We've some exciting new developments to share with you all around Donations & Gift Aid. We appreciate that maximising any revenue off the generosity of your patrons is of key concern to your organisations. With that in mind, we've made an important upgrade to the Donation Prompt and enhanced Gift Aid capture which will both help with revenue generation.
Upgrade to the online Donations Prompt
After looking at our current process and getting feedback from the wider Ticketsolve community, it was deemed that the current Donations page was easy for a customer to navigate through to the next step in the checkout process and critically, not take time to consider 'the ask'.
To help with this, we'll now ask the customer to choose between making a donation (these can still be set amounts chosen by your organisation or a specific amount chosen by the customer) or to 'not donate at this time' before the button to advance within the checkout process is available to click.
This small but important change has been evidenced to help drive any potential donation revenue whilst not sacrificing the ease with which a customer can complete a purchase online.
The above image shows the new donation prompt as a customer would find it online. Note that no value is highlighted and the 'Continue' CTA button at the bottom right corner of the page is inactive. You will also notice that the option to not donate is immediately under the donation amount section.
When a customer makes a donation choice to either select a pre-set donation amount, enter in their own amount or tick the 'I prefer not to donate' button, the Continue CTA button becomes active. This forces the customer to make a decision and in turn, results in higher donation conversions.
Results from Alpha and Beta testing
We’re pleased to share that the results from our Alpha and Beta testing have been fantastic! These outcomes have driven our decision to roll out the new online Donation Prompt to all our customers, so you can all benefit from this revenue-boosting feature.
Here’s a quick snapshot of the stats comparing Alpha and Beta customers two weeks before and after the new donation prompt was introduced:
- ⬆️Average increase in orders with donations: 132%
- ⬆️Average increase in donation rate per order: 154%
- ⬆️Average increase in donation size: 38%
- ⬆️Average increase in total donation value: 217%
- ⬆️Average proportional increase in total donation value: 158%
These numbers really speak for themselves. Some of our Beta testers saw incredible growth, with total donation values soaring by 585% and even 906%!
Ticketsolve Tip
We'd recommend reviewing the text on the Donation Prompt page to reflect the new flow and make sure customers know they must choose to donate (or not) to proceed.
You can change this text in the "Public website cart donations agreement html" snippet - more info here.
Enhanced Gift Aid capture
Please note that Gift Aid is only applicable in the UK.
While updating the Donation Prompt, we revamped how Gift Aid works for UK users. Previously, Gift Aid was captured at the line-item level, requiring customers to opt in with every donation.
Now, Gift Aid will be captured at the customer-record level, allowing customers to select from a few different Gift Aid options. These are:
- All future donations and any made in the last 4 years
- All future donations from today onwards
- Just today's donation
- I don’t want to gift aid
Plus, because Gift Aid comes at no extra cost to the donor, we've added a 'Suggested' label to the most flexible option to subtly highlight it and maximise potential revenue.
We’ve also moved the Gift Aid section to a new page in the checkout and shifted the login step earlier in the process. Now, if a registered customer logs in and has already set their Gift Aid preference, they’ll skip that page for future donations.
Changing a customer's Gift Aid Preference
Gift Aid rules state that customers can change their saved Gift Aid Preference at any time. We've added functionality within the Box Office so that when a customer calls, you can easily update their preferences. Click here for a guide on how to change a customer's Gift Aid choice.
Reporting on Gift Aid
The change in Gift Aid also means that we've made a change to how Gift Aid is reported on in the admin side of Ticketsolve. For more information, take a look at our guide to reporting on Gift Aid Preferences (UK users only).
Important
Reporting on Gift Aid Because of the change in how Gift Aid is recorded, you will need to temporarily use both the old and new Gift Aid reports to gather the required data to claim Gift Aid.
- Donations Gift Aid List - Use this report for all donations with Gift Aid made BEFORE your account was upgraded.
- Donations and Gift Aid Preference List (New) - Use this report for all donations with Gift Aid made ON AND AFTER the date your account was upgraded.
You will have received an email letting you know the date that your account was due to be upgraded. If you're not sure of the date, just contact our Support team who can confirm this for you.
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