How to add query parameters to your contribution page URL

When running fundraising campaigns, two key objectives are essential: 1) tailoring your contribution pages to your target audience, and 2) monitoring your campaign performance to guide future strategies.

You can achieve both goals by adding query parameters to your contribution page URLs. This saves time and opens up more opportunities for your team without the need to create new pages.

Where to Use Query Parameters

Here are cases where you’ll likely want to use

Revenue tracking: Attribute and track revenue across your campaigns on Salesforce reports.
Major donor campaigns: Create a special link that preselects higher amounts, like $5,000/year that you can send exclusively to major donors.
Special one-off events: Preselect symbolic amounts that go along with your campaign theme, like $17.76/month for Independence Day, or your founding anniversary date!
Recurring campaigns: Prioritize monthly or yearly giving options for anyone viewing your contribution page.
Bump-up campaigns: As an example, if you created an audience segment of all contributors who gave $10 in the last year – you may want to send them a bump-up campaign that preselects $15 with messaging around upgrading their subscriptions.

Query parameters are limited to updating default amounts and adding tracking information. If you want to a checkout experience for donors using unique branding, images, or information, you’ll likely want to create another contribution page instead.

How query parameters work

All RevEngine checkout pages have a basic URL that follows this format:

http://yourname.com/contribute

Readers who follow this basic URL will see your page as you built it in RevEngine’s page editor.

Adding query parameters to your link allows you to override the settings you choose in the page editor. You can think of query parameters as creating a special, secret view of your page that’s available only to the readers who have the modified link.

Types of query parameters

These are the query parameters you can add to your RevEngine pages:

amount - Adding this query parameter lets you adjust the suggested amount contributors see when opening your link
frequency - This parameter adjusts the suggested frequency contributors see when opnening your link.
Acceptable values include once, monthly, and yearly, which correspond to one-time, monthly, and yearly contributions.
campaign - If your RevEngine account is connected to Salesforce, use this query parameter to attribute any contributions to the specified Salesforce campaign ID.

If you’re a longtime RevEngine user who experienced our legacy contribution system, please note that…

frequency has replaced installmentPeriod as a parameter in the RevEngine
you no longer need /memberform or org_id= in your url.

Adding a single query parameter

Creating a URL with a single query parameter is simple: add the parameter with the desired value to the end of the URL, preceded by a “?” character to join them.

For example, a URL with a $500 suggested donation amount would look like this:

http://yourname.com/contribute?amount=500

If you set an amount parameter, your donation page will interpret it as a one-time contribution. For recurring contributions ,you can override its frequency using the instructions below.

If your contribution page suggests a monthly donation by default, but you want to nudge your readers towards yearly donations instead, your URL would look like this:

http://yourname.com/contribute?frequency=yearly

This will show users your contribution page with the yearly donation option preselected, along with the yearly contribution amounts programmed in the page editor.

Combining multiple query parameters

You can add multiple query parameters to one URL by combining them with a “&” symbol. This URL, for instance, will show users a suggested monthly contribution of $100 and attribute the gift to a Salesforce campaign with ID 120391123:

https://yourname.com/contribute/?amount=100&frequency=monthly&campaign=120391123