A big thank you to stations that participated in CDP’s #GivingTuesday conversational texting campaign this year. We know there’s so much competition for your donor’s attention and dollars on that day, so we believed it was vital to try something new and supplement existing plans with a text message.

It was worth it too—we’ve seen some great results from stations that integrated conversational texting into their #GivingTuesday fundraising plans. We’ll continue to build on this success as testing campaigns such as this helps provide great insight into future texting opportunities.

And now for the results: 21 stations participated with more than 95,000 texts sent as part of our two-hit #GivingTuesday text campaign, which included a thank-you text message sent on Thanksgiving Day, followed by a donation ask the following week on #GivingTuesday.

Campaign results:

• 206 gifts for $22,005* ($107 avg gift)

• Donation response rate: 0.45%, which is typical of a similar text or email add-gift appeals

• Opt-outs were relatively low too: 3.9%

*NOTE: Not all stations have reported results to date.

Results vary by station, but in general, we’re very pleased with these results. In fact, we heard from a few stations that were excited to participate in this texting campaign, saw some great results and plan to do more texting soon. Thanks to the following stations for their feedback: KSPS PBS, WKAR Public Media and WMHT Public Media—not only did these stations see significant dollars raised for this campaign, but each station also had donation response rates that were 2–4X the group average. I’d say that’s exciting news worth sharing—congratulations!

• Lynn V. (WMHT): “This is really exciting to see…Looking forward to more successful texting campaigns.”

• Kevin C. (WKAR): “We were very pleased with the results of the outbound text campaign…We appreciate all of the help you guys provided.”

• Skyler R. (KSPS): “KSPS PBS considers this a major success, and we’d love to be part of future efforts.”

CDP Conversational Texting service was developed exclusively for public media stations in partnership with ACD Direct. Texting is a highly versatile form of communication and can be executed through coordinated campaigns developed and executed by CDP & ACD, or by using a simple self-serve online platform (Station Text Portal). Our agents are fully trained for engaging conversations and ready to assist in your text communication needs.

Interested in texting your donors? Contact me anytime to see how we can help engage with your donors through conversational texting.

Wishing you all the best in your year-end fundraising campaigns—and let’s make 2022 the best year yet!

Thanks,

Mike Sharp
Associate Director, CDP
msharp@cdpcommunity.org