Tag Archive for: email

Data Management: Empowering Communications

That’s a bold statement: “empower your communications through data management.”

After all, data management is the process of organizing and structuring data in a way that it is easily searchable and useable.

While it isn’t always the most interesting task of an individual’s job, it is very important to format your data so that you have easy access to it. Although you use data management for any type of data, it’s mostly used for structured data.

One example of structured data would be donor information, such as names, addresses, and emails, as well as giving history. You can also use data management for unstructured data like videos or photos. But what does managing your data have to do with your communications?

Data Management Graph

In a 2019 survey, Everyaction and Nonprofit Hub found that 90% of their respondents collect data. However, only 5% said they are using the data. So you’re collecting all this data. What can you do with it?

How to Affect Fundraising Communications with Data Management

How you manage your data affects your fundraising in a variety of ways. The data you collect helps to design strategies and, ultimately, communications.

Your data management strategy is the key to a successful nonprofit communications strategy. Each nonprofit should have a data strategy in place to make sure that they are collecting the right data and using it effectively to reach their goals. In order to reach your goals, you need to manage all the aspects of your data.

More and more nonprofit organizations recognize the importance of managing their data. They realize this critical information provides an opportunity for them to innovate and improve upon their communications. In addition, nonprofits can use data to create a better donor experience, potentially increasing donations.

This isn’t just about keeping track of the data, it also includes knowing how to use it.

What data do you need to collect in order to be successful?

There are many ways to collect, analyze and act on data that are relevant for your communications.

Before you can manage your data, you need to collect it. Using social media, direct mail, or landing pages is a great start.

What Types of Data Should You Collect?

Data collection is the first step in any data management process. To collect data, you need to know what information you want, where to find it and how to organize it. Once you collect that information, you can use it to track trends and, of course, for your communications.

Some data that you should collect and manage for your nonprofit communications are:

    • Demographic data (gender, age, ethnicity)

    • Geographic data (state, region)

    • Behavioral data (online behavior, engagement with social media)

    • Transaction data (donations, memberships)

    • Interest data (clubs, sports teams, participation at events)

How To Use Your Collected Data

Now you can use your data for a variety of purposes. Data is the one asset that you can use to maximize your marketing efforts. To put your data into action, you can use it for direct mail, email, digital ads, or web design.

Direct mail: Direct mail takes your provided data using variable printing. It goes way beyond personalization. All of that demographic, geographic, behavioural, transactional, and interest data can now intertwine throughout the copy and imagery.

Email: You can send trigger emails based on behavioural data. This is an efficient way to reach out to your donors while you are top of mind. Tease your donors with a story via email and drive your donors to your donation page or your website.

Digital ads: Digital ads are an excellent way of reaching out to people who are on the go and have their attention focused on their phones or tablets. You can use them to target previous visitors from your website or your social media. You can even serve up ads to your direct mail list!

Website: You can personalize your website based on the data you collect from your donors and the content they are interested in. This will help make sure that your website stays relevant to them and that you continue to engage them with the content they want.

Conclusion: Time to Power Up Your Communications

The data that you collect from your donors is critical to the growth of your organization. You can increase donations, manage the donor relationship, and create a more personalized experience for them. Developing a strategy around your data management only enhances your communications.

At BCG Connect, we protect your data and use it to provide more effective marketing campaigns. We have several ways to use your data into the creative, copy, and visual elements. If you’d like to know more about how we can help turn your data into powerful communications, get in touch with us.

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7 Ways to Integrate Digital Marketing with Direct Mail

Digital media plays a key role for fundraisers in targeting their donors. For example, integrating social posts along with email, they can hit donors multiple times on different platforms. But don’t stop your direct mail campaign!

Direct mail also continues to evolve with emerging technologies. In this post, we share the importance of integrating your digital media with direct mail, and we highlight 7 ways you can actually add digital media to your direct mail.

The Importance of Digital Media in your Direct Mail Marketing Strategy

Using digital media in direct mail marketing has increased drastically over the past few years. Today, the online world and offline world are converging. You can see the effect it has had on fundraising, for example, where donors are using online from offline sources to donate.

Direct mail marketing is a type of advertising that includes directly delivering your appeals to your constituents via postal service. To be effective, it must include some element of personalization and relevancy to the donor or else it is ineffective. People enjoy feeling important. 70% of consumers say that direct mail makes them feel more valued.

The Convergence of Direct Mail and Digital Media

The key is to combine your digital marketing and direct mail efforts to boost your overall results. The two are powerful ingredients for marketing as individual efforts, but together — you get incredible results. Research shows that combining digital and direct mail efforts can increase response rates. A study mentioned by Philanthropy Today found:

  1. If someone’s getting both mail and email from you, they’re more likely to open your letters! Donors who received mail-plus-email show a 60.5% lift in response rates over those who just got mailed.

  2. Donors who received only an email had a 90.6% lower response rate to the mail than donors who only received the mail itself. The email-only group had just a 1.4% response rate.

  3. People who received both direct mail and digital media were also more likely to give online too. Clearly, the worst option was to send people only email.

  4. Another study shows that those who receive emails along with direct mail give 25% more annually.

Our 4 P’s of Direct Mail Marketing

There are four “P’s” in marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. However, in the fundraising world, we created these 4 P’s of direct mail marketing:

  • Personalization – Personalized appeals to constituents are more likely to be remembered and acted upon.

  • Photos – Adding photos and imagery creates an emotional connection for the donor.

  • Planning – Placing your digital ads ahead of your direct mail will help bridge the two channels.

  • Presentation – Your direct mail piece needs to reflect the ask. From postcards to letters to self-mailers, your appeal should include your story, your call to action, and your goal.

Developing a successful direct mail appeal, along with digital media, should embody the same design, so it is clearly part of an overall campaign.

Including the same design and creative elements on direct mail, email, social media, digital ads, and the landing page provides the donor a connection to the overall campaign.

The Role of Digital Media in Modern Direct Mail Strategies

Most fundraisers know about the importance of engaging constituents through their digital channels – whether it’s through social media, email, or mobile applications. The digital landscape has changed how we communicate with people and how people communicate with us. Digital media has evolved how we do fundraising campaigns, specifically direct mail.

Here are seven ways to integrate digital media with direct mail.

  1. QR Codes – Placing a branded QR code as a call to action on your appeal allows the donor to go from the physical to the digital world in a couple of clicks.

  2. Video – Sounds crazy, but when you add either a URL or a QR Code to your mailer, you direct your donors to a video and continue to tell the story of your nonprofit in a more visually compelling way.

  3. Landing Pages – Include the landing page URL in the main body of your letter. Don’t be afraid to include the URL in multiple locations on your appeal. From the letter to a buck slip to the reply card, guide the donor to your landing page.

  4. VACTA – Voice Activated Call to Action is the latest technology to hit the consumer market. Now it’s fundraisers turn to take advantage of this platform. Add a call to action in your appeal that uses Alexa’s Donate to Charity feature or Google’s simple phrase “Hey Google, donate to a charity” to accept donations.

  5. Informed Delivery – Over 44 million people have signed up for Informed Delivery. This is the USPS digital mail and package delivery online preview. Nonprofits can include a free ad to ride along with the digitized mail.

  6. Social Media – Remember to add your social media icons to your direct mail when you’re creating a multichannel approach.

  7. Text – Text to give is a convenient method for donors to send their contributions via text. The process is seamless and takes a few minutes. Adding your text number to your direct mail gives your donors another way of donating to your cause.

The increasing developments in digital media are changing direct mail marketing as we know it. Direct mail once meant appeals delivered through “snail-mail” but now includes targeted messages to your donor base while they are browsing their social channels on their computer or phone.

Conclusion: How to adjust your strategy for your next campaign

Assess your current direct mail marketing strategy. Identify and apply modern digital strategies, as mentioned above. Employ our 4Ps model of direct mail marketing as the base of your appeals. Fundraising efforts should consider all channels, as every channel has the potential for success when used in tandem with one another.

In conclusion:

Fundraisers have been using digital media for a long time. With the continuous advances in technology and new communication channels, direct mail is also adapting to these changes. We believe that the convergence of traditional and modern marketing strategies is what will make you more successful in this fast-paced world.

If you’re ready for a direct marketing partner who provides marketing solutions for your next fundraising campaign, contact us today.

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Optimizing Direct Mail Programs: Post-Pandemic and Beyond – Tip #3

Tip #3: Better Together – Email and Direct Mail

This is the last post in our special blog series discussing effective ways you can optimize direct mail programs in a post-pandemic world and beyond.

Many organizations that rely on annual giving have embraced an omnichannel approach in their direct mail efforts. Although they are often pitted against each other, combining email with direct mail is a great example of two mediums that are stronger together.

Combining email and direct mail can help maximize your fundraising campaigns by boosting your engagement rates and increasing your ROI. While these two tactics certainly have merit individually, many organizations don’t realize how powerful they can be when paired together.

This partnership couldn’t have better timing from a content, messaging, and outreach perspective since “digital burnout” continues to plague potential donors.

Digital burnout has many variations, including “virtual fatigue” and “webinar fatigue.” It’s easy to overload your constituents with virtual information if you are relying heavily on email in the current climate.

Consider the following statistics:

  • 56% of customers find print marketing to be the most trustworthy type of marketing1
  • 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email2
  • Digital burn out has been on the rise since 2019 and has worsened since the pandemic3

Utilizing direct mail and email together is more impactful than using just one. Benefits of email include quick and direct contact, easy tracking, and the ability to change messaging quickly. Direct mail can be more logistically challenging, but the ethos it invokes is hard to ignore. Why not combine them and have the best of both worlds?

Here is an example from a client who was able to successfully pair these tactics to create a comprehensive spring appeal program:

Pingree Spring Appeal Letter

Email

Although there is still some uncertainty around the future of fundraising, there are many creative and practical ways that organizations like yours can reach potential donors and convey your organization’s message. Analyzing your outreach methods and seeing how they can complement each other is a great start.

What do you think about our third and final tip in this “Optimizing Direct Mail Programs: Post-Pandemic and Beyond” series? We’d love to hear your feedback. Click here to leave us a comment.

Sources:

1 & 2 = Mann & Co.

3 = Inc.

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