If you’re looking to make a meaningful impact through events and fundraising, Raisely is an excellent platform to help you achieve your goals. However, getting started with Raisely may seem daunting for first-time users.
Today, I’ll give you a step-by-step guide on how to set up a Raisely campaign, avoid common pitfalls, and optimise your fundraising, recruitment and retention efforts.
Preparing for Raisely success
Before diving into Raisely, it’s crucial to have a base level of understanding and skills. Many individuals start exploring Raisely before fully committing to the platform, which you can easily do by registering for the platform – which is free. However, without proper guidance the process can feel overwhelming. To ensure a successful Raisely experience, here are our hot tips:
- Seek expert advice. We would say that wouldn’t we. But if you’re unsure where to start or need assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to an expert who can guide you through the process. You’ve made the right first step by reading this blog. ChallengeWorks (the experts I mentioned earlier!) offer both platform management and staff training if you want to take it in-house.
- Familiarise yourself with the platform. Take the time to explore Raisely’s features and functionalities. While some may require a more comprehensive understanding, many aspects are relatively simple to grasp – just go for it. You can easily set up test campaigns to try out the functionality.
- Maximise platform utilisation. Raisely offers various campaign types and tools. Take advantage of all available features, including simple things like rolling out the same banner in all response eDMs, to maximise your fundraising potential and productivity.
Setting up your event site
When setting up an event page on Raisely, there is a sort of chronology you can follow to make life easy:
1. Conceptualise your campaign. Define your campaign’s purpose, target audience, duration, and fundraising goal. Write some key messaging and stick to it.
2. Design and copy. Start with the high-level design and storyboard each web page to keep content tight and to the point.
3. Build. Begin building your event site by configuring the necessary elements. Raisely’s templated system simplifies this process, allowing you to tailor signup forms, workflows, and other components to suit your campaign’s needs.
4. Workflow refinement. Fine-tune the workflow to streamline participant entry and participation. Aim to minimise barriers and create an effortless experience for fundraisers.
5. Testing and optimisation. Thoroughly test all aspects of the functional workflow. Experiment with different scenarios, such as individual entries, team registrations, and sharing components, to ensure smooth operation from every angle. Encourage your team and participants to test the platform as well to gather valuable feedback.
The importance of a platform administrator
To ensure the success of your Raisely campaign, having an administrator is a great idea. While multiple resources would be ideal for backup and flexibility, having at least one person responsible for overseeing the platform or site is pretty essential. We call this person the Raisely-Pro.
We’ve created a checklist of Raisely admin basics that you can use to make sure your Raisely-Pro is properly trained to manage a campaign. You can grab that here: the five-point checklist
The Raisely-Pro should possess a base level of understanding to perform tasks such as updating copy, changing fundraising targets, and managing donations. Consistent usage and familiarity with the platform helps them become comfortable and efficient over time. As I mentioned earlier – ChallengeWorks does offer training if you don’t have the capacity and resource for learning by trial and error.
I would also recommend checking out Raisely’s own resources – they’ve helped me out of a few tricky spots in the past. You can find Raisely webinars, resources, hints and tips here: https://support.raisely.com/
Avoid common pitfalls
Not being adequately prepared or seeking guidance can stop your Raisely campaign from thriving as it should. Here are some situations you can easily fall into if you don’t set up your campaign properly:pp
- Underutilisation. Without a base level of understanding, you may miss out on various features that can enhance your campaign’s effectiveness. For example, neglecting to use the messaging functionality or failing to incorporate meaningful dollar handles can hinder your fundraising potential.
- Manual workarounds. Lack of awareness about Raisely’s built-in workflow automation may lead to unnecessary manual efforts. Simple features, such as applying an email banner to all messages with a single click, can save time and streamline your campaign.
- Poor aesthetics. A visually appealing webpage helps potential event participants and donors to trust in your brand. If you do it properly people will come onto your page and think – wow, these guys know their stuff!
- Loss of donor love. Appreciating your donors is crucial for building long-term relationships and encouraging repeat donations. Ensure you have a strategy in place to thank and recognise your donors promptly. Raisely provides features such as personalised thank-you messages and automated donation receipts to help in this process.
You can maximise your impact and achieve your fundraising goals with Raisely – you’ve just got to know where to start! I hope this helps you to get the ball rolling and for anything beyond this, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, or any of the team via challengeworks.com.au.
