Converting an audience to take an action is salient to nonprofit success. When it comes to conversion, one of the most important things to account for is the call to action. It always needs to be clear, concise, and powerful enough to cultivate a sense of urgency and move users through the conversion funnel towards becoming full-fledged supporters.
Ideally, there should be calls to action on every page of your website, showing visitors where they should go next. Unfortunately, many nonprofit organizations neglect to spend enough time developing their calls to action, hurting their chances at converting potential supporters and other website visitors.
Effective calls to action can increase the performance of your forms, email newsletters, blog posts, fundraising campaigns, and more. And of course, with increased performance comes increased chances of conversion.
So, where to begin? Below are six tips for crafting effective calls that will drive conversion across all of your nonprofit organization’s segments.
1. Use action-oriented language
Don’t be afraid to make firm demands with your calls to action. That’s the whole point! People want to support your mission, so give clear direction toward the action you want them to take with lots of strong verbs and active language, while avoiding fluffy language entirely.
Here are five great examples of action-oriented calls to action that you can use for CTA buttons in your email bodies, in the copy of your social media posts, and more:
- “Donate now to support our fundraising efforts and help us make a positive impact in our community.”
- “Take action and make an online donation today to help us reach our fundraising goals and create a lasting impact.”
- “Join us in our mission by contributing to our online fundraiser and help us achieve our fundraising goals for maximum impact.”
- “Make a difference with your donation and help us make the biggest impact possible in the lives of those we serve.”
- “Support our cause and contribute to our fundraising efforts to ensure a positive impact on our community.”
Let us know if you use any of these engaging CTA’s in your donation buttons or forms in order to appeal to your nonprofit supporters!
2. Leave no room for ambiguity
Ambiguity will confuse potential supporters, thus hampering the success of online fundraising campaigns. In calls to action, ambiguity can lead to a lack of understanding among supporters, causing them to hesitate or possibly abandon your action altogether.
Instead, when nonprofit organizations clearly state what action they want supporters to take — whether it’s donating, volunteering, or sharing a campaign on social media — it eliminates any confusion and provides a clear path for engagement. By being explicit and concise in your nonprofit’s messaging, your team can effectively guide potential donors through the donation process, increasing the likelihood of receiving contributions and ultimately achieving your fundraising goals.
3. Keep it short and to-the-point
While people might have varying levels of familiarity with your nonprofit organization (and thus might need more elaboration on why you’re reaching out to them in the first place), it’s best practice to keep things short and sweet with what you’re asking of them.
If you do want to customize your messaging, check out our segmentation tools. This enables you to send different emails or texts that make sense depending on how familiar certain segments of supporters are with your organization — someone who is a recurring donor can receive a different message as opposed to someone who has only signed up for an action once and never donated.
4. Highlight the benefits
All of this isn’t to say that you should avoid backing up why you’re reaching out. To highlight the benefits, it’s great to tell a compelling story with an emotional appeal to readers that can generate sympathy for your mission. Then, you can channel that emotional appeal into the sense of urgency that drives effective calls to action. What’s an action without a powerful story to demonstrate its importance!
5. Instill a sense of urgency
Actions are time-sensitive by their very nature. Communicating the urgency of your cause will encourage individuals to take immediate action — there won’t be any hesitation or delay. You can drive donations, volunteer sign-ups, or other forms of support that are critical to the health of your mission.
6. Be visually engaging
Calls to action need to capture the attention of potential donors, which is why the CTAs need to be visually engaging. Incorporate eye-catching graphics or images that evoke emotion and align with your organization’s mission.
Optimizing CTAs for mobile devices is particularly crucial as people regularly access the internet through their smartphones or tablets. Ensure that the design of your donation form is responsive and mobile-friendly, with a clear and user-friendly layout that includes a legible font size, easy-to-navigate buttons, and a streamlined process to minimize the amount of information visualized on smaller screens. A prominent CTA button that stands out from the rest of the form can help guide mobile users to complete their donation quickly and effortlessly.
So, what’s our call to action?
The whole point of effective CTAs is to drive conversion. We’ve helped many esteemed nonprofit organizations improve their conversion efforts to engage, recruit, and retain more supporters. We understand that if you’re investing in online audience growth, your most key priority is converting new users into supporters.
To find out more about nonprofit success on our platform, sign up below to receive our white paper all about conversion: https://info.engagingnetworks.net/conversion-report
