Do Your Metrics Make the Cut?

by Troy Dean | Jun 28, 2016

When is Fundraising Successful?

And, how does it increase ROI? Our answer is data analytics.

Integrating the right metrics into your fundraising campaign will help you set attainable and measurable goals to evaluate what’s working and increase your ROI.

Analytics help you understand your audience and meet them through their preferred marketing channels. It also helps you analyze your campaign at a micro and macro level to determine what’s working and what’s not. Let’s look at a few ways analytics help you fine-tune your fundraising tactics.

1. Understand Your Audience

Demographics are your new best friend. Analytics help you determine who your average donor is, their annual income, and how much they’re currently giving. All this information can be used to calculate an individual or household’s potential giving capacity. Understanding your audience and their giving potential will assist you in increasing your ROI over time by separating your donors into giving potential categories.

2. Meet Them Where They Are

Track how frequently you contact your donors. Do you know the participation rate for your fundraising efforts? How many asks are you making weekly, monthly, and annually? Understanding how much you currently engage your donor base will determine how to approach potential donors in the future. Analytics help you discover not only how to engage, but where to engage. This will help you put the right amount of time and money into the right fundraising tactics and increase your efficiency, thus increasing your ROI.

3. Balance Details and the Big Picture

Analytics help you sift through what’s working and what’s not. You’re able to look at the big picture and the details within each tactic without getting swept away. This allows you and your counterparts to work together and make good decisions using real data in real time.

Setting goals, implementing a strategy, evaluating outcomes, and evolving your fundraising campaign will help you increase ROI. So ask yourself again, do your metrics make the cut?