Digital Objective Builder Template

What is a digital objective?

Digital objectives serve your organisational objectives. Your digital objective will look like this example below:

Trajectory Theatre wants to bring in £20,000 in funding in 2019/20 to do this we will engage potential funders and supporters through our email news letter increasing email subscribers by 20% on our current baseline of 100 by 30 November 2019.

We will measure this through our email marketing system analytics. To do this we will set up an email sign up on our website. Jo will be responsible for this objective being met, supported by Charlotte.

After completing the Digital Objective Builder Template, you should be able to complete the sentences below to form your own digital objective:

[Charity name] wants to [organisational objective] to do this we will [digital objective] increasing/decreasing [activity] by [x%/ actual number] on [our current baseline] by [date].

We will measure this through [measurement tool]. To do this we will set up [any systems or processes that need to be established]. [staff member name] will be responsible for this objective being met, supported by [staff or volunteers who are involved].

Completing the template will enable you to form a well thought out digital objective and provide clear direction to achieve it. Feel free to use the template sentence multiple times for your organisation’s different digital objectives.

Template headings explained

Strategic goals: What does your organisation want to achieve over the next few years? What’s the big picture and long-term plan:

• Location — Where will content related to achieving this digital objective sit? On your website, social media, or a partner’s site?
• Services – What services do you want to promote?
• Awareness – What wider service or issue are you trying to raise awareness around?
• Change – What change do you want to achieve through
• Internal Comms – How are you going to ensure that everyone at your organisation is aware of this work?
• Other – Do you need to be mindful of anything else that could impact on achieving this digital objective?

Your digital objectives: How is your organisation going to use digital to help you achieve these goals? Break this down into specific, measurable steps:

• What would you like to achieve digitally to support your overall strategy – For example, Trajectory Theatre would say: “engage potential funders and supporters through our email newsletter increasing email subscribers.“
• What activity relates to your digital objectives being met? – For Trajectory Theatre ,the activity would be “email subscriptions” (other), their current baseline would be 100, their target would be 120 and their deadline would be 20 November 2019.
• How will you measure? Trajectory Theatre would measure using “email marketing system analytics.”

Getting it done: How are you going to ensure that this gets done? Who will be working on it and with what support?

• New systems/ processes – what new systems or processes will you implement to help you meet your objective?
• Person responsible – who is going to lead on this?
• Support – who will support them?
• Monitoring – how will you keep an eye on progress and monitor?
• Frequency – how often will you do this?

Summary: Now’s the time to pull this all together and use the template text above to insert information relative to your organisation and its specific needs. At the end you’ll find yourself with clear direction to achieve your digital objectives.

Why measurable objectives are important

Measuring your digital performance is important for the following reasons:

1. To monitor your progress and find out whether you’re on track to meet your goals.
2. To report to senior stakeholders and demonstrate the impact of your work to decision makers.
3. To gather insight that leads to improvement and understand what’s not working in your digital marketing strategy and how to fix it.

Measurement tools

There are a large number of tools available for digital measurement. These are the three we’d recommend as a starting point:

• Website (e.g. Google Analytics). A quick guide and more in-depth information. You can also track the completion of certain goals on your website, e.g. a goal for online donations.
• Email (Email Marketing System stats, e.g. Mailchimp). A clear guide on what to look for in reports by Mailchimp.
• Social Media (e.g. Facebook Insights). Read Facebook’s great guide to Insights.

Tip: Rather than leaving tracking and reporting to one member of staff, support everyone in your charity to understand the analytics that are relevant to their area of the organisation.

Next steps

Remember that the most important thing is to take insight from your data to make positive improvements. You should track and report on progress against your objective regularly (e.g. weekly or monthly) and take action to make sure you stay on track.

You can set multiple objectives for your digital work. We’d recommend no more than five.

Once you have worked through the digital objective template you can move on to the Digital Marketing Strategy Template.