Understanding your audience at Christmas
Ah, Christmas. For charities in the UK, it’s the most impactful time of the year - and many have already started planning this year’s Christmas activity.
50% of the UK public say they always or usually donate to charity over the festive season - and more importantly, 16% of those donors only give during Christmas.
However, with great opportunity comes intense competition. December is consistently the highest spend month for charity advertisers. To stand out in a crowded market, it’s vital to understand your audience.
That’s why, here at DTV, we conducted some bespoke research through our audience research platform, to find out more about the motivations of this valuable group of donors.
Understanding the Festive Donor
We asked a nationally representative panel of 500 Christmas donors what motivated them to give during the festive period, and here’s how they responded:
A broad range of motivations that open up a smorgasbord of messaging and proposition opportunities for charities. Things got even more interesting when we segmented the responses from demographic groups to find out how people from different age brackets over-indexed and under-indexed in comparison to the rest of the sample:
Once we started to break down the data we found some interesting trends.
18-24 year olds appeared to have more empathy for “the added difficulties” that winter and Christmas bring, both practically (cold, expensive), and emotionally. Might this be because for many of them, they are experiencing some of these things themselves? Perhaps away from family for the first time due to moving out, or away from friends after returning from university? Perhaps struggling to afford to heat their own homes or to afford presents for their loved ones?
The 25-34 year olds were a significant 18% above the sample average for “wanting to give gifts to children who have none”. This may be a reflection of a group that includes many young parents, who are looking at the happy lives of their own children and wanting to support those who have had less luck.
Finally, the 65+ year olds “give to charities all year round” in much higher numbers than the rest of the sample, mirroring a behaviour we would expect to see from our typical “heartland donors” group.
These are just a few of the insights that our analysis captured. If you’d like the full analysis which covers the full range of age groups, plus high value donors, or would like to talk about running your own research piece to understand your audiences better - please do drop me a line at don.mike@dtvgroup.co.uk.
Even this topline analysis reveals that understanding your target audience’s motivations could lead you to a very different set of messages and creative choices this winter than opting for something generic.
If you would like to discuss winter or Christmas planning with us, and find out how we can help you decrease your Costs Per Acquisition (CPA) by 26% and increase your Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) by 27% during the festive season - as we have done previously for a hugely beloved international charity - please do get in touch. We’d love to help you find a way to make Christmas your charity’s biggest gift this year. 🎁