As the holiday season approaches, businesses scattered across an array of industries are beginning to ramp up their marketing campaigns to maximize profits and generate more sales. While this may seem most notable for eCommerce and retail businesses, organizations that rely on donations find this time of year to be just as crucial to their overarching success. For nonprofits, charities, and universities alike, it’s important to reach out to donors—especially given that the holiday season constitutes such a key time of year for fundraising success.
But your holiday campaigns can only be as successful as your ability to properly reach prospective donors—making the validation of contact data for communications pivotal. Not convinced? Below, we’ll outline several key reasons why contact data validation should be the first step in your seasonal communication plan.
Reach the right users successfully
With the holidays right around the corner, tis’ the season for people to feel the holiday spirit and make their charitable donations. In fact, research shows that on average, 46.2% of donations occur during November and 30.8% in December1—demonstrating that the success of your year-end outreach efforts will play a crucial role in your final donation metrics.
But, since data is rarely static, the information you have on hand for donors may not reflect the most updated addresses, emails, and phone numbers of your audience. When engaging in outreach for education-based donations, this especially holds true for address data given that students are likely to move after graduation. Fortunately, validating your contact data helps in the following ways:
- Send emails with success: Email validation verifies an email’s validity and highlights incorrect emails in your contact list, reducing the likelihood of bounced emails.
- Ship brochures to the right address: Address validation scans an address for incorrect formatting, mismatched city and postal code data, and potential spelling errors. Have the confidence necessary to know your mail will reach the desired address with success.
- Call and text the right numbers: Phone validation let's you know whether a number is active and able to receive calls. Whether you wish to call donors directly or engage in a text message campaign, phone validation software increases the likelihood of a successful response.
When your outreach strategy is powered by accurate contact data, you’re much more likely to reach your intended user with success.
Add a touch of personalization
Personalization is the foundation for marketing success, especially when other companies compete for your audience’s attention. The emails, texts, and brochures that stand apart and result in donations are likely to be the ones that have an element of customization that captures the recipients’ attention.
Fortunately, customization doesn’t have to mean personally delivering hand-written notes to every potential donor’s door. In fact, personalization can be as simple as mentioning the donor or subscriber by name in an email—a surprisingly simple act that nearly 45% of emails from nonprofits2 are missing.
When charities and universities alike leverage personalization in their outreach efforts, they’re likely to experience more donations—and it’s no wonder why. Personalization is crucial because it helps foster your relationship with your recipient by letting them know that their message is unique and not a mass send. This not only contributes to the growth of your charitable efforts, but it advances your organization’s relationship with donors—a feat which will contribute to future donations as well.
Avoid the cost of "dirty" data
Not only is inaccurate contact data inconvenient to work with, but it’s also costly in the long run, too. Before even reaching out to recipients, your marketing team puts countless effort into your upcoming engagement campaigns. This means spending time both printing and mailing out brochures—a costly endeavor if sent to the wrong homes.
In addition to wasted resources, incorrect contact data has an even more glaring financial impact: the loss in prospective donations from recipients who never receive your call for charity. As noted above, the end of the year has historically helped charities and universities reap the highest donations. Before you shrug off missed opportunities for communication, it’s crucial to have the right contact data on hand to reach your audience at the most giving time of year.
End-of-year communication made easy
Whether your business operates in the nonprofit, charity, or educational sector, there’s never a better time to prioritize data accuracy for future user engagement than now. At Experian, we believe that every decision your organization makes should be powered by the confidence of accurate customer data.
Ready to get started? Our team of data experts are ready to help set your business up with the data quality solutions required to help your team reap the most success.
Sources:
1 Neon One. 10 Year-End Giving Statistics Every Fundraiser Should Know. https://neonone.com/resources/blog/year-end-giving-statistics/
2 Salesforce. How to Personalize Donor Communications to Drive Fundraising Success. https://www.salesforce.org/blog/personalize-donor-communications/
