If you’re trying to choose between two different taglines, value propositions, or ways of presenting your impact to donors this December, don’t guess. Test!
You don’t need a million impressions or months of data to test messaging. With a small budget, some segmentation, and a little planning, you can gather real insights over the next month or so to reduce risk and increase year-end revenue.
November is the perfect time to discover which messages resonate best before launching to your full list in December. This kind of testing has added benefits, too, like warming up a new audience or making your top supporters feel special.
Here are three ways to test campaign messaging before December, so you can feel more confident hitting send—especially in that last week of the year.
Want to know which description, story, or headline sparks more curiosity or a stronger emotional response? Test both avenues as their own ad sets within one Meta, YouTube, LinkedIn, or Google Performance Max campaign.
To test effectively, run two identical creative formats (same video, same image, same landing page) and simply swap the headline and intro copy. Or, you can test two distinctly different creative assets or impact stories.
Regardless of the ad platform you choose, set a daily budget at the ad set level so the platform is forced to spend the same amount of money on both versions. If you set this up as an Awareness or Engagement campaign, you can typically spend just $100-$200 and get a large enough sample size.
See if one ad receives significantly more:
Read the comments on both ads! Is one ad getting people more fired up in a good way, or a not-so-good way? Is either ad giving people the wrong impression of your work?
You can target your existing supporters with this campaign if you’re wondering what works best for them. Or, if you’re wondering what works best for new donor acquisition, target a Lookalike audience based on your donor list and exclude your existing contacts.
Bonus: This approach also warms up a new audience! You can retarget people who see these ads with fundraising ads in December.
November is the warm-up lap before your December push. You’re re-engaging your list, sharing impact stories, and reminding people why your cause matters so much right now.
Use one or two of your November emails to test campaign messaging across subject lines, intro copy, and calls to action.
Try sending two versions of the same email with different:
Make sure the emails are the same length and design for a fair comparison. After sending both versions, review opens, clicks, and replies to see if there’s a clear winner.
Need inspiration? Use AI as a starting point! If you’re not sure how to write two distinct versions of the same email, explain your goal to your AI tool of choice and ask it to send back email drafts along with an explanation of how to interpret the results.
While clicks and comments give us clues, they may not fully reflect which message actually drives donations.
If you want to know which tagline or value proposition is strongest at the point of giving, soft-launch your campaign with a select group of donors; perhaps a subset of year-end donors from last year. A/B test two versions of your campaign donation page. A few days later, compare the conversion rates and the total $ raised.
iDonate makes this super easy with built-in A/B testing functionality. You can create two versions of your donation page with different headlines, descriptions, or testimonials, and it will automatically run an A/B test for you.
If you use a different fundraising platform without this feature, you will need to duplicate your donation page and make your messaging changes to one version, divide your sample email list in half, and send a different version to each group.
You may not uncover a crystal-clear winner with this test, especially if the email goes to your super-donors, who will likely give regardless of the exact language. When reviewing results, think about what matters most for this campaign. Are you prioritizing…
Bonus: You can frame this test as a sneak peek for a special group of donors. Invite them to get the giving started to bump up that progress bar, so more people are inspired to join in December. Announce your match to them if you have one, and include plenty of gratitude in the email!
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You can use one or all three of these message testing methods to get answers before December. If the tests don’t yield a clear answer, that’s helpful info too. If a clear winner isn’t revealed, you may want to run a few more split tests during December, or infuse both messages into your campaign content.
Just be careful not to muddy the message too much. It’s important to repeat the same specific, persuasive value proposition throughout your campaign so people know exactly what you stand for and exactly where their money will go.