Donor Data Enhancement Services and the Sharpe Gift Planning Matrix©
As donors give at different levels in different ways based on age, income, and other factors, your marketing should ideally be tailored to the age and wealth of your donors. By adding basic demographic data to your donor records, you can better segment and communicate gift planning ideas, increasing your success in current and deferred major gift planning efforts.
In concert with the largest data compilation company in the world, Sharpe Group is able to cost-effectively provide you with age and wealth data through its Donor Data Enhancement Services. In addition to standard data enhancement options (see last month’s issue of Give & Take), Sharpe consultants can work with you to customize data provision services based on your needs.
Maximize the effectiveness of your list.
You can take this information a step further with the Sharpe Gift Planning Matrix©, which offers a practical approach to donor file segmentation and communication strategies. Developed by Sharpe over 20 years ago, the Sharpe Matrix has been used by many organizations to help them maximize their funding while getting the most return on investment. Intelligently segmenting your database by age and wealth allows you to provide donors with the most appropriate messaging and educational materials, through the most efficient and effective media channels and at the right time in your donors’ lives. This is the cornerstone of any successful current and deferred gift planning communications program.
If you are currently using a one-dimensional “planned giving score” and marketing to the same group regardless of the type of gift being featured, you may be misspending valuable resources that could be better deployed elsewhere. Focusing marketing initiatives only on the best prospective donors for each planning option will enable you to significantly reduce communication costs while increasing the likelihood that your communications will be read and responded to. Your mailings will also benefit from increased deliverability through data cleansing.