Virtually all nonprofits would agree that the ability to offer customized messages to different groups of supporters is essential in today’s competitive fundraising environment.
Treating all supporters the same way can lead to “irrelevant messaging or over-messaging,” says Misty McLaughlin, vice president of consulting for Jackson River, a firm that helps nonprofits with their technology strategies.
Segmentation, which entails dividing one’s mailing list into subgroups, can seem intimidating. And while some nonprofits do the basics well — say, simply splitting supporters into lists of big and small donors — many fear that going further would require a lot of staff time, or new software that allows for more sophisticated data analysis.
“I think a lot of groups just get paralyzed, and as a result people just do the same thing over and over again,” says Alice Kornhauser, executive director of the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Maine. Ms. Kornhauser ‘s group replaced its donor database about two years ago, in part so it could divide up its supporters and target different groups.
If you want to upgrade your segmentation strategies, here’s some advice from Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Kornhauser, and Amanda Luther, senior director of client services at Change.org.
Determine how you want to categorize supporters.
Ms. McLaughlin says nonprofits need to analyze which donors or audiences they want to communicate with and assess what information they can use to segment them. There are many variables to choose from, like age, sex, or relationship with the organization.
Many charities also segment by supporters’ interests, as indicated in surveys or conversations with staff. Some analyze the behavior of donors, such as how much and how often they give, which emails they open, or which events they attend.
As you identify different categories of supporters, Ms. McLaughlin says, start coding them in your database — perhaps asking administrative staff to set some time aside to do it. The process could take a significant amount of time, she adds, but “the reality is that segmentation is only as good as the time that you have to act on it,” she says.
Some groups even build “personas” around different kinds of supporters, says Ms. Luther at Change.org. For example, a diabetes organization might create an archetype for a mother who has a child with the disease and often participates in advocacy actions. “All of a sudden they become much more real and tangible,” Ms. Luther says, and you can think about what messages they should receive from the organization.
Start small.
You don’t need to drill down too far at the beginning. Make simple segments, then break your donor groups down further “as you become comfortable and get sophisticated,” Ms. Luther says.
Ms. Kornhauser agrees that starting simple is probably best. “There are so many possibilities that it’s easy to let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” she says.
The Portland Chamber Music Festival is currently tailoring messages in a variety of ways, but none of them are too complex. For instance, ticket holders for its signature festival and a dozen or so annual concerts receive different messages from those who donate but do not attend performances, Ms. Kornhauser says. The group also separates those who give $1,000 or more from those who give less.
Use segmentation to improve programs, even with low-budget tools.
When Ms. McLaughlin was board chair at Birth Roots, a Maine charity that helps budding and new parents, the group used a spreadsheet to track all the people who came to its prenatal and parenting classes. Birth Roots took note of new attendees and frequent participants. First-timers received an orientation from staff to help them feel more connected to the group; people who were came often were cultivated as donors.
Although the group didn’t use a database with a lot of bells and whistles, it still learned how to sort the people it served in order to treat them differently based on their behavior — which is the entire point of segmentation, Ms. McLaughlin says.
Make sure you have the right tools.
Ms. Kornhauser says replacing her organization’s old donor database — built on FileMaker Pro — was key. Before upgrading, the festival could only divide between big and small donors; ticketing information was in a separate database, so it could not easily provide special offers to big contributors who attended many events — a lost opportunity. Starting this year, the nonprofit will provide free drinks and upgraded seating to large donors who also attend concerts.
Ms. McLaughlin agrees that good tools are essential and notes that widely used customer databases, like Salesforce, allow for analysis of how messages to particular segments are performing.
“The goal is to have software that can help do this,” she says. “It won’t make your strategy, and it won’t make your decisions, but it will help you understand some of the meaningful groupings between people.”
