Typically, I'm a fan of landing pages. But then we did an email "Save The Date" for an event we were having for high end donors a few weeks back and just asked them to call or email the person in charge to reserve their place. We didn't have time to do a landing page (the email was to replace the print invites, which were delivered late) so it was just a plain message with no links included to click through. We followed it up a week later with a slightly modified email, again no link.
The event went from being extremely underbooked to extremely overbooked. No landing page was necessary.
So fast forward a few weeks. The Parents Fund wants to do an email follow-up to a print solicitation they did a month back or so. My argument was that they should just do a quick and simple email and send them straight to the give online form. Make it as easy as possible for them to give a gift before they have the time to think about it (or call their spouse for permission!). However, what we ended up doing was sending them to a landing page that explains the impact of the gift before sending them directly to the gift form.
I have mixed feelings about this (and we don't have the data yet to say whether it worked or not). We have evidence from our last e-solicitation campaign with the annual fund that clearly shows that people are more likely to make a gift if we just send them directly to the gift form, rather than sending them to the site first, where they may get distracted. On the other hand, parents may need a bit more convincing that all that tuition money that are currently paying just does not cover the full amount the college is spending to give their child a world class education. Perhaps a split test is in order :-)
If the ultimate business goal of the organization is to raise money, and we can conclusively show that sending people to a landing page impedes that goal, should we just do away with them for the most most part? I'm not saying don't have the content on your site when it's appropriate but in regards to driving people to make a gift from other mediums (email, facebook, etc...), wouldn't it make more sense to make it as seemless as possible for the user?
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Without knowing the specifics, I would tend to agree with you Karlyn. You don't want them to go to your regular site and get distracted because they may never get back to what you were asking them for in the first place. I might send them to a form where they could donate with a credit card if that's appropriate. On the form you might say something like, "Your donation is helping to..." And list SPECIFIC projects that are under way.
I wouldn't however make it on the site where they could get distracted. Just a form to submit the donation.
Bob
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