How Well Do You Know Your Online Audience?
November 3rd, 2009
Audience segmentation is one of the most important keys to any successful marketing or communication campaign. But you must know your audience well to decide whether you should segment by behavior, interests, or demographics.
Segmenting allows you to effectively target your message, to appeal directly to the specific concerns or aspirations of your audience.
While many nonprofits know a lot about their offline target audiences (including donors and top contributors), many don’t know as much about the people interacting with them online.
People react and interact differently online. The segment of your donors that goes online may be very different from the segment that doesn’t. Here are a few interesting statistics to get you thinking about online audiences and online donors in particular:
Who is giving online?[1]
- Less than 15% of all online donations are from older generations of 70 years or above. They usually give offline, and prefer to give offline;
- 50% of online donations are made by baby boomers. They are active web users, and often give both online and offline;
- 30% of online gifts are made by Generation X’ers. They rarely give offline. This is a great generation to tap into now, and cultivate relationships for the future.
What are the preferences of online donors?
- According to the “Wired Wealthy”[2] study, most wealthy donors prefer just to receive email a few times per year from an organization they donate to;
- Almost all online donors want to see a tax summary report at the end of the year to know that their donation was well spent; they also want to receive a tax-deductible donation letter from the organization at the end of each year for their own tax purposes;
- Some online donors are interested in receiving action alerts or success stories (as long as they don’t arrive too frequently).
If you want to learn more about your online audience here are a few ideas:
- Develop a short email survey to send to a randomly selected sample of your email list, with a few key questions that will help you craft your next campaign. You could use an online survey application that tabulates answers for you, or you may even be able to administer the survey through your constituent relationship management tool.
- Set up a poll on your website. This can be fun and interactive—most people like being able to see the results right away. Many content management systems have this feature built-in or available through a plug-in.
- If you’re on Facebook causes, take advantage of the tools available to you. You can view your best donors or fundraisers in the “Hall of Fame”, and build a personal relationship with them to learn more about what motivates them.
- Use your Analytics! Google Analytics can give you lots of great information. How are people finding your site? What geographic region of the country generates the most visits? How often are they viewing your mission or your donation page? What are the most trafficked sections of your website?
Posted by Elizabeth Beachy, Upleaf Co-Founder
[1] 2006 Donor Centrics Internet Giving Benchmark Analysis
[2] The Wired Wealthy: Using the Internet to Connect with your Middle and Major Donors. Convio, Sea Change Strategies, and Edge Research. March 2008
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Posted in Strategic Communications | 
Tags: online fundraising, online giving, online marketing and communication
