Here are five key trends nonprofit fundraisers should be aware of heading in to 2012. How will you respond?

1. Donor Restricted Giving
   Donors will increasingly seek opportunities to restrict their gift to the issue that inspires them most. The industry needs to prepare to facilitate their requests.
2. Targeting In, Broad-based Acquisition Out
   As restricted income becomes more popular, relevant dynamic content and audience segmentation will grow more important too. Offers must evoke strong emotional responses, or the difficulty of acquiring and retaining supporters will increase sharply — even prohibitively. So it’s even more important to know your audience.
3. Social Media ROI
   Performance marketing will become more important in the social media realm (to date, it’s largely received a pass). While there’s still a deficit of data available to measure marketing efforts within social media, marketers are finally demanding results — defined as impressions, conversions and return on investment. Right now, too many social media outlets are still just positioned as branding solutions.
4. Gamification
   Gamification will explode in popularity in 2012. What is it? A technique of embedding tangible and intangible incentives into a marketing campaign, designed to increase constituent engagement.
   Examples could be:
   • Achievement “badges” for social media
   • Achievement levels usually acknowledging prior giving levels
   • “Leader boards” and acknowledgment statuses
   • Progress bars or other visual meters to indicate goal proximity (an update of the old “Church Thermometer”)
   • Challenges between supporter groups
   • Embedding small, irreverent games within fundraising asks
5. Overcoming Multitasking through Integration
   Multitasking is back — with a vengeance — creating even more distractions for audiences that can dilute the impact of single channel marketing. For example, your donor may surf the web with the TV on, intermittently handling phone calls too. This puts even more emphasis on the need to integrate your marketing campaigns.

Are you seeing any of these trends, different trends?  Please comment below.

Tags: marketing trends, online donations, online donors