Key takeaway:
A single, strategically targeted Journity waypoint yields an average of $13,000 a month in donations for GotQuestions.org.
Situation
When Shea Houdmann started GotQuestions.org with his wife in 2002, it was a just a hobby. They designed a site that invited visitors to pose spiritually-related questions answered by a team of trained volunteers.
Houdmann didn’t expect to get 15 visitors a day; but today the site has more than 15,000 monthly visitors and the GotQuestions team has answered almost 532,000 queries. Because 60% of visitors are from outside the U.S., the site features articles in 166 languages.
Houdmann, now CEO of Got Questions Ministries, employs a team of talented folks who stay on top of search engine optimization (SEO) trends and Google ranking requirements. Site traffic is 85% search engine driven and search rankings are consistently high.
Question
With steady site traffic and excellent search rankings, the question for Houdmann was: How can we convert those positives into financial support for our mission? Until recently, the organization’s fundraising efforts were limited to a donation button found deep in their website and a quarterly email to subscribers.
Answer
Houdmann decided to test Journity’s customized engagement platform to boost fundraising. The modal, essentially a personalized message with a button linking to a donation page, displays once month for a strategically segmented engaged visitors. That one “waypoint” (as we like to call it) produced $13,000 in average monthly donations.
“It just blew us away with how many donors it was creating,” says Houdmann.
Even more surprisingly, he’s been running the same Journity waypoint for six months and it continues to produce excellent returns without causing frustration for visitors.
“Before I launched the waypoint, I thought we’d get a lot of complaints from visitors, but the number of complaints has been very small.”
Inspired by the success of Journity’s tool, Houdmann tried developing and programming his own waypoint. He ran it for seven days before pulling it down and restarting the Journity waypoint.
“I thought for sure it would be as effective, but Journity’s waypoint significantly outperformed it.”
Journity is powered by behavioral data and audience insights that personalize the engagement for each website visitor. It helps organizations like GotQuestions.org speak to their donors on a more personal level.
One last question for Houdmann: Is Journity worth it?
“I’ve been thoroughly impressed with everyone I’ve worked with at Journity,” he says. “Journity is well worth the money we’ve spent.”
GotQuestions.org recently completed a total website redesign from Journity’s Web Services Team. Check out the new design at gotquestions.org.
