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13 Giving Tuesday Marketing Ideas for Nonprofits using HubSpot (2024)

13 Giving Tuesday Marketing Ideas for Nonprofits using HubSpot (2024)

The fall is finally here. For the world, it can mean Halloween, baked treats, and Black Friday deals. But for most nonprofits around the world, it's all about developing new and improved fundraising strategies revolving around Giving Tuesday.

What Is Giving Tuesday?

Giving Tuesday is an alternate movement that aims to change the narrative of the season from that of spending and shopping (associated with Black Friday) to that of a season of giving. The idea behind the movement is to permanently shift the mood around this time of the year from that of selfish buying to that of selfless giving. It's all about embracing the true spirit of the holidays by focusing on helping the community.

How Can a Nonprofit Organization Use Giving Tuesday To Scale Its Growth?

How do you get donations on Giving Tuesday?

Over the years, Giving Tuesday has built up a reputation of getting powerful visibility with a lot of mainstream endorsement around the movement. This can be used by nonprofits by connecting their fundraising campaigns to the Giving Tuesday event and leveraging the sentiment of altruism to boost support for their causes.

A nonprofit can initiate a unique appeal for Giving Tuesday, encouraging donors to donate around this special event.

Based on this, here are 13 Giving Tuesday marketing ideas for nonprofits using Hubspot.

13 Giving Tuesday Marketing Ideas for Nonprofits Using HubSpot

1) Sending Personalized Messages to Your List

Personalized messages are highly influential as they help form a conversational bridge with your audience. As humans, we like to feel validated and be addressed as an individual. When someone addresses us by our name and starts a conversation based on our interests and behavior, we are a million times more likely to listen and pay attention.

You can easily leverage this strategy for Giving Tuesday using HubSpot's Donor Segmentation and Smart Content tools.

You can use it to segment your audience based on their interaction with your organization. You can segment them based on their frequency of donation or a particular campaign they have donated to, and hence create a conversational bridge. 

You can double it down by using HubSpot’s Smart Content tool that will enable you to fetch personalized web content, messages, and images for the prospective donor.

This personalization will be based on their geographical location, their preferred language, the device they are using, and more granular filters.

Using these mix of tools, you can create powerful personalization in your donation drive and inject subtle influential triggers to make it convert better.

Segmenting donor by frequency
Segmenting Donor by Frequency


Smart Rules for content on HubSpot
Smart Rules for Content on HubSpot


Learn More about DepositFix for Nonprofits

2) Capturing Conversations on Social Media Related to Giving Tuesday

The hashtag #GivingTuesday will start to trend around the Giving Tuesday week. Take full advantage of it by engaging with the donor community using the hashtag on specific posts that talk about your cause, its impact, and importance. This will get you the eyeballs you need to drive attention to your donation campaign.

Try to use topical jokes and puns around Thanksgiving and the holiday season, and A/B test which posts are working well. 

You can maximize this Giving Tuesday strategy by using HubSpot’s social inbox tool.

The social inbox tool will help you organize your segmented list’s activity on social media via a clean interface. Using this tool, you can see and interact with your customers and leads on social media based on how you have segmented them. This way, you will have a headstart in starting meaningful conversations with them and drive them towards your Giving Tuesday campaign.

Giving Tuesday Pro Tip for HubSpot Users  - You can set alerts in the social inbox tool when a customer uses a specific keyword on social media. For example, you can set up alerts for the term - Giving Tuesday and check your segmented list to see who is talking about Giving Tuesday on social media. With this data, you can start a conversation with the person and nurture them towards your Giving Tuesday campaign.

Source: HubSpot

3) Set Up a Drip Campaign To Nurture Prospective Donors

Announcing a Giving Tuesday donation drive to your email subscribers is a great way to generate buzz among people who are already acquainted with your brand. These people know about your brand and have subscribed to your newsletter to get more information. They are the warmest leads you have, thus making them more likely to contribute towards your Giving Tuesday campaign. 

The way to set this up is by launching a drip campaign. Here’s how it works.

Firstly, send an announcement or broadcast email to your subscribers 2 weeks before the Giving Tuesday event. In this mail, simply talk about the donation drive your nonprofit is organizing on Giving Tuesday, its importance, and how they can help with it. Take them through the cause, its importance, and then go for the ask. 

Next, send a sequence of reminder mails to keep the topic hot and generate buzz among your subscriber community. Talk about some stories related to your cause, and how their donation will make a big difference. End the mail with a simple reminder for the event.

Mix it up with emails where you can talk about a virtual event (more on this later) you are organizing for Giving Tuesday, and how the subscribers can be part of the event. End the mails with a gentle reminder for the big day. This keeps your subscriber alert and focused on the main action they need to take without getting distracted.

Finally, on the day of the Giving Tuesday event, send a sequence of 3-4 mails. Start the first mail by announcing the opening of your payment page. Follow it up by emails related to your virtual event with an invitation link. In the virtual event itself, remind them to go to the donation page and donate generously. Send 1-2 final reminders before closing the payment cart.

If all this sounds complicated, fret not. You can simply use the HubSpot workflow tool to get it done in an organized and easy manner.

Hubspot's workflow tool will enable you to automate email campaigns based on a variety of triggers. You can first send a broadcast mail and then send reminder emails set at regular intervals, for example - 2 days apart from each other. All this with complete automation.  

You can use the workflow tool's analytics to see which subscribers are engaging with your campaign and separate them from the ones that aren't. 

Based on this, you can create 2 separate sets of nurturing campaigns, addressing the 2 sets of subscribers. 

You can create a reminder/follow up campaign for people who opened your mail, sending them mails contextual to their behavior. 

In the same manner, you can engage subscribers who are not opening your mails, with a separate set of follow up emails aiming to make them engage with your campaign. 

All this will enable you to create nurturing tracks for donors and lapsed donors, based on their behavior and activity.


HubSpot Recurring Donations Workflow


4)Ask Them To Recommend a Friend

A quick growth hack to double down on your Giving Tuesday email drip campaign is by ending your announcement and subsequent reminder emails with a simple call-to-action to invite a friend or family member to your email list. You will be surprised by how many invitations you get. 

That’s because the people who are subscribed to your email list are most likely believers of your cause and share the same passion and values as you do for the cause. Asking them to rope in a family member or friend will have a compound effect on the no. of people who will now see your donation campaign and will like to help you out.

You can simply have a 1 line CTA at the end of the mail saying something like: Know someone who shares the same passion for saving endangered pandas as we do? Invite them to our mailing list by sharing the link here. 

Then add the link that leads them to subscribe to your mailing list.

5) Throw a Virtual Live Event 

Get attention for your donation appeal and optimize the fundraising efforts by throwing a virtual live event on social media channels. 

You can use a tool like Restream.io to simultaneously stream the live event on multiple channels like Facebook, YouTube, etc., and talk about your donation. To get eyeballs and some buzz going for the event, you can pre-plan it by getting some local acts to perform for the occasion.

You can ensure maximum attendance by announcing the event beforehand to your newsletter subscribers and then follow it up with a series of reminders. The reminders can talk about the importance/impact of your cause on society and also highlight the line-up of attractions they will get to see when they attend the event.

You can set this up by using HubSpot’s workflow tool to create a drip campaign about a week before the event date. 

The first mail can be a general announcement about the event to your newsletter. It can talk about things like - why you are doing this, why it matters, and why they (the audience) should care. 

Next, you can tease them up to open the next few mails by talking about some surprise acts you have lined up for the event that you will reveal in your next mail.

Finally, end the mail with the exact date they can expect to get the 2nd mail (Ideally the next day or max after 2 days).

In the next mail, keep your promise and reveal the surprise acts. End the mail by highlighting the importance of the event and the exact schedule.

Now, it is time for reminder emails. Send a reminder sequence of at least 3 mails. In the emails, talk about various aspects of the event, incentivizing them to join it. 

6) A/B Test Different Campaigns

Use A/B testing to test and analyze which Giving Tuesday emails, landing pages, and call-to-action buttons are working best for you. 

Next, use this data to double down on what works and get maximum results. 

To do this right, start your Giving Tuesday campaign at least 2 weeks before the event. 

Run the different campaigns for a week, and then study their data to see which marketing collaterals are working best for your brand. See the emails that are getting maximum open rates and the landing pages getting the max conversions. Next, use this data to see what worked in these winning emails, landing pages, etc., and use it on all your campaigns. 

You can use HubSpot’s A/B testing tool to do detailed split-testing of your Giving Tuesday campaigns. It gives you the ability to split test your forms and landing pages to get the most out of your individual campaigns. A/B reporting data is available on the email and landing page dashboards and can be turned on and off with a click. This kind of split testing gives you real-world intel on what works and what does not. The usefulness of this tool can be leveraged to get the maximum out of your Giving Tuesday campaigns.

HubSpot A/B Testing

7) Find a Sponsor

Due to the growing mainstream appeal of Giving Tuesday, amplified by the huge success of Covid-19 focused #GivingTuesdayNow, companies are eager to connect with causes to meet their Corporate Social Responsibilities.

A nonprofit can easily leverage the giving Tuesday movement by connecting with such large corporations and pitch their cause as a possible investment for the company.

This fundraising strategy can be a thousand times more powerful if you connect with a company that has already shown alignment and interest towards your cause. 

This can be done by using HubSpot’s prospector tool. It helps you find relevant companies that have recently visited your nonprofit site. This information can then be used as a conversational bridge to establish a relationship with the company. Since they visited your website recently, they might have an interest in your cause. Use this information to start a conversation. 

Source: HubSpot


With them visiting your site, there’s a higher chance of them finding alignment with your cause and their CSR activities. Now add the mainstream movement of Giving Tuesday, and you have a global donation drive and an interested party, all at the same time. This scenario makes the prospector tool exponentially more powerful than doing cold outreach to companies that may or may not be interested in talking with you.

8) Give Platform-Specific Payment Options 

When setting up your payment form for the Giving Tuesday donation drive, remove unnecessary payment options that are not relevant to the donor. 

An Apple pay user will have no use seeing Google Pay as a payment option and vice versa. The way to make the payment form convert and raise funds is by streamlining the process and making the donation as easy as possible for the donor. 

This can be done by minimizing the clutter of options and make them do just the main thing of adding their information and clicking the donate button.

To get this done, you can use DepositFix. It uses its dynamic platform recognition capability to fetch only platform-specific options for the user. So if the user is using Apple iOS, it will only show the Apple Pay option and not Google Play. The same will be applicable for Android users, showing them only the Google Pay option.

This dynamic display will give the user lesser things to do and make them focused on your CTA - The pay button.

Dynamic Responsive Form


9) Say “Thank You” for Their Giving Tuesday Donations

So you succeeded in raising funds for your Giving Tuesday donation drive. But do you want the relationship between you and the donor to end there? What about future events? 

Giving Tuesday is just a donation drive that helps you put your nonprofit organization on the radar. 

The ultimate goal of Giving Tuesday is to put you on the map to establish long-lasting relationships with your donors. This will help in conducting future donation drives with or without prompts like Giving Tuesday.

So how do you do that? 

It all starts with the simple gesture of saying Thank You.

Also, can you imagine how abrupt it would look if there is no communication from your side after they commit to your cause and donate? 

Gratitude has a powerful impact.

Saying a simple thanks goes a long way in establishing meaningful long-term relationships. It makes the donor feel validated and recognized for their donation. 

It is these nuanced little things that can set you apart from being a run-of-the-mill nonprofit to a nonprofit that connects and forms an emotional bond with its donors.

So how do you say thank you to all your donors without indulging in time-consuming manual outreach?

Simple. You can again use a tool like DepositFix to send automated post-transactional Thank You messages, customized with the donor name and your brand logo.

You can customize these emails with your brand tonality and forge meaningful long-term relationships with your donors.

10) Add Your Brand Logo and Colors on the Donation Payment Page

Add your brand logo on the donation page to keep with your brand theme and generate trust and transparency throughout the payment process. An unbranded PayPal page asking for donations just looks untrustworthy for a sensitive thing like charity and won't convert as well as a branded page. 

Use DepositFix’s brand customization features to make your payment page consistent with your brand language and design.

11) Remove Clutter From Your Donation Page

Remove unnecessary fields and forms that clutter and congest the look of your donation page. Donations are driven by emotions and are often an impulse decision. Add to it the time-sensitive nature of Giving Tuesday, and you do not have any room left for complacency. You need to keep the entire donor journey focused on 1 goal - Becoming a donor for your cause. 

For this, remove all unnecessary fields, buttons, and options. Just take the information you need and have a pay button. 

Again, you can use the power of DepositFix to do this right. DepositFix allows you the flexibility that no other HubSpot integrated payment solution can. Use it to your advantage and scale your donation drive.


Simple Donation Form

12) Make Your Donation Payment Page Mobile-Optimized

Consider the following statistics:

A whopping 25% of donors complete their donations on a mobile device.

More than half (53%) of mobile users bounce off a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Can you imagine the number of donations you are leaving on the table by not having your donation page mobile optimized?

The consensus is clear: All your marketing will be of no use if your payment page is unusable due to a lack of mobile optimization. 

Make sure that your donation page seamlessly loads on all mobile devices to give your Giving Tuesday drive the maximum leverage this year.

Again, use DepositFix to make your donation page load glitch-free on any mobile device and give your Giving Tuesday donors an awesome user experience.

13) Avoid Drop-Offs by Adding the Processing Fee Upfront

A lot of last-minute drop-offs happen because the payment page does not calculate the credit card processing fee upfront. Though a very minor difference, the amount can add up for larger donations. It is best practice to have the credit card processing fee be added to the donation amount. Using DepositFix, you can enable your payment page with this rare and unique feature.

The Next Step

If you are a nonprofit using HubSpot and want to leverage Giving Tuesday to raise maximum donations for your organization, then having DepositFix as your payment solution is the natural next step. 

DepositFix seamlessly integrates with HubSpot's marketing automation system and will power up your Giving Tuesday campaign with enviable features like:

  • Full branding and customization of your payment page
  • Ability to add options for recurring donations 
  • Dynamic display of platform-specific payment options 
  • Mobile optimized pages
  • Ability for your donors to cover processing fees

And more. Check out the full list of features here.

Apart from this, one of our biggest features is our synchronization of donor data from DepositFix to HubSpot. 

By using DepositFix, you will be able to sync data from it to HubSpot. DepositFix provides crucial data to HubSpot, namely contact info with payment fields, deals, and more. You can use this data and create reports based on it inside HubSpot.

All this will give you the eyes and the ears you need to comprehend your customer's behavior in a more meaningful way, ultimately making you a better marketer, and increasing conversions.

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