- June 4, 2015
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Did the Mobile Revolution Bypass Charitable Giving?
Although Americans are spending most of their digital media time on mobile devices, as surfaced by the 2015 Mobile Marketing Trend Report, they are not using that time to engage with their favorite causes or donate money to philanthropic endeavors.
In a new survey, one aspect of its Bring Change integrated marketing campaign, TD Bank surveyed 1,435 U.S. consumers about their attitudes and behaviors toward charitable giving. The good news is that Americans continue to be generous, even when economic reports are shaky.
“The results are heart-warming, but not surprising,” said Vinoo Vijay, chief marketing officer at TD Bank. “TD always suspected that most Americans shared a deep commitment to their communities.”
The bad news for integrated marketers, however, is that certain segments of donors continue to use traditional ways to support charities, sometimes hampering marketers’ efforts to get out messages and raise funds quickly. TD discovered this breakdown:
- Millennials are supporting the greater good with their habits of tweets, texts and photo sharing, with 63 percent contributing to causes they’ve learned about through social media.
- Beyond Millennials, mobile engagement drops to 37 percent of all consumers surveyed.
- And despite the many negative labels attached to this generation, Millennials are more likely to donate than their generational counterparts. Seventy-nine percent confirmed they’d be willing to spare a few coins each week to contribute to a cause they believe in. Only 71 percent of Gen Xers and 67 percent of Baby Boomers reported the same engagement.
The lesson here is that nonprofit marketers can fare better by knowing their audiences and understanding their communication preferences. This case study from the World Jewish Congress American Section is a great example.
Even if you can’t swing a formal survey, you can use data to understand your online reputation, as we explained in “Managing Data We Can’t Control: Listening Online.”
And don’t overlook the power of — or get intimidated by — database marketing. In “Database Marketing: It’s Not What You Think,” we explored what database marketing is and isn’t. Chances are you already have most of the data you need in-house to start or improve your outreach.