Pick 3 for FY19: Digital Prospecting

They’re in folders on servers. They exist in spreadsheets, on Word docs, in DropBox and on scraps of paper. Hundreds of them may have been entered into your database by interns and volunteers. And yet they just sit there, full of so much revenue potential, yearning for your attention.

We understand.

It’s busy. You’ll get to it. But something always comes up.

That’s why CDP created the free Digital Prospecting service, available to all CDP partner stations. If you were thinking of setting aside staff time and resources for Digital Prospecting in FY ’19, why wait? Start now!

Value

Of course we know that email addresses have value. Thankfully, many stations have aggressively worked to match or append email addresses to member accounts, because as Steve McLaughlin, VP of Data & Analytics at Blackbaud pointed out in an npEngage post, donors who are engaged through multiple channels are better than those who give either through mail or through digital means.

Another interesting fact that the peripatetic Mr. McLaughlin and a recent Blackbaud report pointed out (courtesy of The Agitator):

…first-year donor retention was double (25% versus 12%) for online donors if you have an email address versus those for whom you don’t have an email address. But this holds true for offline (37% versus 30%) and multichannel (65% versus 60%) as well.

As Roger Craver points out, we don’t know if that is causal. Until more research is done, perhaps causation doesn’t matter as much as taking the multi-channel approach. As long as we know how to put it to work, more data is always better.

A Turnkey Service

That brings me to free Digital Prospecting. A batch of fallow emails is like a wishing well or fountain full of coins: the only one who prospers from them is the one who collects the coins at the end of the day. Of course, the good news is that if CDP is able to convert those emails into members, you would save the step of having to append the emails once you’ve acquired the member.

You could then go on your way and engage those donors through your current multi-channel efforts and feel confident that the retention rate will be higher.

There’s still time in FY ’18 to turn those already engaged prospects into fully-engaged donors. You’ll barely have to lift a finger, because the CDP team executes it for you. Then you can check that off your list and slot in another priority for FY ’19.

Barry NelsonMarch 15, 2018Comment