Do you want to double click-through rates on your emails? How about drastically increasing your chance to show up on the front page in a Google search? Does boosting your audience’s engagement tenfold interest you? If you want to raise more money, you need to consider communicating visually.

“We’re entering this new golden age of video,” Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg told BuzzFeed News early in 2016. The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Since the most compelling way to inspire people is with a story, why not use videos?

From April 2015 to May 2016, Facebook videos grew from 4 billion views to 215 billion views. Yes, that’s billion with a “b”. 5300% growth in 13 months!

Video is quickly becoming the standard form of communication on the internet and the preferred method for gathering information. This is not surprising when you consider that sight is your dominant sense and when you recall that your brain processes visual information many times faster than all other senses combined.

Perhaps the greatest advantage to using video is the emotional impact it can achieve. People often have powerful and immediate responses to the videos they watch. Since donating is primarily emotionally motivated, storytelling with video is a best practice for fundraisers wanting to capture the donor’s heart and support.

Video also influences how internet users make decisions:

1. The average person watches six hours of video on social media every week, and expects that to increase this year.
2. Video dominates the internet. By 2019, 80% of all internet traffic across the world will be video.
3. Including video on a landing page can increase conversion by 80%.
4. Emails that include video receive an increased click-through rate by 96%.
5. Twitter reports that videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos.
6. Businesses that used video grew revenue 49% faster year-over-year than non-video users and those who use video enjoyed 41% more web traffic.
7. Video provides excellent metrics, allowing you to measure your results.

Do you have a “thank you” video? How about a video of a donor explaining why they put your charity in their will? Video is not “one size fits all.” Chances are you need a new set of videos, not just one — a 15 second teaser on Facebook, a 3 minute story video on YouTube, a 6 second GIF in a tweet, and a 45 second version for Instagram.

It is critical that you take time with your team to talk through what it is that you want to accomplish with your fundraising plans and explore what videos you need. Do you want to acquire new prospects? Do you want to raise money for a specific project? Or, are you trying to educate the public on an important issue?

Using videos can help you accomplish all that, and more. Communicating visually, in a meaningful way that elicits an emotional response may just be what you need to take your fundraising plans to the next level.

Noel Draper, CFRE, created Yellow Can Media to help charities use short films to inspire people to take action by engaging their emotions and intellect through persuasive storytelling. He is a Sr. Consultant with PGgrowth. Connect with him on LinkedIn.