Retention is the New Acquisition: Make Your Donors Feel Special

Danielle Johnson

On the Go! eNews

November/December 2013 Edition

 

By Danielle Johnson-Vermenton, Sr Interactive Consultant

 

As your relationship evolves, treating donors differently is important to keeping them and increasing their lifetime value. As the latest research shows, the growing preference among all age segments is email, website and social media. Donors want to get their updates in an interactive and immediate fashion. They also prefer to engage in those channels.

 

Stewarding and growing a relationship is about knowing the person - their interests, preferences and acknowledging their history with you. Using your Luminate tools build surveys to profile your donors, allow them to indicate their enews and campaign interests and pull reports to see what articles are being clicked on, what emails are being read, and what subject lines resonate. From this you can build donor profiles and personas that enable you to better target your eCommunications, campaigns and social media efforts.

 

So what’s next?

 

If we compare the donor life cycle with a romantic relationship we know that an important rite of passage is meeting family and friends. Online the same is true. A very important engagement tactic is enabling your supporters to express their values by evangelizing your mission through things like social media, pledges to make a difference and getting friends involved. Using the personas I mentioned earlier, you can begin to plan interactive online campaigns and events that engage your donors and allow them to be your champions. This kind of personalization takes your engagement strategy to the next level and will set you apart from the competition. Like the perfect family dinner when everything goes right, your donors will feel satisfied, fulfilled and rewarded because they feel important and appreciated.

 

With every point of contact it’s about building. Show them that you’ve been paying attention.