email segmentation

More and more I am seeing email campaigns going out the way letters did in 1998 - personalized but generic. They are coming from institutional accounts without a signator. They contain "Dear Name", and may even include a merged reference or two but we make them one size fits all messages.

To those of us on the marketing end, this makes sense - free messaging to a large portion of our databases. Throw as much of that as you can toward the wall and some will stick. Some will even provide decent returns depending upon the time of year. This has been further overshadowed by the growth and increasing comfort level of our donors giving online. If you track the source of your online gifts (and if you don't, I would highly recommend at least the use of tracking links - one for each of the major vehicles you solicit through) you know that overall growth is being overshadowed by cross platform donations. That is to say that more and more of the online donors are doing so as a result of a mail piece or a phone call or a text message while the number giving to direct online solicitations is relatively flat.

From a cost standpoint, email is still far and away the most efficient fundraising tool for most of our offices and results can be grown. Treat email like you would direct mail with a kicked up tracking tool. At the very least segment your message content, language and approach by generation. At the best segment by domain (send me something different to my work than to my home/online account), age, giving history, program, signator, "from" account, and subject line.

I know that I am far more likely to open an email from a person. It is not an accident that a huge portion of the SPAM that I get (take a look in your junk folder to see this) is from what sounds like a person. Now most of the time that name does not match the username for the sending account but that is something you can correct. Have an IT policy that doesn't allow you to do so? That will be the subject of my next post as it is a common challenge I hear all the time and just doesn't hold water.