GUEST POST // 4 Ways to Use Data in Your Direct Marketing Strategy
By Gabrielle Perham of AccuData
Nonprofit direct marketing relies on accurate data to create highly-targeted promotional materials that appeal to donors and drive meaningful support on behalf of your cause. In this guide, we’ll explore four ways that your nonprofit can use data to make the most of direct marketing.
Whether you’re using email to promote an upcoming event or writing a letter to solicit donations, adopting a data-driven approach to direct marketing will empower your efforts. Let’s get started!
1. Set a marketing budget.
A well-defined marketing budget provides your team with a clear sense of direction for managing outreach. However, in order to accurately forecast your expected revenue and expenses, you need a clean database that allows you to visualize past performance. Ensure your data is clean by updating donor information, filling in information from your past marketing efforts, and removing duplicate entries.
By adopting strong data hygiene practices, your nonprofit can create a more effective marketing plan and make informed decisions that help you achieve your goals. Source the following information from your clean database to build an effective marketing budget:
Estimated revenue: Review year-over-year revenue growth and lead generation from your direct marketing efforts to better understand and predict your return on investment for the coming year.
Expected overhead costs: How much did you spend on design, copywriting, mailing lists, printing, and distribution last year? According to Getting Attention’s guide to nonprofit marketing, 5-15% of your operating budget should be reserved for marketing expenditures, so strive to stay within this range.
Defined activities: Consider which of your direct marketing activities performed well in the past. For instance, if your emails and handwritten letters received the greatest response, highlight the importance of pursuing outreach on those channels again.
Regularly review your marketing budget to ensure that your expenses don’t exceed your revenue and that you’re achieving growth.
2. Target the right audiences.
For your direct marketing strategy to be effective, it’s important to reach out to the people who are most likely to resonate with your appeal and take action. This is where the data sourced from targeted mailing lists can be beneficial. Nonprofits can purchase mailing lists, which include the names, addresses, and demographic information of prospective donors, to ensure that their online and offline outreach provides a positive return on investment.
These lists can be customized to help your team meet specific goals, such as reaching donors within a certain geographic area or improving your direct marketing response rates among a certain age group.
You can also leverage the donor data housed in your CRM to make informed decisions about your target audience and further refine your mailing lists. Segment donors based on shared characteristics, such as giving history and past engagement, to ensure you’re sending the right messages to the right people. For instance, donors who have responded and donated via your direct mail channels are an obvious target audience. However, you should still pay attention to other supporters, such as those who have responded well to your social media and blog posts in the past, and attempt to bring them into the fold.
3. Personalize your appeals.
In addition to using donor data to identify your target audience, you can use the information found in your CRM to make your direct marketing materials relevant and personal to each donor. Start by collecting this information from your database:
First and last names
Previous donation amounts
Frequency of their most recent contributions
Other involvement, including event attendance and volunteer participation
Then, use this information to customize your appeal according to their journey through your organization. Donors can tell when a nonprofit sends out a mass appeal. Rather than opening your email or letter with an impersonal greeting like “dear donor,” tell a story about the impact of their donation and commitment to your cause. Here’s an example of a customized direct appeal:
“Dear John Smith, thank you for attending our most recent virtual fundraising event and for donating $50 to fight food insecurity in our community. With the help of generous donors like you, we were able to provide free, nutritious meals to 500 families in need. We’re reaching out again to invite you to our upcoming virtual auction benefiting our new food delivery service.”
An authentic, personalized message will leave a positive impression on your direct mail recipients and encourage them to give.
4. Optimize campaigns with marketing metrics.
Once your direct marketing campaigns are up and running, it’s important to measure their progress and success. According to AccuData’s guide to data marketing, collecting the following metrics can help you make informed decisions about your outreach efforts:
Response rate: Divide the number of recipients who responded to your promotional materials by the total amount of recipients. If your response rate is low, you may need to reconsider who your target audience is and increase your level of personalization.
Cost per acquisition: Divide your marketing spend by the number of new donors acquired from each channel and campaign. If you want to reduce your cost per acquisition, ensure your calls to action (CTAs) are clear and direct recipients to the appropriate landing page, such as your donation form.
Email open and click-through rate: Email open rate is the percentage of recipients who open your direct marketing emails, while click-through rate is the number that click on a link to your donation page or event registration site. To ensure your emails don’t fall into the spam or trash folder, write compelling subject lines and keep the frequency of your emails consistent.
Keep in mind that these metrics only scratch the surface of the data that you can collect from your direct marketing campaigns. Choose the metrics that best align with your goals and use them to optimize your future campaigns.
From sending monthly newsletters in the mail to writing a personalized email, direct marketing powered by data can help you raise awareness for your cause, connect with donors, and inspire meaningful engagement. Remember to keep your database clean and updated so that you can spend less time sifting through unorganized reports and more time advancing your mission.
This guest post was written by Gabrielle Perham.
Gabrielle is the Director of Marketing & Sales Operations for Deep Sync and its family of brands: Compact Information Systems, HomeData, AccuData Integrated Marketing, AlumniFinder, ASL Marketing, CollegeBound Selection Service, and DeepSync Labs. She joined the organization in 2017 and possesses more than 15 years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, communications, and digital marketing. She earned a B.S. in Marketing and an M.B.A in Marketing Management from the University of Tampa.
