When you’re running for office, every single aspect of your campaign reflects on you as a candidate. While it may be tempting to to focus on the outward facing components of their campaign, such as your public appearances and social media presence, even the smallest detail can have a huge impact.
Two consequential choices that you may not have considered yet are payment processing and custom domains. Let’s look at how you can best utilize each to increase your chances of winning on election day.
Payment Processing
In 2022, 73% of all consumer payments were made by credit card, debit card, or bank transfer. The use of cash and checks is becoming increasingly rare, but not obsolete. You can maximize the money you raise by offering a variety of payment processing options..
Payment Processing Best Practices
Fundraising is the backbone of your campaign, so it’s critical that you make donating as painless and straightforward as possible. Here are a few ways you can do so.
Offer Multiple Payment Options
Donors need a variety of ways to contribute money to your campaign. Work with your compliance and campaign team to create ways for them to donate through credit or debit cards, checks, electronic funds transfers, and online payment platforms.
Simplify The Checkout Processes
Some checkout pages seem to ask for everything but your blood type— make your forms as clear and concise as possible. Focus on the essentials such as the donor’s name, address, email, and payment details. There are other ways you can collect donor data; doing so during the checkout process may tempt some people to move on before their donation is complete.
Provide Secure Payment Gateways and PCI Compliance
Secure payment gateways and PCI compliance are essential for online payment processing. While you likely won’t be directly involved in creating your payment gateways, there are a few things you can ask for to ensure they are secure. These features may include:
- Encryption protocols such as SSL or TLS
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Compatibility with several payment methods
- Tokenization
If you accept, process, or transmit cardholder data from your donors, you are legally required to follow Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliance. The specific requirements you must follow depend on how many transactions you process in a year, so work with your financial and compliance teams to ensure you’re handling PCI compliance correctly.
How To Create Effective Contribution Forms
Whether people are interested in donating their time or money to your campaign, you’ll benefit from increased engagement by creating effective contribution forms.
- Streamline form design for user convenience. Keep your form as simple as possible, collecting only the necessary information. Use clear labels for each field so users understand what information is required. Enable autocomplete and autofill so users can save time and protect their sanity, and implement smart defaults based on location. Enable Apple and Google Pay to create a one-click option for the hundreds of millions of users in the United States.
- Make forms mobile-responsive. In 2022, almost two-thirds of website traffic was from mobile devices. Mobile-responsive forms allow more users to complete them at their own convenience.
- Ensure data privacy and security. Use SSL encryption and store data on encrypted servers that only authorized personnel can access.
- Incorporate progress indicators and error messages. No one loves a guessing game. Design your contribution forms so people can see their progress– especially if it’s a multipage form. Be sure to also include error messages so they’re informed exactly where they need to make changes in order to move on or submit their form.
Best Practices for Donation Pages
Donation pages are a convenient way for donors to make a monetary contribution from anywhere. Sometimes, the only barrier between you and a donation is the fact that someone doesn’t want to get off the couch to write and mail a check. A few practices can help you make the most of your donation pages so that you’re more likely to receive larger and/or recurring donations.
- Offer transparent communication regarding the donation impact. You don’t have to provide donors with your entire budget breakdown, but giving them some indication of where their money is going can make them more comfortable with supporting you.
- Encourage recurring donations. Much like autopay for bills, many donors may be interested in having money regularly sent to support your campaign, especially if they don’t physically have to do the work themselves.
- Offer suggested donation amounts. This is just another way to make donating absolutely as easy as possible. Start small– think $25 for less wealthy donors– and work your way up to the maximum donation an individual can make for your election. (This is $3,300 for federal elections but can vary at the local and state level.)
- Create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers or matching campaigns. Much like a TV or radio give-a-thon, these strategies can help motivate donors waiting for just the right time.
Custom Domains
A custom domain is a website address that you purchase from a domain registrar. If you have a campaign website, then you likely already have your custom domain. With Numero, you can host your Numero contribution forms on that domain. Instead of using forms with a link like secure.numero.ai/contribute/FormName or secure.actblue.com/donate/FormName, you can change the form link to a domain connected to your website, like donate.YourCampaignWebsite.com.
How Do Custom Domains Lead To Conversions?
With a personal domain you can brand your contribution link to your campaign rather than the payment processing company.
There are several benefits to using a custom domain on your donation forms.
- Brand consistency. Reinforce name recognition and brand identity by consistently using your personal domain. You’re also eliminating the confusion that can come with using a completely different domain name for donations.
- Credibility. You’ll build trust with donors and voters by using a custom domain that’s connected to your website instead of another company’s domain. 77% of consumers are more inclined to trust a website that uses a custom domain
- SEO optimization. A custom domain is 39% more likely to rank higher on Google.
Looking for even more ways to maximize your campaign success? Numero can help. We turn your contacts into campaign donors so you can hit your fundraising goals without ever breaking a sweat.
Let’s get pricing for your campaign.
