Nonprofit professionals know that every campaign generates an extensive amount of data, from conversions to return on investment and engagement rates. The ability to gather, understand, and act on your data is essential for fundraising success.
The better your nonprofit manages its data, the better you can connect with each supporter. For instance, direct mail is one of the best communication channels for forging personal connections, and leveraging data to send highly personalized messages through this channel can dramatically improve your relationship-building strategy.
To help your nonprofit improve its direct mail campaigns, this step-by-step guide will explore how data segmentation can boost your efforts and explain how to use data effectively.
Track Supporters’ Data
Supporters provide data every time they interact with your nonprofit, and the right tools allow you to gather information that’s relevant to their engagement with your organization. Strengthen your data collection and management by:
- Maintaining donor profiles. Every supporter should have a dedicated profile in your donor database that stores relevant marketing and engagement data. For instance, you might record their demographic information, engagement history, behavioral data, and survey responses.
- Surveying supporters. Qualitative data can be difficult to collect, but it is often instrumental in understanding how your supporters feel about your nonprofit. Collect this information by surveying your supporters and giving them the opportunity to express their thoughts on your mission, marketing campaigns, events, and any other aspect of your nonprofit in their own words.
- Integrating software. Often, nonprofits collect data but can’t make proper use of it due to data silos. Data silos occur when data gathered by one tool stays in that platform and doesn’t transfer to any of your other software. For example, your direct mail platform might have valuable information about engagement rates, but without an integration, you must manually transfer it to your constituent relationship management platform (CRM).
If you currently lack the software to track your supporters’ data, reassess your tech stack. This process involves evaluating each platform you currently use, how you use it, and if there are any holes in your current day-to-day processes that technology could fill. For instance, you might discover that many of your tools don’t integrate, and employees regularly have to perform time-intensive migrations, signaling a need for middleware integrations.
Identify Relevant Audience Segments
Before segmenting your audience, consider what types of messages you want to send and what actions you want supporters to take. For example, if you plan to send out event invitations, you would likely divide your supporters into different segments than you would if you were mailing out an engagement survey.
Commonly, nonprofits will segment supporters based on their:
- Location. Consider sending different messages to supporters who live in your immediate area than those who are far away. For instance, you might alert local supporters to in-person events and community volunteer positions. Or, to inform local residents about your nonprofit’s existence in the first place, you might leverage a residential mailing list to introduce them to your organization. In contrast, mail to remote supporters might focus on online engagement opportunities.
- Engagement history. Your messages should reflect where a supporter is in their donor journey. For example, you might create separate mailing segments for reliable recurring donors and supporters whom you are pushing to make their second gift.
- Giving potential. Use your donor data and wealth prospecting tools to assess donors’ major giving capacity. While major donor prospects should receive fully personalized letters, you might organize all other supporters into separate audience segments for low, moderate, and high-value donors.
As your goals change and your audience grows, continually update your audience segments. For instance, you might have separate mailing lists for volunteers and donors. Then, as more volunteers start to donate and vice versa, you might adjust your strategy to focus on engagement with specific campaigns and initiatives.
Create Messaging Templates
When you have clear audience segments, you can create message templates for each group. Include details relevant to each specific audience, such as references to their past support, updates on opportunities aligned with their interests, and stories they are likely to resonate with.
For example, you might divide your audience into two main segments, one for new donors and another for recurring supporters. The template for new donors might open with a greeting like:
“Welcome to [nonprofit name]! We want to thank you for joining our community and share how your gift of [amount recipient gave] has helped further our mission.”
In contrast, your opening for recurring donors would address their ongoing support with a message like:
“Our team at [nonprofit name] is endlessly grateful for your continued support. We’ve done a lot since your last donation of [amount recipient gave] and want to keep you informed about all the progress we’ve made thanks to your gift.”
These templates also provide opportunities for greater personalization by referencing specific contributions donors made. When you leverage your data to create both segmented and individually personalized messages, you can create truly unique messages that donors are likely to hold onto and remember.
To speed up the message creation process, many nonprofits have started using generative AI tools. While AI can be a huge time saver, keep its current limitations in mind. Namely, AI tends to have a generic tone that may not reflect your brand. If you ever request a message template from AI, be sure to read through it and make necessary adjustments to reflect your nonprofit’s unique voice and mission.
Monitor Results
Direct mail results can be more difficult to track than digital campaigns due to the lack of automatically tracked open and click-through rates. However, you can still use your mail service or platform to monitor what percentage of letters were delivered and which recipients went on to donate, register for an event, or take another desired action.
Additionally, before launching a full-scale direct mail campaign, you might gather data about what types of messages are most likely to succeed with your audience. For instance, you might conduct A/B testing by sending out two letters with different photographs to a small group of supporters and monitor which appeal has a higher response rate.
To solicit highly targeted feedback, host a donor focus group. Present donors with different types of messages and appeals and ask how they would likely respond to receiving these letters in the mail. This experience can provide insight into various donor groups, help you learn why individuals support your mission, and allow you to refine your marketing strategy by identifying winning messages.
Direct mail is a key channel for building personal relationships, and when you leverage data, you can maximize its potential for forming connections. Organize your supporters into relevant segments to send them personalized messages aligned with their interests straight to their mailboxes.