Examples of eCards

Meredith Riddick · August 2019

I'm looking to build my first eCard campaign, but I'm not familiar with how they look. Can you please send me examples of what the finished product looks like? I work at an animal shelter so if you have ones specific to animals, even better! Thanks!

Tanna Lewis · August 2019

You can see examples of a couple eCards we offered last year in our holiday campaign here: http://support.childrenscoloradofoundation.org/site/Donation2?df_id=3501&mfc_pref=T&3501.donation=form1. There is also a screenshot below with the eCard fields expanded and the eCard Preview window opened.

There were some things which were a bit funky around the eCards, however. One really frustrating aspect is that there are no reports for the eCards (at least according to BB Support when I checked last winter). So if you want to try to retain the messages being added by users or do analysis on whether one card performs better than others, etc., there isn't a native way to get that data.

Another weird behavior is that the form reloads when you click the eCard Preview and loses all the url parameters, so something you have to work around if you are using any!

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Meredith Riddick · August 2019

Thank you Tanna!! I appreciate the heads up on the quirks, too.

Bri MacBain 2 · August 2019

Here's another example of e-card implementation, this time using an integration for WordPress (WPLO Donate) to bring LO donations directly into a WP environment using the API- this version of LO donations implementation doesn't reload the form either!

https://spca.bc.ca/donations/make-a-donation/

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Sarah Robie · August 2019

Hi - I manage our ecard program at WWF. As you can see from our landing page, we've predominantly used them as freebies for acquisition and engagement, but we also have some donation options as well (we're phasing these out in favor of "tribute" donation forms that happen to have ecards).

WWF ecards: https://support.worldwildlife.org/site/SPageServer/?pagename=WWF_Free_Ecards

Happy to answer other questions you may have.

Allison King · August 2019

Sarah Robie‍ I am continually impressed by the WWF eCards, both as general eCards and as part of tribute campaigns. Y'all have the some of the prettiest cards I've seen and I really like how your pages work.

Sarah Robie · August 2019

Thank you so much Allison King‍!

Meredith Riddick · August 2019

Agreed! Thank you so much Sarah Robie‍!!!

Tanna Lewis · February 2020

Sarah Robie:

Hi - I manage our ecard program at WWF. As you can see from our landing page, we've predominantly used them as freebies for acquisition and engagement, but we also have some donation options as well (we're phasing these out in favor of "tribute" donation forms that happen to have ecards).

WWF ecards: https://support.worldwildlife.org/site/SPageServer/?pagename=WWF_Free_Ecards

Happy to answer other questions you may have.

Sarah Robie‍, what are your results typically like in using the free eCards for acquisition? Do you see many people convert to donors? Thanks!

Sarah Robie · February 2020

Hi Tanna Lewis‍,

Ecards used to be a stronger acquisition channel for us in the early- to mid-2010s (especially via our Google Grant account), but now they function better as an engagement feature. Compared to other acquisition sources, the value of a newly acquired ecard sender was average-to-low, but still enough for us to invest in since we used to get hundreds to thousands a year. The volume is much lower now as many people send wishes over social media: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=ecard

Today, we get many donors who give extra donations because they appreciate being able to send ecards. Also, our tribute/honor donation form is doing well and most donors choose to send an ecard to announce their gift. Our tribute/honor donation form: https://support.worldwildlife.org/site/Donation2?df_id=13830&13830.donation=form1

Tanna Lewis · February 2020

Sarah Robie‍ thanks so much for the reply! Very timely because I actually am going to send out a post soon to the full community to try to get some feedback on tribute programs in general. We have some challenges and some aspects we'd like to modernize. If you don't mind a few preemptive questions here in this thread:

What is your tribute program like in general?
Do you try to direct everyone to just the one tribute form or offer tribute options on your other forms as well?
Do you have a way to capture/report all data submitted for the tribute, including in eCard text?
Do you download it to a separate master database like RE or BBCRM (and if so, which does WWF use, and what do you use to sync it with LO?)
How do you handle paper acknowledgements?

Thanks again!

Allison King · February 2020

Following, as I'm going to be creating a class on tribute campaigns to be released in Q2 2020.

Gaby Gollub · February 2020

Hi Tanna,

I manage WWF's donation forms and can address some of your questions:

What is your tribute program like in general?

Not sure what kind of information you're looking for. We do have an Online Gift Center where people can make a donation and have a thank-you gift (a plush animal, socks, T-shirt, etc.) mailed to someone else. In practice, this is more like shipping your item elsewhere than donating in honor of someone.
Do you try to direct everyone to just the one tribute form or offer tribute options on your other forms as well?

We mainly direct traffic to that one form, but we did include a question on our 2019 year-end form about whether the donation was in honor of someone, and showed a name field if someone said yes.
Do you have a way to capture/report all data submitted for the tribute, including in eCard text?

We only capture data about the honoree if the donor chooses the option to have us mail an announcement of the gift. We can see eCard text by running a transaction report but we don't capture or or report this. Donors can't provide text for their honoree if they don't choose the eCard option.
Do you download it to a separate master database like RE or BBCRM (and if so, which does WWF use, and what do you use to sync it with LO?)

We use BBCRM; donors' data syncs to it.
How do you handle paper acknowledgements?

On our tribute form, we give donors the option to have us mail a third party an acknowledgment to let them know about the gift. This personalized letter is sent automatically.

I hope this is helpful! Good luck with your tribute program.

Best,

Gaby

Tanna Lewis · February 2020

Thanks Gaby Gollub‍! I just posted a new thread here to try to get more tips, so feel free to pick up there if you want - https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/1/49557 - but quick question for your last item there - how do you automate the personalized postal letter? Is it generated from BBCRM?

Gaby Gollub · February 2020

You're welcome, Tanna. Sorry to say but our acknowledgment letters are well outside of my wheelhouse. Before this form launched, my BBCRM colleagues put in some legwork to map the honoree notification fields from Luminate to the CRM and updated our sync to generate this letter (to the best of my knowledge). Sorry I don't know more about this.

Examples of eCards

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