This article was originally published in my Digital Tip-A-Month Newsletter. Sign up to get more tips like this in your inbox once a month.
A good fundraising campaign should speak to each recipient personally, and that means segmenting or conditionalizing key messages to recognize their relationship with your organization. Getting the right message in front of the right person will build stronger relationships and raise more money.
Here are three segments (plus a bonus segment below) that almost every nonprofit should be thinking about:
Recent Donors
People who have donated within the past year are your most valuable supporters – and they’re primed to donate again. But donors are not ATMs. Be sure to thank them for their past support and recognize what their donation has helped accomplish this year before you ask them to give more.
Last Year’s Donors
People who donated in past years, but haven’t given yet this year, are another valuable segment. They’re more likely to donate than the average person, but their support has lapsed, so they may need an extra nudge. Tell them how much you value their past support and urge them, tactfully, to renew that support while reminding them of why they gave in the first place.
Special Donor Categories
Do you have a sustainer program? Are there major donors on your email list? Other special programs?
People who support you in a major way deserve extra care and attention, and they shouldn’t be bombarded with asks. Send them appropriate messages, and don’t ask a thousand-dollar major donor to give $20. Always thank these folks, and you might ask sustainers to make a special, additional one-time gift to support a timely need.
Half-Hour Exercise
If you have these segments built already, make sure they’re part of your end-of-year plan (and see below for a bonus tip). If not, try creating them now in your email system. Save them for use in fundraising campaigns, and make note of the size of each segment relative to your full list, which should help guide how much time you invest in special messaging for them.
If you don’t have the data to build these segments, can you get it? You’re starting early, so you have a month or two to pull these lists together before your end-of-year campaign starts.
Bonus Segment: Likely Donors
If you’re regularly segmenting your emails to donors, the next step is to identify who’s most likely to give, even though they haven’t given before. This allows you to send them more targeted asks than your less-likely donors, and avoid the high unsubscribe and spam complaint rates that tend to accompany fundraising emails.
Likelihood to give could depend on a lot of factors, and if your budget permits, it can be valuable to hire a company to model your donor list and develop this segment for you. For a DIY approach, crunch some numbers on how donors behave compared to the rest of your list. Questions you might analyze include:
- How long have most donors been on your list before they donate?
- Do donors open more emails than non-donors? How many more?
- Do donors tend to engage in advocacy?
- Do donors attend in-person events, or engage in other ways?
Use these factors to create a segment of people you suspect are primed to donate – and then go test your assumptions.