Boost the reach and results of your annual report!
Annual reports are a key method of sharing success, showing business growth and demonstrating to donors their dollars are being well spent.
Important as they are, it’s frustrating to imagine that after all the time and effort you put into sifting through data, capturing stories and gathering testimonials, the result is one printed piece that may hit a recipient’s recycling bin within a day of delivery.
The return on investment for your time and effort significantly increases when you take your report digital.
Here are a few reasons why:
It’s easier to read.
The digital space demands that content be broken up into bite-size pieces, and that dramatically improves readability. The people who open your report can take in key information at a glance without working through paragraphs of information.
It keeps attention.
Along with readability, digital content can incorporate video and movement to catch and hold viewer interest. Creative visual presentation and the ability to link to web pages make a report less cluttered and more dynamic.
It’s simpler (and cheaper) to distribute.
Share your report with whomever you choose, right from your computer. Send an email to your donors and subscribers and invite them to celebrate the year with you. Put a link on your website. Share via social media to get far more eyes on it than if you were to mail it out – with a significantly lower cost. If you have an audience that expects an annual mailing, you can send them a teaser that tells them where to find the report.
It can be reused and repurposed.
You can’t lose a digital version of something under a stack of papers. Once you’ve got that URL, you can share it again and again – and repurpose all of the content you worked so hard to collect! Throughout the year, reference the report and pull quotes for testimonials, stories for social media and statistics for proposals.
It sends traffic to your website.
Back up what you’re saying in your report by linking to your website whenever relevant. Not only will your website content verify your claims, but this will increase traffic to your website and give readers an easy way to keep reading about what you’ve accomplished and why you do it.
Convinced by the research, our team decided to develop a process for creating digital annual reports in 2017. We used the Verdin annual report as a learning tool.
It’s been a fun and inspiring process, and we’re excited about the result. If you want to see an example of a digital annual report (or if you‘re curious how many donuts we ate in 2017), check out the final report right here… or click the image below!
Every business and organization starts annual report planning at a different time. When you launch that process, reach out to our team! We’ll discuss how to make your annual report dynamic by taking it digital – to increase its ROI and ultimately put it in front of more people.
