For many of our GivePanel customers, Birthday fundraisers generate over 90% of their income from Facebook, so an obvious question is: “How do I get more people to set up a Birthday Fundraiser for us?”
Since people started a Birthday fundraiser for your organisation based on a notification Facebook sent them, it is reasonable to assume that you can also use a targeted Facebook Ad to do the same job.
Here are a few examples of Birthday Ads we’ve seen:
Choosing the right audience
We would recommend starting with WARM audiences that are ready and willing to fundraise for you. These are audiences who already know, like and trust you such as...
- Existing donors
- Existing sign ups (e.g. email list)
- People who have visited your website in the last 180 days
- People who have engaged with your Facebook content in the last 180 days
- People who like your page.
- Friends of people who like your page.
The first four custom audiences e.g. existing donors, existing sign-ups, website visitors and those that have engaged with your Facebook content should be added into one ad set. You should create a separate ad set for those that like your page. This is because by including the audience of page likers, amongst the other custom audiences, it would narrow your targeting potential dramatically.
If your Facebook Ad campaign doesn’t work for these audiences, it’s not going to work for colder audiences (people that don’t know you so well). I would recommend having all these audiences in one ad set otherwise the audience volume will be far too small once you filter them by birthdays.
Filter Option 1 – Upcoming birthday
Go to the detailed targeting section when creating your Ad set and search for “Upcoming birthday” and this will filter your audience by those who have a “birthday in 1 week”.
Filter Option 2 – Birthday in [Month]
Go to the detailed targeting section when creating your Ad set and search for “Birthday in…” and you are able to filter your audiences by those that have Birthdays in a specific month.
![Birthday in [Month]](https://givepanel.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/pasted-image-0-1-May-31-2023-08-58-12-4902-AM.png?width=500&height=298&name=pasted-image-0-1-May-31-2023-08-58-12-4902-AM.png)
Which option should I use when?
Both of these options can be used in different ways to get in front of the right audiences at the right time.
I would recommend having an “always on” ad set using Filter Option 1 (Birthdays in 1 week) that runs all the time. I would put a few different ad creatives in the Ad set to see which one works best over time.
I would use Filter Option 1 (Birthdays in [month]) when you are doing a specific campaign – for example an Awareness Week, like in this case study we wrote about with Sands.
Although there are still a few limitations in doing these kinds of campaigns, if you are already having success with Birthday fundraising organically, it’s definitely worth throwing a bit of budget behind some paid ads!
Of course, before you even consider driving more Birthday Fundraisers on Facebook you should ensure you can handle the data and thanking/stewardship processes.
In other words, you should be using GivePanel. Book in for a demo today!
