This article originally appears on the SageWords.net blog.
Increase Your Donations through Audience Segmentation
By Stacy Dyer
Audience segmentation is something businesses figured out a long time ago. To get an idea of why segmenting your audience data is so important, watch this video about Star Trek Red Shirt Death Rates with Matt Bailey:
OK, so you’re not trying to survive the next away mission (maybe you are, but that’s a different article), still there’s a few key points to learn from this example.
- Different people are motivated by different things
- People are more likely to do what you want when your message resonates with their individual perspective
- Tailor your message to connect with that perspective
Let me give you an example of what this means for nonprofit fundraisers.
Pretend you run an animal welfare organization. You have both myself and my husband in your database because we both animals. But there is a key difference in our perspectives. (You happen to track this key detail in your CRM because you are a rock-star fundraiser!) What is it?
I am a cat person.
My husband is a dog person.
Now you want to send us each an email asking to give to your annual fund.
To me, your appeal features a picture of a sweet, fuzzy kitten. I am more likely to connect emotionally with your message and click to go to your donation form. There, I see a picture of another cute kitten. Now I know I am in the right place! You are bunch of kitten-loving fools and of course I am going to support you!
To my husband, you send the same appeal, but feature an image of a dog instead. He sees your adorable puppy face and raises you another donation!
What happened here? It was the same campaign, the same message, and you doubled your responses (and donations) just by segmenting your audience. By targeting each segment with an email and landing page specifically designed to create an emotional connection with them, you were able to tap into sources of support which you would not have otherwise.
That is the power of segmentation.
One message doesn’t work for everyone. Identify what key attributes differentiate your audience and target campaigns to emotionally connect with each segment of your donor base.