A Scientist in Your Communications Department
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•393 views
Presented at the 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington DC.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to A Scientist in Your Communications Department
Similar to A Scientist in Your Communications Department (20)
More from Jono Smith
More from Jono Smith (15)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
A Scientist in Your Communications Department
- 1. A Scientist in your Communications Department: Segmenting Messages Customizing Content Delivering Results <#11NTCsegmt> Jeff Shuck President/CEO
- 5. How to target with predictive analysis
- 6. How to analyze the impact of your segmentation & targeting strategyDOES THIS WORK?
- 12. Situation Problem: How do I use online communications effectively to increase fundraising? Hypothesis: Personalizingcommunications through segmentation will generate results. Procedure: Identify groups with unique characteristics and talk to them based on what motivates them. Results: More meaningful connections with your constituents and donors and more money raised for your mission.
- 13. PROBLEM: How do I utilize online communications to generate real fundraising results?
- 15. The first rule of fundraising is to ASK.
- 16. Long-time major donor, milestone birthday approaching. Participated in a different event with siblings, lives with parents at home. Team captain for top fundraising team, thinking about retirement. Board Member, married, no kids. Directly affected by your cause, city-dweller. New volunteer with your organization, parent. “Likes” you on Facebook because a friend participated in an event, lives abroad. Lapsed participant, but consistent donor. The key is to ask in a personal way.
- 17. HYPOTHESIS: Personalizing communications strategies and tactics through segmentation will increase your fundraising results.
- 19. Identify your highest potential groups.
- 20. Forecast future behavior based on information.Speak to each group differently.
- 21. What happens if I don’t segment? Oversaturate people with information. Hit or miss on your messaging = no constituent action. Lose the opportunity to build a meaningful connection.
- 22. What happens if I do segment? Right message to the right person at the right time. Create a connection and generate a response. Deepen relationships with people who care about your mission.
- 23. PROCEDURE: Identify groups with unique characteristics and talk to them based on what motivates them.
- 24. Step 1: Collecting Data Often we don’t know the most important data. Start with why. What’s your connection to the cause? Why did you choose to donate? Use the donor information you already have: Address information Gift history (how much, how many, to what projects) Gender, birthdate (age) Group based on basic information, identify trends and adjust communications based on trends. Work towards standardizing your process, your questions, and your data entry to make measurement and evaluation easier.
- 25. Case Study:Komen Global Race for the Cure, Year One Existing database was inconsistent. Added a question to registration form: “What is your connection to the cause?” Focused on building our understanding of who was actually coming and why, instead of deciding we already knew.
- 26. Step 2: Descriptive Analysis Focus on donor characteristics. Evaluate past behavior. Segment based on characteristics and past activity.
- 29. Tailored communication to each of these segments.Combined cause connection information with the amount actually raised to create blended messages that spoke to more specific situations. Don’t forget donors! Created targeted asks based on the previous year’s average donation (social norms) to encourage donors to give more. Case Study: Komen Global Race for the Cure
- 34. Online Communication 75 unique messages: 17 recruitment messages 46 fundraising messages 10 general updates 2 donor messages Yielded over 850,000 e-mail impressions.
- 35. Step 3: Predictive Analysis Use your constituent knowledge and information about past activities as indicators of potential future activity. Identify a predisposition towards a specific action, give them messaging and tools to get there faster.
- 36. Registration time increases the likelihood of being a Pacesetter significantly. Age raises the likelihood significantly. Cause motivation raises the likelihood significantly.
- 38. At registration asked: “Do you plan on fundraising?” “Are you interested in incentives?” Received different messaging based on what they expected themselves to do, versus what they had already done. Case Study:Komen Global Race for the Cure, Year Two
- 39. Step 4: Building Strong Messaging Build a clear case for your event. NEED: What problem are you trying to solve? IMPACT: What difference will you be making?
- 42. Strong case for your mission at time of donation may increase the donation amount.
- 43. Donation levels can be influenced.Say thank you.
- 44. Case Study: Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure Acknowledgement of past participation. Specific, realistic ask that is tied to event.
- 45. RESULTS: More meaningful connections with your event participants and more money raised for your mission.
- 48. Messages about incentives were the most engaging. Tested messages using incentives, stats, stories and tools as motivators. Case Study: Komen Global Race for the Cure
- 49. Goal Performance Structure minimums and goals so that they are attainable and motivational.
- 50. Impact on Fundraising Median amount raised per fundraiser increased 20%, from $100 to $120.
- 51. Impact on Gift Size
- 52. Overall Impact
- 53. Now what? The cheat sheet to take home. Ask WHYpeople are supporting your organization’s mission. GROUP people based on their interests. PERSONALIZE your messages based on what you know about people’s motivations. Build your CASE: Illustrate your NEED and the IMPACT a donation will make. TEST and MEASURE the response to different messages. THANK your donors.
- 54. Long-time major donor, milestone birthday approaching. Participated in a different event with siblings, lives with parents at home. Team captain for top fundraising team, thinking about retirement. Board Member, married, no kids. Directly affected by your cause, city-dweller. New volunteer with your organization, parent. “Likes” you on Facebook because a friend participated in an event, lives abroad. Lapsed participant, but consistent donor. CONCLUSION: You have a diverse group of constituents.
- 55. CONCLUSION: Using your data to segment your messages will bring them together to raise more money for your cause. WE CARE ABOUT YOUR CAUSE.
- 56. YOUR TURN: Q&A
- 57. $365 $1500 $20,000 $20,000+
- 62. Session Evaluation Each entry via text or web is a chance to win great NTEN prizes throughout the day! TEXT Text <#11NTCsegmt> to 69866. ONLINE Use <#11NTCsegmt> at http://nten.org/ntc/eval Session Evaluations Powered By:
Editor's Notes
- How many of you shop using Amazon.com?Have any of you ever received an e-mail like this?This e-mail is an example of highly specific targeting. When I was logged into the site, I was searching for (xxx) and it took note of my activity on the site, what I put in my shopping cart, but maybe didn’t purchase, or what I spent time browsing and sent me this e-mail to follow up on my interests.
- Another example of how people use your interests and what they know about you to target recommendations to what you might like, and therefore increase your interaction with their business.
- You’re probably saying to yourself: “But, I’m not Amazon or Netflix. They have lots of money to do targeting like that. Isn’t that what big marketers do? I don’t have anything to sell these people, I’m asking them to donate to me. They aren’t giving me any information about who they are or what they’re interested in. They’re just writing me a check or making a donation online. How am I supposed to use these same tactics as those big marketers?”
- So, that’s what we’re here today to discuss. How to segment your messages, customize your content – and most importantly, deliver event fundraising results.Using the science fair analogy to walk us through the process:First, we’ll discuss utilizing online communications to stimulate results in event fundraising. We’ll make the connection between new communications methods and traditional fundraising theory.Then, we’ll talk about what segmentation is – and why it will generate results.After we understand WHY segmentation, we’ll get into the nitty gritty and discuss how it works, how you can make it work for your organization and the different ways you can take it back to your organization now.Finally, we’ll talk about measuring the results. You want to make sure that the effort that you are putting in to analyzing your audience is actually generating your desired results.Along the way, I’ll be giving you some examples of how segmentation has worked for some of our most successful clients.
- Main message for this section: Connect mass communications strategies to traditional fundraising techniques. Communicating with your event participants should utilize the same strategies that you use for smaller groups or individual major donors.
- In order to better understand how to find a solution to the problem, let’s go back to the basics – in chemistry, you break it down to the basic elements, so let’s go back to some fundraising basics. I want you to look at your event participants as more than just event participants. They are valuable donors and fundraisers for your organization. Look at the lifetime amounts that some of your event participants have brought into your organization – they may have raised the same amount of money as a major donor, but you haven’t looked at them in that way because they are in your “event” bucket. This is why we’re going back to the fundraising basics – to remember that event participants are also fundraisers.Other fun fact: Au (Gold) is the most malleable and ductile of all metals; a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet. Its uses vary from monetary exchange to jewelry to practical applications in electronics and industry. Like our communications plans, it can be shaped in whatever way we please and if we use it in the right way, it can return more value to us.
- You won’t generate results unless you ask.You already know this – we’re going to apply some of the tools that you are already familiar with to your event communications strategies.The event has been created as a REASON to ask. Make sure that you are asking.You probably have a good group of supporters that you know will participate in your event. How are they going to know about your event unless you tell them about it and then ask them to be part of your event?Think about what you are saying in your e-mails? Are you giving people information? Are you asking them to do something? Ideally, you are offering both – information AND a call to action in your e-mails. Offering only one is not utilizing your communications methods to the full potential. You have to foster a give and take relationship with your donors and constituents. Give them a reason to give and offer them information and inspiration, so that when you ask, their answer is yes.
- Animation comes out one-by-one. (one click, delay by 2 seconds)How do you get to the YES? Ask in a personal way.You would never approach a major donor with a form letter or a generic brochure, right? With the ability to personalize messages now, there is no reason that you should be sending generic communications to your constituent base via e-mail communications. While the audience is savvy enough to know that you aren’t sitting at your computer typing out an email in Outlook just to them, you should give them information that they care about and that is relevant to their reasons for supporting your organization in the first place.Understand why someone already supports your organization and speak to that.
- Main message for this section: Sell the idea of segmentation.What is segmentation and WHY do we think it’s the right tool?Why segment with your eCommunications?
- This is the strategy you use with your major donors. Look at your overall constituent base as all potential major donors and utilize your technology and your data to personalize your communications.
- When you send the same messages to your entire constituent base, you run the risk of diluting your message – oversaturating people with information or asks from your organization that do not speak to their original reasons for supporting you. Your messages may resonate with some people very strongly, but may get lost with other people. If you overcommunicate with non-specific messaging, chances are you will get lost in the email clutter.
- Refer back to the six rights. Catch people when they are in the right mindset. Talk to people about what they care about and tap into the reasons that they chose to support your organization in the first place.As you are able to segment people with more detail and into more specific groups – you will have more luck in generating real results.
- Main message for this section: Getting into the nitty-gritty of how to segment.What information do you need to begin segmentation and how do you get it?The mechanics of descriptive analysisThe mechanics of predictive analysis
- Need to start somewhere with segmentation. You have to see what you already know about your donors and constituents.Look at your registration or donation form. What information are you collecting?How can you use the information that you already have?Donor history, address information, gender, birthdate (age)To bring your data collection to the next level, use your event management tools to look at the following types of information:- How frequent is participation? (Once and done? Repeat participation?)How much are they collecting in donations?How many donors do they have?How soon do they make an ask after signing up?How far in advance of an event are people signing up?Are they recruiting other people to participate? What actions are those people taking?
- We made sure everyone had to register online, including their connection to the cause.
- “Take a microscope to your data – and this is where we use it and interpret”Now, you have your information - this is where we start to take action with it. You can use simple tools within your e-mail communication systems, or even a basic excel worksheet, to group your audience together based on various characteristics. Even if your organization only has basic information (address, gift history) – there is a lot that you can do to personalize your messages at this stage to generate initial responses.Give examples on how to use each type of data.Is your organization sponsoring events or projects in a specific geography? Use address information to communicate more directly. Acknowledge based on their specific gift history, not on your predefined levels. People love it when they feel like you know them personally and their specific gift is making an impact. By saying, your “$140 donation” versus seeing their name on a donor list of “gifts between $100 and $150 – you are developing a more personal connection with the specific action that person has taken.Talk about projects that they have donated to in order to keep them engaged. Ask their opinions about future projects – involve them in your community beyond just an ask for more money.If appropriate, use gender or birthdate information to talk to groups:Birthdate – time based communications, thank them for their support on their birthday with a personalized message from someone who has benefitted from your work. If your organization does work based on gender or age, tailor your project communications in that way.
- Maybe add histogram.
- Two ways of approaching predictive analysis:1 – sophisticated statistical analysis (via a tool such as SPSS)2 – can also do basic predictive analysis based on intuition, for example: “women survivors will react differently than men survivors.”Keep in mind, no predictive model will ever be completely accurate, but it will allow you to direct behavior more effectively.
- An event case:Sets the tone and culture of the eventRecruits participantsCreates an easily repeatable fundraising ask for participants to makeSets a metric to report onPresents a purpose for growing over timeBe passionate.Be focused.
- Thank you is key to relationship management. Validate their reasons for participating and/or giving:To feel good by doing something goodTo feel like they are part of a communityTo be acknowledged(Jimmy Fund bus example)
- Segmentation e-mail example – past participant that hasn’t participated in a while.Acknowledge the way that they have participated in the past.Ask them to continue their involvement with your organization in a meaningful and realistic way for them.
- Main message for this section: Analyzing resultsHow do you measure the results?Using case studies to demonstrate success.
- When we were chatting the other day, you asked about the % of people who hit the 2008 suggested goal of $250. In 2008, 6.2% hit $250 or above. In 2009, 6.4% hit $250 or above. In 2009, we shifted our suggested goal to $125. In 2008, 10% hit $125 or above.In 2009, 12% hit $125 or above.
- How do you get to the YES? Ask in a personal way.You would never approach a major donor with a form letter or a generic brochure, right? With the ability to personalize messages now, there is no reason that you should be sending generic communications to your constituent base via e-mail communications. While the audience is savvy enough to know that you aren’t sitting at your computer typing out an email in Outlook just to them, you should give them information that they care about and that is relevant to their reasons for supporting your organization in the first place.Understand why someone already supports your organization and speak to that.
- 1 billion people live on less than $1 dollar per day4 billion on between $365 and $1500 per yearAbout 1.5 billion between $1500 and $20,000And about 100 million on over $20,000
- 1 billion people live on less than $1 dollar per day4 billion on between $365 and $1500 per yearAbout 1.5 billion between $1500 and $20,000And about 100 million on over $20,000