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Personalize Communications With These 4 Data-Driven Tactics

July 29, 2024 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post by Gabrielle Perham of DeepSync

Imagine you’re an avid monthly donor and volunteer at a local animal shelter. You open your email inbox to see you’ve received an email from the shelter entitled “Learn more about our organization!”

You open the email to a summary of the nonprofit’s background and a list of ways you can get involved. Don’t they know you’ve been part of their community for the past five years?

Unfortunately, this situation happens all too often. To resonate with people on an individual level, nonprofits have to dig deep and personalize their messaging.

That’s why it’s important to adopt a data-driven marketing approach. With data, you can cater to different groups within your broader audience and seamlessly increase engagement. Check out these data-driven communication tactics your nonprofit can leverage.

1. Segmentation

To speak to supporters as individuals, you have to first think of them as individuals. While you may not be able to write an entirely unique message for each donor, you can target your communications using segmentation.

Segmentation refers to the process of grouping your audience based on shared characteristics, and there are many different ways to do it. Getting Attention’s nonprofit marketing guide recommends creating groups based on:

  • Level of support
  • Location
  • Age
  • Engagement rate

For example, you may create a location-based segment so you can reach out to local supporters about events you’re hosting in the community. If you don’t have enough information to create these segments, consider enriching your database.

Deep Sync defines data enrichment as “the process of supplementing your first-party data with third-party data to confirm you have the most accurate, reliable, and comprehensive database possible.” By enriching your database, you can learn more about your supporters and add valuable information to your database that helps you better reach them, including:

  • Demographics
  • Contact information
  • Income
  • Net worth
  • Lifestyle information

Let’s say you’d like to run an SMS marketing campaign but don’t have phone numbers for some of your donors. You can source this information through data enrichment, allowing you to easily get in contact with your supporters via text.

2. Marketing Audiences

Sometimes, the audience you’d like to reach isn’t reflected in your current supporter base. In this case, you can work with a data provider to create and reach a custom marketing audience. This way, you can expand your reach and unlock a new base of potential supporters who will align with your current campaign.

For example, imagine you run a political advocacy group that’s gearing up for an upcoming election. You want to encourage young people who can vote for the first time to support your cause, but your mailing list currently consists of adults over the age of 50.

To reach this group, you can use carefully compiled third-party student marketing data that grants you access to contact information for those in your target audience. Then, use this audience across online and offline channels to ensure your messaging reaches them.

3. Automation

While segmentation and custom marketing audiences can help you actively tailor the content of your messages, automation can play a supporting role in personalizing your communications. There are several ways you can use automation in this context, including to:

  • Insert personalized elements for email campaigns. Use automation to quickly add a personal touch to your emails. Individualize each message with elements like donors’ names, donation amounts, and past activities.
  • Trigger communications. Send automated communications such as thank-you emails, post-event follow-up, and event registration confirmation. That way, you can promptly communicate with donors before following up with more in-depth messages later on.
  • Send reminders. Automate reminders for upcoming events, recurring donations, and membership renewals. These messages keep your donors in the know without disrupting your team’s workflow.

When you use automation, you save your team time and energy while still improving your communication with donors.

4. Surveys

You have plenty of tactics for gathering information about your donors. Now, go straight to the source! Send surveys to hear directly from your supporters. Surveys allow you to collect constituent data that you can use to shape your communications strategy.

You may ask your supporters questions about the following:

  • Communication preferences. Ask donors how often they’d like to hear from you, through which channels, and about which areas of your organization. Communicating on their terms shows you’re committed to building one-on-one relationships with them.
  • Events and programming. Learn about supporters’ experiences with your events and programming. For instance, get their thoughts on the items you offered at your latest auction or ideas to improve your volunteer program.
  • Overall satisfaction. Lastly, ask your supporters about their overall satisfaction as members of your nonprofit’s community. Here, you can open the discussion for more open-ended feedback to glean insights into what you’re doing well and where you have room for improvement.

After collecting responses, store the results in your donor database for future reference.

To maintain a personalized, data-driven communications strategy, continuously fine-tune your approach. Constantly follow up with donors, employ A/B testing, and experiment with new tactics to improve your strategy and further individualize your messaging.


Gabrielle Perham, MBA

Gabrielle is the Director of Marketing & Sales Operations for Deep Sync. She joined the organization in 2017 and brings 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, communications, sales enablement, and digital marketing. With a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done attitude and a big-picture mindset, Gaby loves solving marketing and business challenges. She earned both a B.S. in Marketing and an M.B.A. in Marketing Management from the University of Tampa. Gaby enjoys spending time with her fiercely outspoken daughter; hiking and kayaking; rocking out in the first row of a live show; and giving back to her local community.

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Fundraising Tuesday: Nonprofit Database Management–5 Tips to Improve Donor Data

March 29, 2022 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post by Gabrielle Perham at AccuData

Most nonprofit professionals understand how important donor data can be. After all, these metrics are your roadmap to improving donor communications, fundraising strategies, and dozens of other important functions.

But just because you understand the importance of data doesn’t mean that you’re storing or using it effectively. In fact, over 76% of nonprofit organizations have yet to develop a dedicated data strategy, and many struggle to effectively manage their donor databases. To help you cut through the clutter and make the most of your data, consider these top nonprofit database management tips:

  • Perform data audits
  • Standardize data entry and management
  • Implement cybersecurity measures
  • Invest in data enhancement
  • Optimize marketing and outreach

Even if your database is well-maintained, these nonprofit data hygiene and management strategies can help you boost functionality and leverage your data to its fullest potential!

Perform data audits

How are you supposed to begin addressing problems in your nonprofit database if you don’t know what they are?

According to Re:Charity’s data hygiene best practices, data audits are one of the first and most important steps of conducting a cleanse of your data records, giving you a high-level overview of specific issues, systemic weaknesses, and the overall health of your database.

Data audits are good at exposing inaccurate and outdated information. Plus, this diagnostic check-up should also expose areas of your database where your current data management practices are the most ineffective.

Standardize data entry and management

Effective nonprofit data management is about far more than just conducting mass database cleanses every so often. Instead, create a standardized process for recording and managing data. This can go a long way to make information quicker to find, locate errors more easily, and prevent mistakes before they happen.

For example, you might:

  • Standardize entry for mailing addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.
  • Standardize abbreviations for common titles, numbers, and phrases.
  • Standardize and record protocols for verifying information, removing incorrect or redundant information, and reporting system issues.

These measures should cut down on time spent during your data audits, prevent a build-up of widespread system errors, and ensure that your data is clean, secure, and accurate.

Implement cybersecurity measures

As mission-based organizations funded by public goodwill, nonprofits are especially vulnerable to the negative press brought on by fraud and hacking scandals. To protect your donors and your nonprofit database from these online scams, implement nonprofit cybersecurity measures, like:

  • Get an SSL certificate for your nonprofit website, which should repel data fraud, boost public confidence, and increase website traffic
  • Leverage PCI-compliant payment tools, which abide by official credit card security standards to offer the highest levels of payment data protection
  • Educate staff on how to identify and address fraud, such as dealing with phishing scams and suspicious emails

For specialized tips and guidance, you may even invest in a professional nonprofit data service, which can carefully review and provide expert strategies to protect and manage your nonprofit database.

Invest in data enhancement

Beyond dealing with “bad” or “dirty” data, another important aspect of database management is strengthening your data. This is where data enhancement, or data append, can provide a powerful boost to your data strategies.

Data enhancement is the process of pulling data, such as donor demographics or geolocation, from external resources to enrich your outreach and marketing techniques. To conduct a data append, take a look at these critical steps from AccuData’s guide to data enhancement:

  1. Outline your organization’s marketing goals, noting what data is most important to achieve them.
  2. Partner with a professional data provider to enrich your data.
  3. Compare your internal with external datasets to align these records.
  4. Pull external data to integrate with your internal records, creating a richer outlook of your donors.

Once you’ve dealt with important issues in your nonprofit database, an effective data append can help to take your data strategies to the next level. In particular, it can strengthen donor outreach, improve your nonprofit SEO practices, and refine your nonprofit marketing strategies.

Optimize marketing and outreach

Once you’ve properly cleaned, refined, and enhanced the information in your nonprofit database, it’s finally time to launch data-driven strategies for the benefit of your nonprofit. For example, consider these fundamental techniques to improve your nonprofit data marketing:

  • Use predictive modeling to anticipate future donor behavior and build more effective outreach.
  • Segment donor data, grouping donors by characteristics that would best inform your marketing strategy.
  • Set key performance indicators to measure the success of your campaigns.

 

Nonprofit database management is about more than just tidying up your records—it includes the collection, upkeep, and use of your data to more effectively market your brand and appeal to donors. With these data-driven insights, you should be able to confidently tackle the challenges in your nonprofit database, acquire new donors, and inspire greater donations than ever before.


Author: Gabrielle Perham, MBA, Director of Marketing

Gabrielle is the Director of Marketing for AccuData Integrated Marketing. She joined the organization in 2017 and possesses more than 15 years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, communications, and digital marketing. She earned a B.S. in Marketing and an M.B.A in Marketing Management from the University of Tampa.

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