘top ups’ during checkout.
c) Seek to convert to RG in the moment
After a one-off donation, why not prompt an upgrade to a monthly donation? This will enable the donor to increase their impact.
d) Live or time-bound social event
Take all the best bits from a glorious Giving Day and a gamers’ stream and pop them into the middle of your appeal. Host a short live event (Tiltify, Twitch, Meta, YouTube or even *ahem* Zoom) and shape it like a mini appeal with a beneficiary story, behind-the-scenes, shout-outs to donors and a countdown plus target for the event. It adds urgency and personal connection. Make clips from the live content to drive last-minute momentum.
e) Donor-generated content
Encourage supporters to post a ‘reason I gave…’ or ‘my gift is in memory / celebration of…’ using your main brand hashtag. Feature some of those posts in your social feed or even on the donation page. This builds authenticity, social proof and a sense of recognition amongst your community.
7. Nurture
Don’t let the appeal journey end with their gift; thank them immediately as part of a receipt.
Share a further warm and grateful message within 24 hours (permission pending based upon your org’s location), via email (or SMS) that recognises the donor, recaps impact and invites sharing.
Then explore the further points covered in our third post.
Closing thoughts
You’ve already laid the groundwork, but perhaps found one or two areas in need of some added focus. Start now!
The next 6 weeks are crucial. Small decisions made today (setting up e-wallets, adding a micro-gifts promo, planning a matched-giving live content) could create outsized impact this holiday season. If you’d like our full checklist to use internally, drop us a line or pick it up here.
Need help to optimise your appeal and smash your target? Say hello!
We’ll do a free quick review and offer advice to shape things up before December.
Let’s make 2025 your most successful year-end appeal yet!