One billion people logged in to Facebook on a single day, marking the first time that many members—a staggering one-seventh of the Earth’s population—used the world’s largest social network in a 24-hour period.

What you may not realize is that your donors and prospective donors are logging in to Facebook at increasing numbers. Here a few more stats that may surprise you.

The largest growing percentage of Facebook users are age 55+.

VeraData blog post graph Users by gender and age

Source: Facebook User Stats

VeraData blog post graphic Actions after SM

Among internet users, 72% use Facebook.

VeraData blog post chart FB demographics 2

VeraData blog post chart FB Instagram user engagement 2

What does all of this mean for your nonprofit, and how do you reach existing and new donor audiences?

Here are a few planning tips:

1. Think omnichannel and mobile in your campaign planning and execution.  Donors no longer consume content through only one channel on a single device; you have to adapt to changing behaviors in order to keep reaching existing and new donor audiences. The organizations that start now will be better prepared to handle donor behavioral changes.

2. Test multiple Facebook ads, both the creative and messaging, to understand what best engages your donor audiences. The engagement metrics data can prove very valuable in understanding which creative connects with your audiences. The learnings can then be applied to other advertising mediums (direct mail, print, TV, radio, etc.) that require longer up-front planning timelines and larger financial commitments.

3. Strategic integration of digital campaigns offers unprecedented opportunity to interact with your donors like never before. For example, you can now directly target your donor database audiences on their Facebook news feeds while these same donors are receiving direct marketing (direct mail, telemarketing, email) communications through tools such as Social Synchronization.

4. Tailor the Facebook communications to specific donor segments: active, lapsed, low, mid, high, major, etc. Overlay demographic, interest, behavioral and/or modeled data. Once all your audiences have been built for Facebook targeting, integrate Facebook ads into your analytically driven marketing/communications road map.

Judah Fontz is the Executive Vice President of Digital Solutions at VeraData and a guest contributor to Innovairre Communications, which supports more than 500 nonprofit organizations around the world. For more information about how to integrate Facebook into an analytically driven omnichannel donor engagement campaign, contact us at Answers@Innovairre.com. Subscribe to our newsletter here, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.