Everyone from Walmart to local gas stations is auctioning off their audience data to advertisers. 

Yet Walmart’s acquisition of Vizio in the Spring of 2024 for a whopping $2.3 billion is more than just a business transaction; it’s a pivotal move that redefines the landscape of advertising and likely mass market fundraising as we know it.

It’s a strategic acquisition that will deeply enhance Walmart’s understanding of its customer base. They’ll be able to tailor their marketing strategies more effectively than ever before, and sell this to Orgs. The significance of this deal extends beyond personalized marketing too; it elevates Walmart’s advertising offerings to an entirely new level.

Thanks to the third-party cookie fallout, we shouldn’t expect to see fewer Retail Media Networks anytime soon. Reminder: RMNs use a retailer’s first-party data allowing you and me to show more relevant and personalized ads to our target audience.

But for now, RMNs are still very CPG-focused. Once they reach critical mass then they’ll be very relevant to Orgs – it’s only a matter of time. In the short term, there’s plenty else to be done in closing the advertising-to-donate loop.

Delivering a Seamless Door Experience

The direct access to consumer viewing habits that Walmart now gets through Vizio’s Automated Content Recognition technology allows them to close the loop on the advertising-to-purchase journey, thus offering a pretty seamless buyer experience that many retailers strive for but few achieve.

One of the big themes of SPN is working towards closing the advertising-to-donate journey (without splashing out $2.3 billion to acquire any business, let alone a donor). Analyzing donor (consumer) behavior and predicting future giving patterns allowing for more targeted and personalized outreach is one contributing factor in closing that loop; segmentation, operating audience-first, thinking in terms of LTV are others.

Here’s one practical factor that often gets forgotten in the “continuous testing and learning” bucket, and you can tackle it right now: Optimizing your above the fold experience.

Connect the messaging being seen in your ads, to those being heard in your streaming and audio efforts, to the messaging being read on your website and LPs. You have 2 seconds to grab someone’s attention.

Then it’s your above the fold experience that’s really the lever to getting a potential donor interested in contributing to your mission.

Your Above-the-Fold, Homepage Experience

If you think about the most valuable retail shelf space, it’s being in the aisle of what you sell, at eye-level on the shelf.

• With eye-level placement, someone doesn’t need to turn their head; your product is in their face.
• The homepage, or wherever you send your traffic to, above the fold, IS that same valuable real estate.
• Instead of not having to turn heads, we have one block of real estate that no one needs to scroll down – the hero section. 

Go take a look at another Orgs page. Analyze a hero section that isn’t yours for a moment – we see the same homepages every day and after a while you stop seeing what a donor with fresh eyes sees.

Here’s what to make sure you have:

1. Clear imagery showing the mission or product in action and the feeling you’re trying to sell. And sell is the correct word to use here. 
2. A headline that sells you on the punchline and earns your interest to continue scrolling. Having something that you’d recognize in your internal marcomms meetings isn’t going to sell someone who just came off the street into your “store”. 
3. Supporting evidence. This might be a sub-heading underneath the headline, it might be 2-3 bullet points, social proof, badges or certifications, etc. Whatever it is, you need it.

Allow me to extend this retail theme a smidgen further. The mindset needs to be “How do I get someone from the street who sees my market stall (aka the ad or email they clicked on) to come over and scroll…or peruse my plentiful array of strawberries and buy some?” Summon your inner market trader. Once you’re in that mindset versus trying to just make beautiful pages, you’ll start winning.

The strategic leap here is not just about selling your mission and vision; it’s about understanding the way people shop “giving” and enhancing how they engage with Orgs in their everyday lives. Experience matters and great experiences convert to donations, advocacy and word of mouth.