A recent survey of 3,000 people – compiled by the Charities Aid Foundation and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations – found that charity donations have fallen by 20 percent in real terms in the past year. That equates to £1.7bn less being given.
With the population still recovering from the recession, many people are continuing to reign in their spending. Charities are clearly faced with a significant challenge in reaching the public and convincing them to donate to their causes. With this in mind, charities must optimise their marketing efforts to ensure that they are targeting the right potential donors, that their message is felt and donation levels are kept up.
These eight tips should help charities do just that:
Manage supporter data in a central database
Having a single view of supporter behaviour is essential to develop more relevant and engaging relationships with donors and volunteers. Collecting data from multiple channels can make this difficult, but Experian’s own research found that 84 percent of customers said they would no longer buy from an organisation that failed to take account of their preferences, purchasing history and other customer information. This demonstrates the importance of having a Single Customer View and keeping the supporter at the centre of all activity. Such an approach will also help you understand who your supporters are, how they interact with your charity and their lifetime value.
Make sure your internal data is best of breed
Although it is a basic data management principle, data quality is fundamental to how accurate your reporting, insight and decision making are. So firstly ask yourself ‘is my data clean?’ Are your campaigns just suppressed or is the information on deceased and goneaways flagged on your database? If the current process is to suppress at point of campaign you will need to get this information on to your database to have an accurate and up to date view of your supporter base.
Data capture processes must be robust and charities must use every relevant opportunity to capture supporter information. With a multichannel approach key to success, charities should give supporters the opportunity to select which channels they wish to be contacted through, as well as which content they want to hear about.
Finally are you using ALL relevant internal data? For instance, are you feeding email engagement data back to your database? If you can access this information it can be used to analyse and understand how engagement relates to giving.
Invest in insight
Conducting a comprehensive audit of your databases and data assets will enable you to understand what you have, what you need and what you can do as a result. This will allow you to adopt insight based planning, enabling campaign planners to make recommendations based on insights (rather than hunches) and therefore reduce the risk associated with new approaches.
It is important to invest in getting access to some quality analytical resources that can generate insight into your supporter behaviour at a strategic level, rather than just looking at tactical initiatives or campaign responsiveness. Having access to this will enable you to know:
- Where the value is in your supporter base
- Where the potential is to increase fundraising activity
- Where donor behaviour has changed and what triggered this change
- Whether or not different fundraising products such as events attract different types of donors compared to cash donors
- Which channels attracting supporters most effectively
Enhance internal insight with external data
Although internal insight will enable individuals planning campaigns and activities to understand where the value is and where potential value may be found – an enhanced picture can be created by using external data.
External data will enable planners to ascertain if there is greater potential for fundraising from individuals, as they can provide information on an individual – including potential wealth and attitudes to donating.
Where external data really can add value to the process of planning communications is during the welcome phase of a relationship with a supporter. At this stage, internal transactional and behavioural data is limited. Using insights from existing supporters profiled against external variables allows you to predict new supporters’ behaviours or potential value. It allows targeted messages to be used even at this early stage of the relationship.
Develop a robust campaign planning framework
A robust planning framework can be adopted in order to maximise fundraising opportunities and ensure that a charity can gain maximum return on investment. An effective campaign planning process enables the sharing of information and learnings/insight (and does not have to be repeated); it creates buy in, allows alternative strategies and tactics to be evaluated and it facilitates continual monitoring of performance. The framework should include all relevant individuals and agencies responsible for campaigns.
Central to the concept of effective campaign planning is a test and learn methodology with control group creation so that you can understand how to best execute supporter communications; this removes the guesswork in the evaluation of overall fundraising performance. It allows the roll-out of strategies that provide the most return, and avoids the risk of implementing expensive mistakes which will negatively impact performance.
Link online and offline data and campaigns
UK Internet visits to charity websites are up by 13 percent year-on-year according to Hitwise data.
You must ensure that you are making the most of this channel and the supporters coming to your website by linking online and offline activity. It is important to remember that consumers do not work in channel silos. They use a mix of channels; whether they are surfing the net, browsing your site, reading emails, looking at a catalogue or walking down the high street. So why not look at them holistically? It makes perfect sense that understanding behaviours across channels and delivering consistent tailored messaging will increase your ability to impact behaviours from acquisition through to retention.
What are your supporters looking for and are they finding it?
Over 30 percent of all traffic to charity websites comes from search according to Hitwise data.
With this in mind, web pages must be optimised with relevant content – content that has been created and placed due to knowledge of what people are searching for. This means you can focus your efforts on driving traffic to the site outside of classic search.
Mobile optimisation must not be overlooked. People search differently depending on the device they are using. For example people are more likely to search for more intimate types of cancer (testicular/prostate) on a mobile device, which is a more private network than on a home desktop. This will have implications on mobile optimisation of web pages and specific mobile search optimisation strategies dependent on the role of your charity.
Charities cannot afford to ignore social networks
Social media is one of the fastest growing sources of traffic for the charity industry. 11 percent of all visits to charity websites now come from social sites.
What are the best networks to use in order to drive visits to your website? The answer can depend on the demographics of your different supporter groups and understanding these demographics can help you channel spend and energy to the right network.
Since the launch of Facebook ‘likes’ there has been 1.13 trillion likes and the network now has over 1 billion users in countries around the world. At the time of writing, the NSPCC has around 182,000 likes on Facebook, while Cancer Research has over 325,000 likes – this underlines the potential for these charities to reach large audiences and raise their profile within important support networks.
Get the most out of your supporters
Donations are down, but with these tips charities can better target and engage with existing and potential supporters, while maximising donations.
