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Hi there
Hope you're keeping well?
Did you see that we have a brand-new training event on landing pages, in early September? More details below; it's filling up quickly so don't miss out! We also have a couple of heads-up for you that will hopefully 1) help you avoid getting locked out of Twitter and 2) improve the performance of your Meta ads. And a roundup of useful links...
Learn about landing pages with expert Paul Boag
When: Tuesday 10th September, 2024; 4 pm – 5.30 pm GMT
Location: Online
What: Online training with UX Expert Paul Boag and Digital Charity Lab – Boost Your Campaign Conversions with Compelling Landing Pages
About the training: Imagine if you could improve the conversion rate of every campaign you run. Too often it's the landing page, the very last step in your campaign funnel, that drags your conversion rate down. In this online training, Paul Boag, a conversion optimization specialist, will share tried and tested techniques that significantly improve the conversion rate of any campaign landing page.
Cost: €34.99
Discount code: There's just a few of the 15% off discount codes for Digital Charity Lab subscribers left - use the code LabList-LandingPage at checkout.
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Heads-up: take care with verifying age on Twitter
 A problem that keeps popping up in the online communities for digital charity people: Twitter asking accounts to enter a date of birth and then locking people out.
For charity accounts, some social media managers have entered their organisation's founding date as the date of birth - but if that date makes your account under 13 years old at any point in Twitter's existence, the account will get locked. People under 13 years of age are not allowed on Twitter. Some are finding themselves permanently locked out despite appealing to Twitter's support (which effectively no longer exists); others have got their accounts back but finding all the tweets that were posted 'before they were 13' have been deleted.
If you do get asked for a date of birth on Twitter, proceed with care. Probably the best thing to do is enter the date of birth of one of your digital team, but only use someone who turned 13 well before Twitter was founded in 2006. And keep a careful record of the date that was entered; Digital Charity Lab's free account management toolkit includes a template for tracking this kind of info about your accounts.
Of course, there's an ongoing conversation about whether non-profits should come off Twitter entirely, given its role in stoking race hate. Ben Matthews of Empower has a good article about the current state of Twitter and what charities need to consider. What are your thoughts - are you considering an 'X'-odus from Twitter?
Another heads-up: take care with AI music on Meta Ads
Meta has a recent-ish feature on its ads where it automatically adds music to your ads - yet another AI-generated feature no-one asked for. This would be something we could happily ignore, except that Meta in its wisdom, pre-selects this option. It's really easy to miss, and it absolutely destroys ad campaigns. Some examples I've seen just recently:
- An appeal for donations for aid in Gaza overlaid with bouncy hectic Euro-pop
- An ad for a charity bereavement service overlaid with mumbled hip-hop
- A charity event ad using the same aggravating music that appears on Shein and Temu ads
Plus many more. The 'add music' option cycles through different types of music using AI, so your ad can appear with lots of different inappropriate tunes, and it's impossible to check what's being used.
The toggle appears in the ad creation stage of a Meta ad campaign and looks like this:
'At no cost to you', like they're doing you a favour by adding completely inappropriate music to your ads. Anyway - keep an eye out for this. It's also worth checking active ads to make sure it's turned off. If you do want to add music to your ads, use the 'select music' option and choose a track, so you can be sure the music has the right tone for your ad's message.
Useful articles & resources
🫧 Speaking of AI - investment firm Goldman Sachs have warned that AI is over-hyped, not delivering on its promised return, and may in fact be the latest bubble from the habitual bubble-creators of the tech industry. Very interesting.
📣 Excellent messaging guide from Neon, to help non-profits talk about the recent waves of far-right violence
🏳️🌈 I recently worked with the LGBT network ILGA-Europe to do some intensive training on Meta Ads, including this blog post which covers nine things you should know to understand, test and use digital ads.
🗓️ Event: our friends at Rally and Ask Direct are holding an event for Irish charities this Wednesday, 21st August, on lessons for Irish fundraisers from the M+R Digital Benchmarks report. More info and registration here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvdeCtqD4pGtbPpSYyMj2cr-LW1x6D9V45#/registration
Thanks for reading *|FNAME|*! As always, I'd love to hear your feedback about these emails, and any suggestions you have for new training events or resources :)
Jean
Digital Charity Lab
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