how to plan for effective growth

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Tips of how to plan for effective growth

Ian Welch

2 © 2012 Experian Limited. All rights reserved.

Overview

Living standards in the UK have been hit since the onset of recession in 2008 by higher unemployment, higher taxes, and failure of wages to keep pace with the cost of living

The impact is that households are having to make more informed choices on how they spend their disposable income

Yet the need for charitable income increases

every year

► Increased economic hardship

► Impact of environmental change

Media fragmentation

► Plethora of cheaper & data rich digital channels

Increase pressure to justify investments in fundraising


Understand where you are & how you engage with your supporter base?

Be clear on your fundraising objectives in the medium and long term

Plot the touch points of supporter interaction – when and how do you talk to people?

Understand how & what data is captured from each touch point?

Is the data you hold on supporters in a single source

How accurate is that single source?

1. Preparation is vital for success


An accurate view of the supporter data will help you identify where the gaps are

What you should know

► Where they live and their contact information

► How much and when did they donate or volunteer

► What type of donation was it – such as an event or regular gift

► What payment method was used

► What channels do they use

► How often they are contacted

2. Get to know your onions


What data can be captured from all supporter touch points?

What cleansing processes are required to keep it accurate?

What don’t you have?

► Enhance supporter contact data such as appending e-mails or telephone numbers

Enhance transactional data to get a more accurate view of supporters lifestyle & interests

Set KPI’s that measure the accuracy and performance of a critical data

3. Identify what needs improving


4. The value of a richer picture

Acquisition Gap

Fundraising Gap

+

-

Recruit Donation

Donor Management

Lapse

Value Retention Gap

Clients internal data

External insight data


With confidence in data the next stage is to invest in accessing quality analytical resource

Prioritise this resource to focus on to answering the following key questions

► Where is the value in your supporter base?

► Where there is potential to increase fundraising activity?

► Where donor behaviour has changed and what triggered this?

► Whether different fundraising products attract different types of supporters?

► Which channels are attract supporters most effectively?

Avoid the trap of analysing just campaign performance

5. Insight before planning


Search data

Demographics

Website data

Online behaviour

• What do they do and not like doing online?

• What acquisition channels do they use?

• Where should you advertise to reach them?

• How do they use social media?

• What are their Facebook ‘Likes’?

• What fundraiser blogs do they visit?

• Which audience will most likely adopt other your fundraising messages?

• Where in the UK do they live?

• What is their Mosaic profile?

• What is their social grade?

• What are their other interests and activities?

• What political aspirations do they have?

• How many visitors also engage with other charities?

• What is the size of the overlap opportunity?

• What sections of other charity websites do they visit?

• When are your core audiences most vulnerable to visit

other fundraising websites?

• What specific fundraiser events do to these audiences search for?

• What type of messaging and keywords appeal to them?

• When is the right time to push messaging to new audienecs?

• What are the high converting keywords by audience?

• What charity brands are they looking for?

Fundraising's

segments

6. Use online insight to inform your activities


Channels to Reach

Sally spends 3-4 hours a day on Facebook and Mums

Forums and Groups. She talks to other mums about

everything, including her weight loss and is influential among

this group. She is experimenting with Twitter, but prefers

Facebook.

Where on Social Media can we find Sally?

170k

Number of people

with this persona

in the UK

Charity Donations

Searches

Health and Medical

Pets and Animal

Women’s Sites

House and Garden

Health & Beauty

Horse Racing

Yachting & Boating

Lotteries

Golf

Gay and Lesbian

Online Interests

More

likely

Less

likely

Media Brands

An Example Persona Sally the Fundraiser


Adopt a robust planning framework to maximise any fundraising opportunities

Implement a “test and learn” methodology

Introduce a process to share information and support insight

Enables a clear prioritisation of resources

Review, review and change if its not working

7. Make the time to plan


An example planning framework

Exploratory Analysis

Hypothesis Generation

Develop Strategy

Build models/ segments

Design

Plan / Targeting

Deploy test activity

Post campaign evaluation

Assess roll out / retests


11% of visits to charity websites arrive from social media websites

This trend is only likely to increase and it has the potential to attract new, younger supporters to charities

Only by utilising the planning framework will you be able to prioritise, investigate and monitor this behaviour

Based on that behaviour you can deliver relevant content that will hold attention and drive effective returns on any investment made in these channels

8. Embrace new channels


1. Understand where you are & how you engage with your supporter base

2. Get to know your onions

3. Identify what needs improving

4. Realise the value of a richer picture of support behaviour

5. Strategic insight before planning

6. Use online insight to inform your activities

7. Adopt a robust planning framework

8. Embrace new channels to attract new audiences and engage with existing ones

So in summary

how to plan for effective growth

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