Content strategy

The Giving Day website gives individual funds a space to host content and tell stories. Rely on your web page to reduce the burden of telling your story through email.

• AAD emails will announce the event, create momentum and show the power of many, and provide a recap.
• College and unit emails should aim to motivate. Share giving stories, and prioritize connection and stewardship.

As in past years, colleges and units create their own communications strategies based on their audiences and giving stories.

Communications timeline

Marketing for Giving Day is short, bold, and intense. This two-week sprint generates urgency and sparks momentum. Mass promotion is on hold until March 1, 2024. When communication begins, we hope to see a mix of Cornell and peer-driven messaging.

Each of the following communication phases will include a marketing mix of website updates, emails, social media, video, and news posts.

Full timeline overview

Segment definitions

VIP* single-area donor: 1 gift to one college/unit (college/unit sends)
VIP* multi-area donor: 2+ gifts to multiple colleges/units (AAD sends)
AAD also sends to international donors, multi-area donors, past Giving Day donors, loyal donors, all other donors, parents, registered students, faculty, and staff.
Colleges and units also send to alumni donors from the past 3 years, non-donors, with a special email track for students, parents, faculty, and staff.

*VIP definition: Anyone who gave $5K this year OR last year OR both. Anyone who has given $50K in the last 5 years.

College and unit email schedule

Email schedule for college and units

Email liaisons

Each college and unit will be paired with a member of the AAD Email Marketing Team. All emails will be created in Marketing Cloud by EMT liaisons.

FREEZE DATE for opt-outs and VIPs – January 17

Colleges and units may begin reviewing opt-out and VIP files on January 5. People on this list will not receive any email about Giving Day from AAD, colleges, or units. Please share specific individuals that should be added to these lists by January 12.

Share audience + segmentation plans – January 19

Fill out the form (coming soon!) to share your Giving Day audience criteria and details about the segmentation you’re planning so that we can begin pulling your lists. Audience form submissions are due by January 19. If you are planning to target audiences not listed in the form, you will need to meet with Stephanie Watt to discuss your strategy.

Share your audience + segmentation plans

Email submission – January 31

Please use the email checklist as you prepare your content for each planned email message, and submit your request no later than January 31. Be prepared to review and approve all your emails with your Email Marketing Specialist no later than February 23.

Email request form link

Preparing email assets and requests

Email banners have been created for every college and unit in Marketing Cloud. Please contact your liaison directly if you need to update your banner. We encourage you to use the same photo in your email message and your Giving Day web page. Attach your photographs for your email messages to the email request form.

Giving Day links

Colleges and units should submit the desired link for each email on the email request form. The EMT members will use your core URL to build the final UTMs for tracking purposes.

VIP pre-Giving Day page: https://givingday.cornell.edu/leader

VIP pre-Giving Day page for international: https://givingday.cornell.edu/international

Giving Day homepage: https://givingday.cornell.edu/

Giving Day leaderboard: https://givingday.cornell.edu/leaderboards

Giving Day challenges: https://givingday.cornell.edu/prizes

Giving Day organizations search: https://givingday.cornell.edu/organizations

Giving Day cause page: https://givingday.cornell.edu/causes

Giving Day champions page: https://givingday.cornell.edu/fundraisers

Your college and unit specific profiles and campaign page link. (This is a sample: https://givingday.cornell.edu/organizations/ilr-school)

Email templates

All Giving Day emails must be sent from Marketing Cloud to ensure real-time unsubscribes. Two flexible, mobile-friendly email templates are available for each college and unit to use. The emails will be designed to support the purpose of college and unit emails (motivate, share giving stories, connect). The templates will contain Giving Day assets, branding, and proper text formatting. You will be able to customize your copy as desired to fit your marketing needs.

Email scheduling arc – week of February 5

We will review all submitted emails to identify send-time overlaps on Giving Day in early February. For those with overlapping times, we will reach out to you directly by February 9 and will plan the email send times for Giving Day messages together.

The overall goals:
– spread out emails to avoid a bottleneck in Marketing Cloud
– schedule hourly challenge emails appropriately.

Questions about emails? Contact:

• Stephanie Watt for questions about email strategy