How supporter data can create a connected donor experience

Data quality is more important than ever in an evolving digital world

The relevance of content served by a charity to its intended audience – and the ultimate return of that investment – is heavily influenced by the quality of data it collects from its users. Supporter experience architects can only make their magic work when the data baseline is clean and trusted, especially in a new era of hyper-personalised content that can be made relevant to the user’s location and medium (smartphone or tablet). Getting it wrong could be worse than not personalising at all (but more on that later). From a practical perspective, that means we rely on having access to data sets that have been cleansed and condensed which can then be enriched with donor insight data to optimise their value and inform donor experience programmes.

What are the main types of donor insight data?

Here is a snapshot look at the different types of data points available today:

• Demographic data is the output from analysis of population-based insights such as life stage and gender. By understanding the socio-economic make-up of your donor database, you can begin to identify where donors with similar demographic traits exist and tailor your fundraising strategy to them.
• Geographic data, also known as geodata or geospatial data, refers to any supporter data point that is intrinsically linked to a physical location. For example, understanding where your current donor database live may help you identify more supporters in a similar region or location, where you can then focus fundraising efforts.
• Location data such as an address, or information regarding a property type provides valuable information to organisations. Knowing the number of rooms, or whether a building is an apartment, or a house, can help you understand your donors better.
• Financial data insights, such as income & repayment indicators can be used to hone your messaging towards certain donors.
• Behavioural data consists of those data points that provide insights into what donors like to do and how they donate or volunteer. You can also identify who uses your services or supports your charity by volunteering. Could they become a donor?

By combining the above data assets you can start to build a very insightful picture of both your current donor base and key prospects to target for future fundraising campaigns and to inform what your wider donor experience should look like.

Get more value from your fundraising spend

At Experian, we empower organisations to better understand their data assets and transform their business. Our solutions are developed with data users and practitioners in mind, focusing on usability, automation, transparency, and accuracy.

With our advanced donor profiling platform, Mosaic, together with our wealth of UK donor data, we can help you to understand, locate, and target your ideal supporters more effectively – and personalise messaging for them. You can use this data to build donor profiles with impact and deliver higher returns on your fundraising spend.

Successful profiling can only be achieved with an accurate starting point for your data. Implement real-time, built-in checks with Data Validation solutions at multiple data points to ensure potential donors or volunteers really are who they say they are, and that their details are captured accurately; without impacting the supporter journey. From this starting point, you have the building blocks for more effective profiling, targeting and segmentation of your supporters to help maximise your interactions and engagements with them.