Use Donor Segmentation to Tailor Communications and Measure Results
Your supporters are not all the same.
In a university, your alumni have different interests than the parents of your current students. And the engineering school alumni will respond differently than the English majors.
You need an easy way to communicate with different groups according to their interests and relationship with you. That’s one of the reasons for segmentation.
Your database should have the ability to pull lists based on these differing constituencies. But it only works if you've carefully defined who they are and tagged them properly in the database. If you haven't already, this is a good time to add this information to your data.
Your database should be able to report on any of the natural groupings of donors that arise in your situation and include or exclude them from communications as necessary.
Segment by Who People Are
Here’s a starter list of potential natural groupings you may find in your database:
program participants
volunteers
members
employees
alumni
donors
board members
former board members
vendors
event attendees
Brainstorm for more groups that may be unique to your organization.
Segment by What People Do
Beyond these external factors, you should also be able to use your database to derive segments based on giving patterns and behavior. First-time donors, lapsed donors, prospective donors, loyal donors, and more can all be extracted and spoken to uniquely in communications.
One acronym that’s helpful for remembering three of the most important behavioral segments is RFM. Recency, Frequency and Monetary. Here are three starting points for segmenting in each:
Recency – Group by date of last gift: 0-12 months; 13-24; 25-36; or more than 36 months since last gift.
Frequency – Quickly break out who gives most often: 1 gift; 2 gifts; 3 or more gifts. Not usually necessary to go beyond those three groups.
Monetary – See whose single largest gift is in a certain range: $0.01 - $99; $100 - $999 and $1,000 or more.
Reporting by Segment
Besides having the ability to communicate effectively, segmentation gives you powerful reporting capabilities.
This is especially true when you cross-reference different segments against each other.
Take the above three RFM indicators, for instance, and find the handful of donors who gave within the past year, have made more than 3 gifts ever and whose largest gift is $1,000 or more. Right there is a key small group of donors who are very important to your organization.
Now, slice another way and look at how many are alumni, volunteers or board members. You’ll probably start to find some new insight into just who is supporting your organization.
We've got your back!
Five Maples helps fundraisers save time, raise more money and enjoy doing it!
Contact us today at garyh@fivemaples.com for a free consultation.
