phoning in online gifts

Is your phone program promoting and supporting your online giving? Most likely the answer is yes - if like most folks you end the call with a credit card ask I strongly suggest use of an online giving option for folks who are not comfortable providing a credit card either to a random caller, to a student or on the phone no matter who called. At least a portion of these folks who are nervous about supplying a credit card can be convinced to make an online gift - establish a phone program site on the annual giving portion of your main web site. Provide "commiters" with pictures of your callers, a link directly to a pledge payment page and a clear and direct confirmation number to reach in order to confirm that the call did originate with you.

Push out emails at the end of the calling shift confirming commitments providing a link to the payment page and to the caller site with merged fields providing the details of the call signed by the caller. That alone will increase the connections between the alum and the caller and result in additional payments plus some very interesting follow up comments from the alum to the caller - especially if the callers are students.

That is all great when the contact starts with a call. What if the contact starts with an email? Unlike precall letters where we we have to assume they are read, with emails we can know - create two different scripts, one for those who opened the email, one for those who did not and update the calling software daily as part of the caller assignment process. This allows you to identify who has read information and can have a follow up "what questions do you have" and who either didn't see it or chose to ignore it and needs a bit more information. As a more advanced version, this email can provide multiple links based upon past giving and you can use that to help identify and focus conversations within the opens scripts. Those who opened the email and clicked a link can have an ask that is based upon that link as the first ask and then based upon either their last gift or area of giving as a second.

This is just a quick overview of how you can target and focus your efforts on the both sides of a phone program utilizing online communications.