Raise More Together 2022 Summit Debrief

Written By Jessica Campbell

On July 13th-15th, I ran my 4th Raise More Together summit - a summit for nonprofit leaders and fundraisers who want to raise more money for their nonprofit organization.

I love a good summit recap so - here is mine!

Revenue:

  • Partners (4): $6,000

  • VIP Pass Fast-Action: $5,639

  • VIP: $4,006

  • Fundraising Power Pack order bump: $1,944

TOTAL: $17,589

Expenses:

  • Speakers: $4,320

  • Panelists: $900

  • Speaker gift (card from PunkPost): $170

  • Summit Coach: $500

  • Promo: $500

  • Prizes: $525

  • Website: $119

  • Text Messages: $180

TOTAL: $6,714

NET REVENUE: $10,875

Other stats:

  • 112 VIP tickets sold (71 Fast Action, 41 VIP) - that's a 12.8% conversion rate

  • 871 sign ups (my goal was 1,500)

  • The fast-action page had a 63% conversion rate

  • The general VIP page had a 35% conversion rate

  • The live show up rate was between 3%-9%

Other questions I know I'll get asked:

  • Started planning this about 90 days ago

  • My tech stack is: Squarespace, Thrivecart, FloDesk, YouTube, HelloAudio, TextMagic and a pop-up FB group

Additional thoughts:

  • For the first time ever, I tried a 50/50 pay split model with the summit speakers vs. an affiliate model. In the past - I've REALLY struggled to get my speakers to promote the event as affiliates. In surveying the speakers post event - 100% said they liked this method. While it was my largest expense, I think I'd do this again because I feel better about paying people (even a little bit!) for their time.

  • I'm not sure if it's the weight of the world, the summer or audiences are not as willing to opt-in to a free summit as they were 12-24 months ago but I struggled to get folks to sign up for this summit. My goal was 1,500 (that's what I signed up at my last summit in 2021) and only signed up 871. In the past, I ran my summit in late August - this time was mid-July. I won't be doing a summer summit again.

  • I'll also say, that the free sign up conversion was crazy low. I just checked and had over 3.1k unique visitors to the site, but only 871 sign ups (28%). In the past - it's been closer to 50%.

  • Another strange thing was that of the 871 folks who signed up - only about 250 people were from my list. That is wild! That means only 11% of my own list signed up for the summit. And I have a highly engaged list (40-50% avg. open rates). When I surveyed folks asking why they didn't sign up, 90% said they were overwhelmed and 10% said they were on vacation.

  • Continuing with the strange things - in the past - my FB group has doubled summit to summit. This time - it grew by about 150 people (!)

  • Before the summit, I sent a consent email giving people a very clear way to opt-out of the promo emails. I also included a link to opt-out in every single promo email (you can read more about that here). In all, about 55 people from my list of at the time 2,300+ people opt-ed out and I had very little unsubscribes along the way.

  • Promo: Last summit, I paid for someone to run FB and IG ads which brought in 600-700 folks. After, I wasn't convinced these were the right people nor quality leads + I've heard ad horror stories lately so I decided to not run ads this summit. Instead, I reached out to a few friends in my niche with similar but different audiences to do a guest blog post, dedicated email and LinkedIn post (all of which I wrote for them). I paid them $250 each. I'm not convinced this moved the needle much, but I think I'd do this again (with more planning) because it felt better to pay my friends compared to Zuck.

  • Text messages: One thing I've been obsessed with is giving people a "5-star" summit experience. This isn't my first summit so I've had the chance to build it up, but in the past - I had sent a bajillion email reminders. This time, I decided to send an email at the top of the day and then a recap - that's it, but we sent text message reminders in-between. 100% of people surveyed loved them and they weren't that expensive (although yes, it was more expensive compared to email).

  • Finally, because sign-ups were low (for me) and the live show up rate was also on the low side, at the very last minute I decided to not sell something on the backend of my summit as planned. I'm glad I went this route because there were only 31 people live at my masterclass (!). Instead, I'm nurturing folks for 6 weeks then launching to them in late August when hopefully people are more engaged.


Final Takeaways:

I still really believe in online summits (while the sign ups for this one were lower, it brought it roughly the same amount of revenue) - I think the marketing strategies I've been practicing need to improve. For example:

  1. If you were going to send 6-8 promo emails - seriously consider doubling it. People are so so busy and burnt out and it just takes more

  2. Get clever with outside the box marketing. For example, I might send a postcard save the date or something that really stands out

  3. Get niche within your niche. For example, I serve nonprofit leaders and fundraisers who want to raise more money, but my next summit - I might focus on specifically monthly giving programs or newbie fundraisers wanting to raise their first $1M vs just fundraisers in general


As always, I'm an open book. Feel free to ask any additional questions in the comments!

Jessica Campbell
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Let people opt-out