Blog
November 20, 2015
In Muddle in the Middle, Part 1, we learned about the value of mid-level donors to your long-term fundraising strategy and the reasons for nurturing those relationships. In this follow-up post, we show you how you can use Salesforce to identify, target and ultimately grow your mid-level donors, in the context of your year-end push.
When it comes to nurturing your mid-level donor — or any donor, timing is key. According to Network for Good, in 2014, 30% of all giving occurred in December and 10% occurred in the final three days of the year. Hopefully, this year-end push is something your organization has been planning for all year. But just in case you are a little behind schedule, grab your Salesforce administrator, roll up your sleeves, and read on.
With only 42 days left in the year, how do you maximize those year-end donations? You automate your ask through drip email campaigns because, face it, who wants to be in the office between 12pm and 6pm on December 31 when online giving is at its most concentrated? Using Salesforce’s email marketing platform — Marketing Cloud — you can easily create a series of highly targeted messages that are triggered by a prospect’s behavior and/or response. If you don’t have a tool like Marketing Cloud you can still execute these strategies it will just require more manual work on your part. Here’s the plan:
- Choose the right targets: First, create the following segments in Salesforce, using Salesforce reports:
- Constituents who have attended at least one event or otherwise engaged as a volunteer for your organization during this past year, but have never donated directly. (According to Charity Navigator, volunteers are almost twice as likely to donate to a charity they are passionate about than non-volunteers.) Report How-to: Assuming you are using Campaign Members for your event attendees and volunteers, create a Campaign Member Report, filtered by the appropriate Campaigns and Campaign Member status (attended, volunteered), and grouped by Contacts where campaign start date = current year. You will also need to add a filter to the report for just those members who are not donors. One way to do this is by first creating a formula field on the Campaign Member object that puts a flag on the Campaign Member record if the person is not a donor. You could reference the lifetime giving amount field on the contact or account in your formula.
- Lapsed donors, specifically LYBUNT (last year but not this year) and SYBUNT (some year but not this year). Report How-to: There are standard LYBUNT and SYBUNT reports within Nonprofit Starter Pack, NGO Connect, and Advancement Connect.
- Recurring donors to ask them to consider giving at the next level. Report How-to: In NGO Connect and Advancement Connect, filter your report by the “Active Sustainer” flag and “Current Amount” fields.
- Set up the message sequence: Next build out your drip campaign, for each segment above, using Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder. Journey Builder’s dynamic content and marketing automation will enable you to deliver the right message to the right constituent at the right time based on their actions. The Campaign canvas allows drag-and-drop representation of the prospect’s journey so that it is easy to visualize the time elapsed between each activity of the campaign. The diagram below represents the type of automated sequence you can build with Journey Builder.
- Monitor and measure: Finally, measure your results with metrics provided by Marketing Cloud, e.g., open rates, click-throughs, conversions and average donations. Campaign Manager reporting allows you to see which efforts are bringing the best results. You can set the overall goal and then see success rates against the goals, watching the icon change from orange to green!
- Tweak and repeat! Make the most of your year-end appeal by using tools already in your toolbox. Salesforce and Salesforce Marketing Cloud allow you to create targeted lists and produce personalized drip-campaigns responding to your prospect’s behavior. Start nurturing those mid-level prospects now to take advantage of people’s tendency to donate during the holiday season for both practical and charitable reasons. That mid-level donor may be a major gift donor down the road. It starts one ask at a time – why not automate it!
