Online-offline translation guide for acquisition

July 5, 2016July 2, 2016 nickellingeracquisition, Donor intelligence, email, list rental, mail, onlineLeave a comment

When I was an exchange student in Japan, I carried a pocket-size English-Japanese dictionary with me. (Pocket sized to make sure that it never had quite the word I needed, causing me to resort to “large bald person’s religion’s house” when I wanted to find the Buddhist temple. I quite possibly offended the entire nation and thus apologize here for my adolescent self.*)

Recently witnessing a conversation between two people– one an older direct mail veteran; the other, a digital native online community builder who may never have seen a piece of paper – put me in mind of those days of mistranslation and bumbling. They never seemed to grasp that one man’s teaser copy was another woman’s pre-header (or close enough to be getting along with). Thus, they talked past each other and went their separate ways thinking the other was an idiot, even though they seemed to my ears to be agreeing.

Thus, this week, I’d like to try for some peace, love, and understanding between the often warring nations of offline and online. Or at least the understanding part.

We’ll start with one of the simplest areas of cultural differences: acquisition.

Those who have been weaned on online will find the offline acquisition culture strange and terrifying. Most notably, they trade and rent acquisition lists from each other!

For those in the offline world, don’t suggest this as a tactic for your online brethren. Not only is it illegal (sending unsolicited emails is called spam and it’s even less appetizing than its namesake), but it is culturally not done in the online world. (Yes, the cultural taboos are even worse than the legal ones.)

Despite, or because of, these differences, however, there is a lot that each tribe can learn from the other.

For online folks, just because you can’t and shouldn’t exchange or rent lists online doesn’t mean that you can’t create mutually beneficial relationships. You can do this through shepherded emails. Let’s say another nonprofit has a similar constituents or issue area to you. You might consider sending an email to your list saying, in essence, that if you like us, you might like them. And vice versa (of course; there is no quo within the quid).

Similarly, you might try engaging your corporate partners to see if they will run a shepherded email for you to their constituents, urging them to engage with you. This has its own built-in incentives — the for-profit looks like the valuable philanthropic member of the community they are and you reap the list building benefits.

For offline folks who think the no-list exchange or retail rules are overly puritanical, know that an opt-in model for mail is on the visible horizon. For those in the US, our friends in Europe are facing this by virtue of EU/UK regulations. (How politicians justify themselves being able to send mail as they wish with opt-in only for nonprofits baffles me, but I suppose that’s what happens when you write the laws yourself.)

And opting in does provide a stronger bond between you and the donor or potential donor. Thus, you can learn from your online partners how to build that bond. Some tips:

As we’ve advocated, make sure you are setting expectations for what communications a person will receive in your welcome series.
Make it easy for a person to change the frequency, timing, and/or nature of their communications. One tactic smart online folks will do is have multiple lists for which someone can subscribe. If a communication is not to the person’s liking, they can be removed from those emailings without losing a constituent. If a person does not want (for example) premiums, they should be able to request that and have it be honored.
Make it easy to opt-out with clearly visible instructions. A person who asks to be taken off of your mailing list is doing you a favor (not as much of one as they might have done, but a favor nonetheless). They could simply let you mail away and waste your money, but instead, they are helping you save it. Help them help you.
Get your list through organic means. Online and offline content can help you build a subscriber and constituent list. This content marketing isn’t good for just online activation — it can be used for mailing as well.

Hopefully, these will help you discuss acquisition fluently across channels. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the cost implications from offline and online, using fun and exciting terms like “marginal costs.” You won’t want to miss it.

* Of course, if I’m apologizing for my adolescent self, we’re talking about way more people than just the entire nation of Japan…

Mental accounting and nonprofit giving

July 1, 2016June 27, 2016 nickellingerDonor intelligence, influence, persuasion, psychologyLeave a comment

Back in March, we looked at how people have different mental buckets for their expenses. Certain amounts are set aside for home expenses, car expenses, utilities, entertainment, education, etc. And there’s a bucket for many for charitable giving. We talked about this in the context that you can (sometimes) get someone to make a gift they wouldn’t normally make by framing it as an exceptional expense — something they wouldn’t normally budget for.

Since then, there’s been a more in-depth look at mental accounting in nonprofit giving. Monica LaBarge and Jeffrey Stinson published an article called “The Role of Mental Budgeting in Philanthropic Decision-Making,” as well as doing a podcast about it that you can listen to here.

Some key highlights from how people mentally account for their donations:

Generally, people substitute one charitable act for another, not for a non-charitable act. That is, people substitute sports for movies or church giving for alma mater giving, but they don’t generally substitute movies for church giving.
The amount allocated to charitable giving is usually at about 10%. It’s interesting to hear this, as this is the amount often suggested by religious institutions as the amount to give to them; generally, however, it seems to be a rule of thumb for charitable giving. Even non-religious givers centered around 10%.
Interestingly, tickets to galas and events can be considered charitable gifts or in other buckets. One donor to whom the researchers spoke talked about how buying a table for a gala was a business expense because that was his goal in sponsoring. In the next breath, he talked about giving to an organization through a ticket purchase because he knew the person being honored. Thus, it’s important to understand how the giver classifies their giving to you. You may be able to take multiple buckets to maximize your giving.
The happier people are with their giving to you, the more they are able to give. This sounds obvious, but when someone enjoys giving to you, they are willing to dip into other buckets (like entertainment) that may not normally be open to you.
You may be able to work with business people who support your organization to sponsor in ways that help their business, giving you access to their business budgets. Focusing just on philanthropic giving caps your upside with your donors.

Much of this comes back to the dictum “know thy donor” — the more you know about how your donors think of you and their experiences with you, the better off you are.

Using non-donor knowledge to enhance segmentation

May 18, 2016May 7, 2016 nickellingerDonor intelligence, list cooperatives, monthly giving, online, RFM, RFM analysis, segmentationLeave a comment

Yesterday, we introduced you to two special people that a traditional RFM analysis would group as 4-6 month $25-49.99 multis. To wit:

Since Sandy first donated to your organization in 1992, she’s given over 100 gifts. Nothing exorbitant – she’s now giving $30 every three or four months – but she also has volunteered, come to three walks, signed up for emails, and taken almost every advocacy action you offer.

On the other hand, you acquired Miriam from an outside list in 2012. She gave $25, but nothing since then. You don’t have her email or phone number, but a last chance lapsed package piqued her interest four months ago and she gave another $25.

We talked about how their donation history can and should differentiate them. There are additional indicators here, however, that can also enhance your messaging and segmentation:

Online interactions. If someone is active online, it’s relatively simple to group their interests by their activity – what they click on, look at, and interact with. (Actually, technically, interact with is the easiest, click on is slightly harder, and look at can be a bear with some online tools.)

With Sandy, she is an advocate for you and doesn’t seem to require premiums to donate – perhaps you can replace the labels in that upcoming package with a paper version of an action alert – cheaper, and likely more effective.

Other organizational interactions. Sandy has been a walker – do you want to mention that your walk is coming up in 90 days in the PS or in a buckslip? Similarly, you should probably customize the messaging to acknowledge that she has given her time as well as her donations. Making her feel known will only help her loyalty.

Outside data. Getting outside data on your donors can help you adapt your tactics. If you find out that Miriam does all of her banking online, perhaps she’s a better target for an EFT-based monthly gift than you thought (with the right messaging).

List co-operative data may indicate that that she gives to nine other charities far more often and more generously than to you. Perhaps she’s just not that into you and you might want to cut your losses soon than you might have thought.

You may find out she does a lot of business on the telephone and find that it isn’t your organization that wasn’t lighting her up; it was the means by which you were approaching her.

All this and more can come from data appends. And you can try to get that email address and engage her online, so hopefully you can learn more about her.

All of this – donor and non-donor interactions – are masked by an overarching RFM category. But what if we could dispense with RFM categories altogether? We’ll talk about that Friday; if you don’t want to miss it, or any of our Direct to Donor posts, please sign up for our free weekly newsletter.

Including loyalty in your beyond-RFM segmentation

May 17, 2016May 17, 2016 nickellingerchannel conflict, customization, Donor intelligence, lifecycle, lifetime value, retention, segmentationLeave a comment

Since Sandy first donated to your organization in 1992, she’s given over 100 gifts. Nothing exorbitant – she’s now giving $30 every three or four months – but she also has volunteered, come to three walks, signed up for emails, and taken almost every advocacy action you offer.

On the other hand, you acquired Miriam from an outside list in 2012. She gave $25, but nothing since then. You don’t have her email or phone number, but a last chance lapsed package piqued her interest four months ago and she gave another $25.

What do these two have in common?

They look the same on a traditional RFM analysis: they are both 4-6 month $25-49.99 multis.

And if you use only a traditional RFM analysis, you will treat them the same.

That’s silly. If you were looking only at these paragraphs to judge, Sandy would seem to be a good candidate for monthly giving, upgrade strategies, and/or planned giving. Miriam probably has a 50-50 chance (or worse, given industry averages of lapsed reactivated retention rates) of never giving you another gift.

It’s easy to criticize this, but harder to do this analysis writ large, when you are doing five-to-seven-figure list selects. So how do you draw these lines? Here are a few ideas:

Lifecycle analysis. Way back when (November 2015 – ah, those were the days), we talked about how there isn’t just one retention rate – there are several, based on where a person is in their donor journey.

This lifecycle analysis can layer on to your segmentation analysis and on to your messaging. Some sample categories:

New. What it says on the tin.
1st year. They have given a second gift, but it’s been less than 12 months since their first gift.
2nd year. Gifts in their first two years.
Core: Donors who have given in each of the past three 12-month periods
Lapsed: A gift 13-24 months ago.
Deep lapsed: A gift 25+ months ago.
Lapsed reactivated: Someone who has given a gift in the past 12 months after a gap of at least a 12-month period

Your mileage and organization may vary – it’s more important to look at this analysis than it is to have the same precise categories.

So you may not have a separate piece for Sandy, but you might want to make sure there is language like “As one of our most loyal donors” or “You’ve stood with us for more than 20 years.” or the like in the existing piece.

As for Miriam, as a lapsed reactivated donor, you are still worried that you might lose her again. Perhaps you want to stay close to the tactics that recruited her (or won her back or both). She might also be worth an e-append or phone append to see if you can find a channel that further engages her. Or maybe you want to use a less aggressive ask string – your goal for a lapsed reactivated donor is to make donating a habit again, rather than to increase their giving just yet.

Gift density. Take a look at the number of gifts someone has made, then divide by the number of years since a person’s first gift. This is how many gifts you will get from them in an average year (or at least what you have received).

Sandy’s number is above four. Four is a bit of a magic number (some would say three or even two– again, having a number is more important than what the number actually is) to indicate strong likelihood of monthly giving. When someone has a pattern of giving frequently, this ask isn’t nearly the heavy lift it is trying to get someone to go from one gift per year to twelve.

Miriam is below one. One is a separate magic number, as below one indicates a likelihood to lapse (by definition, they’ve done it at least once) That should trigger some of the anti-lapse efforts discussed above.

One is also a magic number in that if someone gives you exactly one gift per year (and they’ve been with you a few years), that’s the bucket they see you in. So, if they look unlikely to upgrade and they look unlikely to increase the frequency of gifts, the only other way to increase their lifetime value (other than increasing their retention rate) is to decrease costs. Let’s say you send an average of 14 mail pieces per year and do two telemarketing cycles. This person probably can decrease this substantially and save costs.

Longevity. Length of donation is something that should be honored. Not only are milestone anniversary notes and certificates and the like a good thing to do from a moral and ethos perspective, but they will also make sure that your most loyal donors know that you know they are important to you.

Channel responsiveness. Change your tactics to suit the terrain.

All of these are even more important when looking at borderline segments. Should you mail the 13-18 $15-$19.99 multis? Maybe just those that have been with you five years or more? Or with previous high gift densities? Or just mail responsive?

But there’s more to it than even that; tomorrow, we’ll talking about using other interactions with your organization to define and customize.

Creating useful donor surveys

May 11, 2016May 7, 2016 nickellingerDonor intelligence, donorcentricity, regression, surveysLeave a comment

In my DMA Leadership Conference talk, I said that people who listened to what donors say they want in donor surveys deserve to be lied to. That was obviously too harsh – what I should have said is that they deserved to be misled.

Because people (not just donors, but all human beings*) aren’t meaning to lie to you; they just don’t know what their true motivation is. As we’ve seen, emotional reaction happens 6000 times faster than rational thought. So unless someone is doing System Two thought, where they are rationally considering all alternatives, the role reason plays in this process is coming up with the best possible justification of a decision already made.

Consider a study that asked people to rank their top 16 motivations. Sex was rated #14; wealth was dead last. Then they looked at actual subconscious motivators of decisions. Sex was rated #1 and wealth was rated #5.

This should be considered no surprise to people who have met, well, ya know, people. But it was a surprise to people themselves, who think themselves chaise and uncorruptable, but in reality dream of having very special moments in Scrooge McDuck’s vault.

0pu-08jzteemwvmsx

But that doesn’t mean all donor surveys are bad – far from it. It just means that, in a statement that may get me arrested by the Tautology Police**:

Bad donor surveys are bad. Good donor surveys are good.

Common traps in donor surveys:

Talking only to current donors. You want to talk to people who stopped giving as well, to the extent that they will talk to you. After all, you are looking for the difference between these two groups. Trying to define who your good donors are without talking to former donors is like saying the reason that Fortune 500 companies are successful is because they have employees and offices.
Asking donors to analyze why they did what they did. They don’t know. So they are going to try to figure out what answer someone like them would generally say or what they think you want to hear. Neither is helpful to you.
Asking donors what is most important to them. Clearly, from the above, the answer is sex. Looking only at your limited options, however, they will probably make mistakes in determining what is important to them, similar to the poor people who thought that sex and wealth (aka Genie Wishes #1 and #2) didn’t impact them.

So how do you construct a survey that gets to these important points? You are going to set up your survey so that you can run a regression analysis.**** If you need help with how to do this, check out our post on basic regression.

You will need a dependent variable. Ideally, this will be donation behavior because it is a clear expression of the behavior you are trying to impact. If not, an overall satisfaction score with the organization will be generally OK, as it should correlate strongly with donation behavior.

For your independent variables, ask about aspects of your organization. So, for example, “have you ever called X Organization about your donations?”, “did you receive a thank you note for each donation you made?”, “have you been to X Web site”, “how many days did it take for you to get your thank you note on your last gift?”, etc.

The powerful thing about regression analysis is that it will help you figure out both how people feel about their experience and how important that experience is to them? For example, my guess is that for most organizations, the number of days it took to get a thank you will be a good predictor of retention. Since the analysis tells you the strength of that association, you can invest the right amount of resources into that area versus new donor welcome packages or donor relations staff or database infrastructure and the like.

* Yes, non-donors are also considered human beings – just slightly lesser ones.

** Motto: Enforcing through enforcement since Socrates.***

*** Former motto: Our motto is our motto.

**** Or other modeling if you are feeling fancy.

Using your real estate better: reply devices

April 5, 2016March 24, 2016 nickellingerask strings, conversion, customization, Donor intelligence, mail, reply devices, retention, trustLeave a comment

When people in your organization review a mail piece, people expend sound, fury, and energy on the teaser copy, the word choice in the letter, and the photographs used.

But I bet you could send around a reply envelope with the wrong return address on it and have no one notice it. I’ve actually done this test, albeit unintentionally; I am not immune. I caught the error in the final proof process, meaning I missed it twice before.

This is where you, as the direct marketing expert, justify your salary. Anyone can go through a letter with a red pen and choose their own favorite words. You get to do the unsexy things that will get results.

And the reply device is probably the unsexiest thing in mail, which is saying something. If your mail piece were the crack spy team, the reply device would the guy in the van.

573-20091

“You know what? I’m sick of being in the van. You guys are going to be in the van next time. I’ve been in the van for 15 years, Harry.”

— Gib, True Lies

It’s also where a mail piece is one and lost. And it’s a place where you can implement your priorities where no one will yell boo.

So, some ideas:

Anchoring. We’ve talked a bit about this here and the science of ask strings here. However, there’s a wonderful SOFII article about the making of a mail piece here that explains the below the reply device.

Did you notice the $6518 option? Not only is that a nice high anchor that people are giving toward, but they find that some people actually give that. From the SOFII piece:

There is, however, one twist: there is an option to donate a sum of $6,518. We put that figure in because it is the actual average cost of granting a wish. Every now and then, when I’ve done that before, you find a donor who is willing to donate at that level. We did this once for a hospital when the price point for a piece of equipment was $6,942.73. Thirteen people “bought” this device. These donors upgraded from an average of $65 to nearly $7,000. It never hurts to ask.

Good for you, Make-A-Wish!

Ask for more information about a donor. Your mind must always be in two places about a donor or prospect: where they are now and where there are the possibilities of them going. One opportunity is for this donor to become a multichannel donor; to do that, you need an email address or phone number. And, while you can append these data, this has costs both in money and in not learning what method(s) by which your donor wants to be contacted.
Ask about other opportunities. Would this donor be interested in more information about becoming a monthly donor, leaving your organization in their will, or donating a used car? You will never know unless you ask.
Customize based on what you already know. Usually, reply devices are mass printed, which seems to be a missed opportunity. If you already have the person’s email address or phone number, you shouldn’t ask again. Likewise, if someone has ignored your checkbox for planned giving five times in a row, perhaps a monthly giving offer is more her/his speed.

There’s also the reply envelope; if the reply device is the guy in the van, the envelope is the guy in the van’s intern. Usually these are blank. However, messaging on the envelope can:

Reinforce the person’s decision to donate with trust indicators like the BBB seal.
Build urgency with messages like “Rush this envelope to save lives.”
Spread program awareness (e.g., “If you or a loved one has been affected by X, please call our hot line at 800-XXX-XXXX”)
Help with the program allocation of your mail piece in joint cost allocation. (For those not familiar with this procedure, you should be looking at each of your pieces and determining what percentage of this content is for each of your programs and what is fundraising for the purposes of your tax returns. Additional program messaging on the envelope gives a slight boost to the programmatic content.)

Just because the reply mechanisms don’t have as much messaging doesn’t mean that you still can’t make them work for you. Hopefully, these tips have helped you customize your reply so that you can get more replies.

Learning from political fundraising: hypercustomization

March 25, 2016May 14, 2016 nickellingercultivation, customization, database, Donor intelligence, multichannel, online, segmentation, surveys, telemarketingLeave a comment

fireworks4_amk On the path to his win in Iowa, Ted Cruz took an unusual position for a presidential candidate. He spoke out against fireworks regulations.

Usually, Iowa contests focus on broad national issues that a person would be expected to lead on as president (plus ethanol). Fireworks range as a national issue somewhere around garbage collection and why-don’t-they-do-something-about-that-tacky-display-of-Christmas-lights-on-Steve-and-Janice’s-house.

But from a data perspective, the Cruz campaign knew its supporters. There’s a great article on this here. Here’s a quote:

“They had divided voters by faction, self-identified ideology, religious belief, personality type—creating 150 different clusters of Iowa caucus-goers—down to sixty Iowa Republicans its statistical models showed as likely to share Cruz’s desire to end a state ban on fireworks sales.

Unlike most of his opponents, Cruz has put a voter-contact specialist in charge of his operation, and it shows in nearly every aspect of the campaign he has run thus far and intends to sustain through a long primary season. Cruz, it should be noted, had no public position on Iowa’s fireworks law until his analysts identified sixty votes that could potentially be swayed because of it.”

As we unpack this, there are several lessons we nonprofits can take from this operation:

The leadership role of direct marketing. Cruz’s campaign is run by a direct marketing specialist. Contrast this with Marco Rubio’s campaign, which is run by a general consultant, or Jeb Bush’s, which was run by a communications specialist. As a result, analytics and polling in the campaign are skewed not toward what generalized messages do best with a focus group or are the least offensive to the most number of people.

In fact, in the campaign, the analytics team has a broader set of responsibilities than normal. Analytics drive targeting decisions online and offline.

The imperative to know your constituents. Much political polling is focused on knowing donors in the aggregate. The Cruz campaign wanted to know them specifically. So they gathered not just people who were supporters and asked them about local concerns. This came up with 77 different ideas, including red-light cameras and, as you probably guessed, fireworks bans. We’ve talked about knowing your constituents by their deeds and by asking them; what’s important about this example is the specificity of the questions. It’s not “what do you like or dislike”; it’s “what do you care about.”

Testing to know potential constituents. One the campaign had these ideas, they tested them online with Facebook ads. The ads weren’t specific to the Cruz campaign, but rather asked people to sign up for more information about that issue. Once they had these data, they not only had specific knowledge of what people cared about, but the grist for the mill of data operations that could model Iowa voters and their key issues.

Focusing on actual goals. Cruz’s end goal is to drive voters, just like ours is to drive donations. By simplifying things down to what gets people to pull their levers/hit the button/punch the chad, they had a crystallizing focus. One can debate whether this is a good thing, as the campaign sent out a controversial Voting Violation mailing that attempted to shame infrequent voters with Cruz leanings to the polls. (It should be noted that these mailings are the part of campaign lore — they’ve been tested and found to be very efficient, but few campaigns have ever wanted to backlash that comes inevitably from them.) But that focus on things that matter, rather than vanity metrics like Facebook likes , help with strategy.

Hypertargeting: All of this led to some of the most targeted direct marketing that has been seen in the political world. When telemarketing was employed for particular voters, not only would the message reflect what they cared about (e.g., fireworks bans) but also why they cared about it (e.g., missed fun at 4th of July versus what seems to some as an arbitrary attack on liberty). This came from both people’s own survey results and what models indicated would matter to them.

So now, let’s look at this in a nonprofit direct marketing context. How well do you know your donors and potential donors? Or how well do you really know them? And how well do you play that back to them?

I’ve frequently advocated here playing back tactics to donors that we know work for them and focusing our efforts on mission areas and activities we know they will support at a segment level.

But this is a different game altogether. The ability to project not only what someone will support, but why they well, and designing mail pieces, call scripts, and emails that touch their hearts will be a critical part of what we do. And once you have this information, it’s cheap to do: if you are sending a mail piece or making a phone call already, it’s simplicity itself to change out key paragraphs that will make the difference in the donation decision.

This also applies in efforts to get donors to transition from one-time giving to monthly giving or mid-major gift programs.

So, how can you, today, get smarter about your donors and show them you are smarter about them?

Welcome step two: Learn more about your donors and engage them

February 24, 2016 nickellingerconversion, cultivation, customization, Donor intelligence, retention, thank you, welcomeLeave a comment

You’ve now created a gap between now and your normal communication stream for your new donor. What do you do next? As any Londoner can tell you, you now need to

bakerloo_line_-_waterloo_-_mind_the_gap

We know in case after case that personalization increases the effectiveness of direct marketing. And not just making sure the person’s name is spelled correctly: it’s about making sure you know why they are giving and are thanking and soliciting them under those auspices.

With a new donor, you will have a single data point with which to start. They responded to theme A through medium B. You can leg your way into donor knowledge as we recommend by changing one thing at a time, but that won’t help you get that second gift. And even if you are doing well, 60-70% of the time, you won’t get that gift.

Previously, I’d talked about the two ways of getting information about your supporters: watching their behavior and asking them. It turns out those are the two things you should be doing in your welcome communications as well.

The critical step, and the one most often missed, is setting up opportunities for behavior watching and for feedback. Or sometimes we go to the opposite extreme and send an email for every little bit of our mission we can think of, drowning the donor or prospect with a deluge of did-you-knows.

The way to maintain that balance with your supporters is to give them three major opportunities:

To use you as a resource. People are more likely to support organizations that solve their problem. This can range from “I want to eat more sustainably but I’m drowning in a sea of cage-free, organic, cruelty-free, etc. labels and don’t know how” to “I donated to suicide prevention because a friend committed suicide, but now I’m having these thoughts…”. We nonprofits are (or should be) experts in our area and we can help in these areas. And, as a much secondary effect, it allows us to see our supporter as a person.
To use you as means to accomplish their goal. If they donated to a particular issue, they may also want to write their legislator about it — that may give them the same (or similar) warm feeling that donating did. Or they may want to volunteer in a very specific way that helps them achieve the same end their donation did.

To learn what they think. You want to know how you can serve them better. This can be through a survey or an open-ended question. Or this can be an opportunity to bring in a different medium by having a human call them, thank them, and ask for why they gave and why to you.

The larger point here is that these should be framed in how they help the donor or cause, not how they help you. It’s amazing how much of a difference there is between “We are also on social media, so like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!” and “Our Facebook community helps parents of children with autism support each other, so please join in if you’d like to hear from others who have been where you are.”

It goes without saying that you should track these activities. If someone sends back the petition in their mail package, advocacy is something that appeals to them. Thus, the way to get them to be a higher value donor may not be to get a second gift through the mail (although you should try); it may be to get them to be a frequent online advocate, then ask them after an online petition to become a monthly giver to support the specific advocacy activities they enjoy.

It’s even easier online. If someone clicks on your link for more information for parents of kids with autism, you know they almost certain fall into this category themselves. This is a programmatic opportunity as well as a fundraising one, but all boats will lift if you have this information and use it to help the person in question. Links that you send should be trackable and appended to each supporter’s record so you can customize your messaging.

The alternative is to become the cable company that asks you for your phone number with their automated system, then has a person ask you for it, even though caller ID is a thing that has existed for a while in this universe. If someone tells you something, they will expect that you know it. And clicks are, believe it or not, communication.

There is a lot of ink and virtual ink used on how many emails or mail pieces you should have in a welcome series, how long it should last, etc. You’ll notice that I don’t cover any of that here, because I don’t find it to be all that important. If you can accomplish the thank you, learning, and engagement all in one communication, go for it. On the flip side, as long as a welcome series is about supporters’ interests, it’s difficult to say that it is going on too long.

Why welcome your donors?

February 22, 2016February 20, 2016 nickellingeracknowledgment, Donor intelligence, donorcentricity, starting, welcomeLeave a comment

I’ve read a lot about online and offline welcome kits, packages, and series. These are almost always treated in separate articles by separate people in separate universes. If your organization is sufficiently large, chances are they are written by separate people; if it’s even larger, they are written by separate people in separate departments.

In studying, I’ve found one deep and profound difference between welcoming donors and constituents online versus offline:

One is made of dead trees; the other is made of electrons in tubes.

Other than that, not much difference. There are four major purposes for welcoming someone:

To appreciate them in a way that makes them like you. Online, there’s research from Powerthru Consulting from their work with Environmental Action that is worth a read. They found that everyone who opened an email from their welcome series, it increased their likelihood of opening an email over the next six months by 20%. Further, it increased their likelihood of opening all of the emails over the next six months by 1-3%.

Welcoming emails also are well-opened and clicked on, far more than regular emails, according to MarketingSherpa.

It’s more difficult to get such data on mail pieces, but I’d wager they run the same way. This first post-thank you mail piece is going to be (if you are doing it right) in the honeymoon phase of the relationship and thus affect the trajectory from there.
To learn about the person and engage with them. If you doubt why should know about your donors, sneak over to my Winter is Coming end-of-times prediction about nonprofits who do not know their donors. Suffice it to say, your best chance of getting future donations from someone are by making sure you are customizing your asks to their desires. You won’t know how to do that if you don’t know them.
To allow them to learn about and engage with you. In this honeymoon period, you are still a bit new to them as well. Maybe they are actually more interested in something that you do than the one they donated to. Maybe they are interested in advocacy, volunteering, downloading materials — who knows at this point?
To get another gift, perhaps an upgraded one. A one-time giver is not really a donor. About a quarter will give another gift. While this is better odds than putting your finger on a name in the phonebook (side note: we really need a new analogy for this), it’s not someone who is committed to the organization. Double this for online donors, who are even more fickle on average.

A donor who gives a second gift early in the process is more than twice as likely to retain as a long-term donor than someone who waits. Do not be in the “oh, they just gave; let’s not ask them” crowd that does not strike hot iron. The debate over whether or not to ask in thank you’s is a legitimate debate (I say you should, but other smart people say no), but not asking in the welcome series at some point is simply incorrect.

This should not be restricted by medium. I’ve already talked about this extensively in the post on breaking down your thank you silos. So, I’ll just add two quick things here:

You usually will have someone’s mail address when they donate online, but not their online address when they donate through the mail, so this is easier to do from online to mail.
fMRI studies show that reading from dead trees causes more emotional processing than reading from electrons. Roger Dooley and his Neuromarketing team have the story here. So there probably is greater applicability of these techniques going from online to mail.

This week, I’ll go through each of these purposes in turn for a welcome strategy that is medium-agnostic. Personally, I view hitting all of these points as more important than whether you send two emails or five or the exact timing of when the mail gets out, so we will focus on technique and usable tips.

Direct to Donor

Direct marketing tips for the modern nonprofit

Menu

Donor intelligence