The Salvation Army sees a 46% increase in completed donations with Campaign Studio
Mission
To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination
Challenge
Perform data-backed testing to validate the decision to transition all donation pages to GoFundMe Pro’s Studio campaign builder
Solution
Campaign Studio proved to be the more effective fundraising solution, resulting in a higher donation completion rate and an improved donor experience
“We were expecting the Studio campaigns to load faster, offer an improved user interface, and enhance the overall experience. And they did just that.”
– Andrew Dobney, Director of Digital Strategy
A/B test results with Studio:
46% higher
overall donation completion rate
32% higher
“Give monthly” donation completion rate
Increased
page load speed resulting in more donations
Setting up an A/B test to validate assumptions with Studio
The Salvation Army team wanted to optimize performance across all donation pages, including load speeds and the donor checkout experience. Already familiar with GoFundMe Pro’s Studio donation page builder and the results other organizations have seen on Studio, The Salvation Army believed that it would outperform existing pages. However, before making the switch, the team wanted to conduct a thorough A/B test to ensure the best results.
The A/B test was about validating what we were anticipating would happen with Studio, and making sure that we were doing our due diligence to confirm what we were expecting to happen actually did happen.
The A/B test parameters included:
- Location: Website homepage and hero header
- Donation frequency: One-time and monthly
- Traffic source: All visits
- Device: All devices
- Traffic split: 50%/50%
- Duration: 5 weeks
At the end of the five-week-long test, Studio was the clear winner, delivering a 46% higher overall donation completion rate (the percentage of users who started the donation form and completed it) and faster page load speeds. Directionally, they also saw a 32% higher “Give monthly” donation completion rate. The success of Studio’s donation pages can be attributed to a simplified, one-page giving experience, a donation form placed above the fold, and visual impact blocks that illustrated the power of each gift.
The GoFundMe Pro team put us in a position to confidently use Studio, and they helped to ensure the metrics that we were looking at independently were accurate and saying the right things.
Rolling out Studio across The Salvation Army Territories
After seeing great results from the A/B test and with the holiday giving season fast-approaching—the most important fundraising period of the year—The Salvation Army National team is converting all standard donation pages to Studio. The test results have been shared with each Salvation Army Territory, and their teams have been highly encouraged to update all campaigns to Studio. Most, if not all, are planning to do so.
The test confirmed our suspicion that Studio was the way to go, which we wanted to do early enough ahead of holiday giving. Now, we’ll be updating all of our existing donation pages to new ones created on Studio.
Andrew’s GoFundMe Pro tips:
- Use Campaign Studio for its built-in optimization and improved donor experience based on insights from thousands of other organizations.
- If you have the time and interest, test, test, test yourself:
- Come up with a plan and set relevant KPIs. Whether it’s changing the button from “Donate now” to “Donate” or shifting a button 10 pixels to the left or right, or stacked or not, anything is testable.
- Utilize source codes and pass-through parameters.
- We might receive a request to create a donation page with a pre-selected amount, but instead, we can repurpose an existing donation page and add a pass-through parameter. This saves us some time, and we can meet their request and goal.
