Is your CRM ready to maximize your year end appeals?
As we come to the end of summer, nonprofit professionals like you are assuredly thinking about and planning for a busy and productive year end. For many, this planning includes hosting events, drafting year end solicitations, and crafting that perfect Christmas card. While those can be all important for engaging with donors during this crucial time, we believe that leveraging your nonprofit’s data will improve the performance of each of these initiatives.
Let’s look at your donor data.
How confident are you when pulling mailing lists? For a lot of nonprofits, this can be a significant pain point and is their least favorite task associated with mailings. However, even just a few hours of sorting and filtering data can help you identify 95% of the donor profiles that need updating. Do yourself a favor and pull your largest YE mailing list right now. Once you have it in a spreadsheet, highlight the data and click the “sort and filter button” in the home menu. This will allow you to sort and filter each column’s data. As you do this, highlight all of the errors you run across (i.e. “123 Main St” in the “State” field, “Apt. #1” is in the “Address 1” field) and update them in your donor database. Looking for duplicate profiles? Try sorting by street address, full names, or email address. Once updated in the system, go ahead and rerun that list. However, this time submit it to a service like truencoa.com which will run your entire list through the USPS database and provide you with forwarding addresses as well as 9-digit zip-codes. Implementing any one of these strategies will save you postage and will ensure your mailings will be delivered as timely as possible.
Segment Your List.
Another way to boost your year end is through effective data segmentation. Perhaps your organization engages in a Giving Tuesday campaign and sends personalized hand signed Christmas cards to donors. You don’t have to be a seasoned marketing professional to realize that mailings for these two initiatives likely shouldn’t targeted the same audience. After all, do you really want your top donors to give a potentially smaller gift on Giving Tuesday when their large gifts have always come in the last week of the year? Likewise, sending handwritten notes to someone that only gives small online gifts might not be the best use of your staff’s time. This year, why don’t you try the following segmentation examples to maximize your efforts:
Christmas Card
• Donors that give $500 or more
• Donors that give most of their support in the last 2-weeks of the year
• Donors that gave more than 3 gifts in the last year
• Donors that have given in the past via soft credit (i.e., donor advised fund)
Giving Tuesday Mailer
• Donors that give less than $500 a year
• Donors/Prospects that are highly engaged with your organization’s email marketing
• Donors that have given online or by credit card in the past
Call us for a free 30 minute consultation for how you can improve your existing data and, more importantly, show how to leverage your data to make your year end the best it can be!