guest post // 4 Ways to Use A/B Testing in Nonprofit Communications
By Joshua Meyer, Bloomerang
Your nonprofit has ambitious goals, but you can’t do it all alone. Whether you’re trying to launch a new program, expand your donor base, or recruit more volunteers, you need to create compelling communications to rally people around your initiative.
You know that you can’t just send the same generic messages to all of your donors. To truly resonate with your audience, you must tailor your communications to catch their attention, appeal to their interests, and inspire them to take action.
By conducting A/B testing, your nonprofit can home in on the specific elements of your messaging that hit the mark with your audience and lean into them for better results over time. In this guide, we’ll touch on the basics of A/B testing and four ways you can leverage it to improve your nonprofit communications.
What Is A/B Testing?
A/B testing, or split testing, refers to the process of comparing two versions of a piece of content to determine which performs stronger over a certain period of time. You’ll typically only change one variable or element between the two versions and present them to similar-sized audiences to evaluate how they interact with the content.
Bloomerang’s donation page guide provides an example of what an A/B image test for a nonprofit’s mobile giving form design:
A/B testing allows your nonprofit to make data-driven decisions about the content you present to your audience, from your donation page to your email campaigns.
For instance, let’s say that you’ve determined that your average email click-through rate hovers around 3%. If you A/B test a change to your call to action (CTA) button that results in a 3.5% click-through rate, you can apply the tactic across all email communications to encourage more people to engage with your content.
4 Ways to Improve Nonprofit Communications with A/B Testing
There are endless possibilities for improving your nonprofit communications with A/B testing. To make the most of your team’s time, here are the most popular ways to apply A/B testing to your communication strategy:
1. Email Campaigns
Email is a common channel for nonprofits to send updates, fundraising appeals, event invitations, and more to their supporters. However, it can be challenging to figure out the best approach to increasing engagement and retaining interest among your audience. Are you reaching out to donors too much? Or not enough? What makes them click on one fundraising email and not another?
You can unlock more insights by conducting A/B testing on your:
Subject lines
CTAs
Content layout
Content length
Amount of personalization
Image usage
Use your past email metrics to pinpoint the improvements you’d like to make to your emails. For example, if you’re hoping to increase your open rate, you might focus on adjusting your subject lines to find what works best.
2. Donation Page
Your nonprofit’s donation page is an invaluable conversion opportunity on your website. After all, it’s where prospective and current donors go to give to your organization. However, according to M+R, only 19% of website visitors who reach a nonprofit’s main donation page complete a gift.
To improve your donation page’s performance, you can A/B test your:
Form fields
Impact statistics and social proof
Suggested giving amounts
CTA button
Image usage
You don’t have to limit your testing to just your donation page. If you’re trying to acquire new members for your membership program or recruit more volunteers for an upcoming event, consider conducting A/B tests on those forms, too.
3. Social Media Posts
Due to social media's global popularity, your nonprofit needs to maintain an active and engaging presence on these platforms. There are many ways for donors to interact with your organization on social media, from participating in peer-to-peer fundraising to attending your livestreams.
To create posts that resonate with your followers, you can A/B test components like:
Timing
Statistics usage
Emoji usage
Image or video choice
CTAs
Hashtags
By posting high-quality updates and visuals regularly, you can stay at the top of your followers’ minds, drive traffic to your website content, and keep them invested in your mission for the long term.
4. Advertising
Advertising channels, like Google Ads, can significantly expand your nonprofit’s reach and help you introduce new supporters to your mission. Plus, thanks to the Google Ad Grant program, your nonprofit can access a monthly stipend of $10,000 to create engaging ads that will appear in Google search results for keywords related to your mission.
Once you’ve secured the grant, you can use A/B testing to make the most of your Google Ads. For instance, you can test your:
Ad headlines
Ad copy
CTAs
Landing page choices
Throughout your A/B test, keep an eye on metrics such as ad impressions, click-through rate, and conversion rate to identify which changes are improving your ad performance.
How to Conduct A/B Testing
While the concept of A/B testing is rather straightforward, there are specific steps you should follow to generate actionable insights for your nonprofit. These include:
Define your goal. Begin by identifying what you hope to accomplish through A/B testing. For example, you might want to increase your donation page conversion rate, secure more matching gifts, boost social media engagement, improve your email open rate, or reduce your Google ad cost-per-click. Establishing a goal allows you to determine whether your tested change is successful or not.
Choose a specific variable to test. If you change your orange CTA button that says “Donate to support us today” to a blue CTA button that says “Donate to save lives today” and see an uptick in conversions, you might not know whether it’s the color or text change that struck a chord with donors. By altering only one variable at a time, you can draw a clear connection between the change you’re testing and the results you receive.
Establish two audience groups. To directly compare your two versions, you’ll need to split your audience into two similar groups. Let’s say your nonprofit has an email list of 3,800 subscribers. If you’re testing how personalizing subject lines can increase open rates, you might send emails with generic subject lines to 1,900 subscribers and emails including the recipient’s name to the other 1,900.
After you’ve established your goal, variable, and audience groups, it’s time to execute your A/B test. Monitor each version throughout the duration and use your predefined metrics to identify which performed better overall.
While you should record your findings in your nonprofit’s database, before you begin making changes to your strategy, perform a statistical significance test to ensure that the difference in performance is large enough that it can’t be attributed to pure chance. There are plenty of free tools online, such as the Qualtrics Statistical Significance Calculator, that you can use to input your numbers for easy calculation.
Remember that A/B testing is an iterative process that your nonprofit can use to continually refine your communications strategy over time. While these tests can take time and energy to run, there are plenty of free tools available to automate your marketing tasks and enhance your metrics reporting. By sharing your A/B test results across your team and brainstorming improvements together, you’ll set your nonprofit up for continued success.
This guest post was written by Joshua Meyer.
Joshua Meyer brings more than 20 years of fundraising, volunteer management, and marketing experience to his current role as the VP of Demand Generation for Bloomerang. As a member of the Bloomerang marketing team, Josh manages the organization’s growth marketing efforts. Through his previous roles at the Human Rights Campaign and OneCause, he has a passion for helping to create positive change and helping nonprofits engage new donors and achieve their fundraising goals.