Stop Fighting, Start Analyzing:Data Driven Strategy & Collaboration for Non-Profits

Presenters: Keidra Chaney

Elizabeth Finlayson

Who we are…

Keidra Chaney

• Started as web content manager, knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP at mid-sized non-profits

• Trained through books, courses and experience.

• Became a web analytics evangelist (and nag) at my workplace.

• Started consulting on digital analytics and website optimization to non-profits of all sizes

Elizabeth Finlayson

• Started in development right before September 11th and have managed flourishing programs during 2 recessions

• Because of my direct mail training, database and analytics have always been a personal passion

• Started consulting on fundraising program development, analytics, and providing coaching to non-profit professionals

What we are here to solve

• Lack of budget• Lack of strategy• Siloed organization• Lack of understanding of data• Too much data• Poor technology• Lack of staff• Lack of trust in analytics

WHEN FALL APPEAL MEASUREMENT GOES WRONG…

Let’s meet the cast…Development Director Development Associate- New!

-10-year senior managerLikes:-Free food-Wine from ArgentinaDislikes:A lot of numbers

-Right out of college-Happy to have joined the non-profit workforceLikes: -Creating new vegan dessert recipes

Marketing Director Marketing Associate

-15-year senior manager, 8 years at this organizationLikes:-Monkey figurines-BellydancingHates:-The Development Director

-5-year Marketing Associate, waiting for the Marketing Director to leave so she can take her job.Likes:-Experimental, noise music-Playing the viola

That guy in your office who only makes suggestions after the plan is in motion…

Likes:-To make suggestions after a plan is in motion-Russian ballet

How it starts…The Development Director says to the new Development Associate…

Hey new girl, it’s time to

write the fall campaign letter.

Go do that.

Yes, ma’am. You can count on me. I’m on

it!

“New Girl, we need to do a Facebook campaign…”

Development Associate doesn’t know the organization has a Facebook page and makes a new one!

Marketing Director pushes for a postcard mailer with no trackable response. The Development Director

pushes for a landing page or reply device to no avail.

I’ve been doing this longer than her, why doesn’t

she listen to what works?

I thought this was my

campaign!

A week before the campaign

Someone mentions…

Development Associate copies last year’s e-blast, makes a couple of changes & sends it out.

Got it!

Hey, don’t we normally do an e-

blast?

“That Marketing Director is a real stickler, you’ll need to tag everything for the campaign.”

Um, okay.

The Development Director shows the Development Associate how to tag in Google Analytics. Her profile was incorrectly configured by the previous Development Associate. Also, she doesn’t know is that the Marketing Director also has her own unshared profile.

A few weeks later…

• The Development Director goes to the Marketing Associate…

…who goes to the Marketing Director…

I didn’t!

Hey, can you get me the

numbers on the last e-blast?

Huh, what e-blast?

Why did you send an e-

blast without

telling me?

They discover…

This e-blast went out the same day as the e-blast for their first advocacy campaign!

Oh, no! Can you draw up the metrics?

Nothing is tagged!

“These development people don’t know what they’re doing.”

The Marketing Associate & Marketing Director both go to their offices and tag everything- resulting in all campaign communications being double tagged!

I know!We need to

tag everything right away!

Last year, an intern ran a Twitter campaign that brought in $2,000- unfortunately, because she saved it on her home drive,

there was no documentation of the campaign.

What Twitter campaign???

Hey, whatever happened

to the Twitter

campaign?

My postcard was

awesome!

What about my new

letter concept?

What about my new letter concept?

When the direct mail portion of the campaign beats last year’s goal, the Marketing Director takes full credit.

The hardworking, idealistic Development Associate is fired.

Due to:• Missing income from

the Twitter campaign• Missing metrics• And……Pissing off the Marketing Director.

Don’t let this happen to you!!!

PLANNING A MEASUREMENT STRATEGY

Top Down vs. Bottom Up Approach to Measurement?

• Top Down: Starting with defined set of goals and a selected group of relevant metrics

• Bottom Up: Starting without a defined set of goals

Planning a Measurement Strategy

• What is your campaign’s overall goals? • What specific outcomes will help achieve

your goal? • What is the purpose of your organization’s

marketing materials? (ex. sell tickets, raise awareness?)

• How will you measure whether your outcomes have been achieved?

GOAL SETTING

MARKETINGEFFORT

AUDIENCE ACTION GOAL METRIC

Blog Increased readership

Reading an article

Average time on website

EventProspective

donor engagement

Collecting potential donor

information

# info form signups

Direct mail letter

Completed and returned

mail donation

$$$# of direct mail replies

Then think measurement tools!

METRIC TOOL

Average time on website

Your Web Analytics Tool!

# info form signups Your database!

# of direct mail replies Your database!

Success Metric Example: New Visitor Engagement

Subject: A mid-level ($1 mil annual budget) non-profit’s newly launched fundraising website, rich with multimedia content

(videos, blog)

Objective: Increase leads for offline individual gifts through engagement with

website content

New Visitor Engagement

• Standard Metric: video views• Key Online Success Metric: # of videos

viewed per visit

• Standard Metric: offline donation• Key Online Success Metric: # of

newsletter/info contact signups

Is it the right success metric?• Does it show results? Can you use it to show definitive ROI

on your efforts? Does it show that it’s helping you sell widgets, create awareness? Increase registrations?

• Does it give insight? Can you learn more about your users, the effectiveness of your content/campaign by looking at it?

• Is it actionable? Can you look at it and take some kind of immediate action to make things better?

• Can you benchmark it? Can you look at data month or month/week or week and see trends?

The one metric you need to know…

Donor retention/attrition Website Bounce Rate

Created by Bloomerang based on Fundraising Effectiveness Project 2013 Survey Data

Principle: If you’re not keeping people, you are wasting your time.

From survey by KISS Metrics

Know your benchmarks: ROICost per D

ollar Raised

Acquisition/Capacity Building

Direct Mail$1.25 - $1.50

Special Events$1.00 of gross

Web & social media $35.00 -$100.00

Fundraising

Direct Mail$.20 - $.25

Special Events$.50 of gross

Major Gifts$.10 - $.20

Planned Giving $.20 - $.30

Grants$.20

Sources: Fundraising, Second Edition by James M. Greenfield and ROI Analysis by Baruch College's Nonprofit Management Group.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

BREAK!!!Take 10 minutes

Advanced Scenario

• “I manage a donor group of individuals who give between $1k and $10k and we are about to mail out our fall promotion to a list to around 14,000 potential donors (including both cold leads from a purchase list and warm leads from our own database).”

Lifetime Value- Quick & Dirty

Historical LTV Formula

Average first giftAttrition Rate

Current Project LTV Formula(Total Dollars to Date - Total Costs to Date)

Number of First Gift Donors

Lifetime Value in Practice

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7 Year 8 Year 9

Lifetime Value $100 $139 $154 $160 $162 $163 $164 $164 $164

Average Gift: $100Attrition Rate: 61%

Lifetime Value in Practice

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7 Year 8 Year 9$0

$20

$40

$60

$80

$100

$120

$140

$160

$180

$100

$139

$154$160 $162 $163 $164 $164 $164

Lifetime Value

Average Gift: $100Attrition Rate: 61%

Segmentation

• Trends in aggregate may hide actual insights. • Look at segmented traffic to compare traffic from

different audiences.• Segmentation allows you to give context to your

data by focusing on a specific slice of your audience or audience behavior.

• Recency, frequency, amount (RFM)• More helpful: Interaction with your organization

• The future…

Testing

Source: Lior Levin, InstantShift

Why Testing is hard

• It’s not, but working with people can be.

IT Dept says:You want to put CODE on MY pages? No way.

Designer says:My design is rock solid. You’re an idiot and don’t know anything about design.

Marketing says:I know what I’m doing. You want to prove me wrong? No way!

So present it to the BOSS: Long term, we can make more money/get more signups/ for a

minimum cost. It’s stupid not to do it. Oh, and the utility is free.

Dev. Asst. says:I have enter all these stupid numbers???

Dev. Dir. says:I have to pay for two mailing lists???

Source: Avinash Kaushik, Occam’s Razor blog

Your Turn…

• Start with your audience & donors…• Think about your groups• What separates these people? What is similar

about them?• Can you look at behavioral as well as financial

data?• Ex. Click-throughs, attend events, average gift

COLLABORATION AND COMMUNICATION

Data Silos & Communication

Internal Communication Channels

Communication Channel Use When

In-PersonStrategically

& Relationally Important

High levels of uncertaintyPersuasive

What, why, not how

Phone Strategically Important

What, why, not how

EmailUse for highly

routine activities

Spending more than 3 minutes, it’s a phone call

Details of How

TextUse for highly

routine activities

Confirming existing plans

Details of How

Lean

er

to

Rich

er

Noi

se &

dis

torti

on in

crea

ses

Getting Ready for the Predictive Analytics Future

Getting Qualitative & Subjective Data into Your Database for Analysis

• Turn qualitative data into quantitative data • Sources of this data:

– In-Person meetings– Surveys– Social media- follow your donors on Facebook and

LinkedIn- have a relationship manager keep track of important posts from major donors

• Get into your database

Closing your Campaign

• Do a quantitative & qualitative summary of the campaign

• Make it visual

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

If We Have More Time…

Arts Org. Analytics Project

• $1.8 million organization• 20,000 donors in database• $1,000 major gift entry point• $5,000 - $25,000 majority of major givers in

this range• Goal: looking to create a donor and major

giving profiles to predict future giving

Show Attendance by Donor Quartile

Show Attendance by Giving

Modes of Contact by Giving