Cause Marketing: The Impact of Data Cleansing on your Marketing and Fundraising Efforts

 

If your organization also aims to offer societal benefits while generating profits, then “cause marketing” is what can help you to accomplish your goals. However, those companies who are involved in “cause marketing” need to manage their donor details in their database since this is a direct contributor to your company’s marketing and fundraising success. You must realize that your organization is formed with the existing details and the likely supporters. These are the people with whom you need to engage via calls, emails, posts, social media, and face to face.

But, before we get into the aspects like, why does the need arise to clean donor database, or how to go about it, let’s see what exactly is cause marketing?

What is Cause Marketing?

Introduced in 1976, it’s a pretty new marketing concept that was established through an association between the March of Dimes and the Marriot Corporation. While March of Dimes’ worked for a cause that contributed to the prevention of birth defects in babies, Marriot offered family entertainment complex in Santa Clara California. Both these organizations worked together to promote Marriot’s family entertainment product while raising funds for March of Dime’s cause.

Therefore, it’s a united effort by and between two organizations; one of which is a for-profit and the other one is non-profit for mutual benefits. This co-operative effort offers people the chance they need to help along with knowledge. This helps the profit producing and dominant brands across the globe promote their products as they raise funds and awareness for non-profit organizations using their resources. So, “cause marketing” is basically an arrangement where one for-profit organization and a non-profit organization work for the cause to generate profits and social benefits for both the parties.

Hence, when you are involved in “cause marketing” you need to maintain a database of donors which is the soul of your business and so, must be cleaned and updated on a regular basis.

What’s the impact of data cleansing on cause marketing?

From donors, members, volunteers, or fundraisers, everyone you speak to on a daily basis is important for your organization. These are the people you need to market your products consistently and you should have a strategy in place that can help you raise more funds in just a few months.

Therefore, it’s important to have a clean database for improved fundraising results and efficient marketing of the products and so, you must invest in a good data cleansing software from one of the trusted data cleansing companies. Data Ladder is one such brand that offers dedicated products in this range and has got some great reviews on performance and quality.

• It’s extremely important for an organization to target individual customers with messages because these are the people who will engage with your organization and even offer their support. However, the information sent to one client will not be the same that will be sent to the other for example; the information sent to donors, would not be the same as what you would send to the volunteers. Therefore, your you must have a neatly arranged database that will make it easier for you to contact clients based on the individual information that they need.
• You can easily find who may want to donate to your cause by keeping a track of the activities of the individuals associated with your business, or even any donations made by them and events attended. It gets easier as you can even provide the most relevant information to those who are attending the events in different cities and states. contacting in segments though would be a much smarter idea as it may not be possible to send information to likely participants all over the country.
• Having a clean database help you to get better connected with individuals or potential donors on social media sites. If you have collected the Twitter handles of donors, you can easily connect with them online, interact, say thank you, and invite them to an event. Using a good data cleansing tool by reputed data cleansing companies can help maintain these databases by removing any errors or duplication so that, you call the right person, provide right information attract potential donors for your organization.
• Sending emails to addresses that are non-existent or have changed, leaves a negative impact on the credibility of the non-profit organization because this will lead to spamming those who are not active anymore. The smartest thing to do here would be to delete emails that have been stacking for over 16 months thus, keeping the email lists updated with maximum deliverability rates.
• If you want to get an accurate picture of the working and non-working data, you should be able to run reports on specific data. this will help you to present your reports on your marketing attempts made to different fundraisers, donations, or members.

How to keep your donor database clean and updated?

Data should be updated by not more than one person because otherwise it may lead to errors and duplicate records thus, making the whole thing extremely confusing as to whom you should engage with online or face to face. Here you would need to delete any duplicate information, create records for the aligned database, and add any required information in the empty fields. You can do this by using an efficient data cleansing software that can make the entire process much easier thereby saving a lot of time and effort. You can also keep your database clean by:

• Make sure that you create a unique attribute for each donor or contact using a number or a mix of letter and numbers, etc. this will help you to manage each record individually while you report conveniently.
• Set up meetings and inform your team or the primary user of any changes made in the database. They should be informed of all the fields that are important, the meaning of it, and the way all the information should be used. for the data that’s no longer in use can be hidden instead of deleting.
• Be very specific about the records of those donors who are the major contributors to the fundraising campaigns. Make sure that their information is updated on a regular basis and are precise.
• Check whether you really need to revamp the entire database or just a few changes here and there would do. You must double check if you need to update multiple fields or just cleaning some of the records would do the job. While this can be achieved by adding another person who can keep a check on any changes, you can also use a versatile data cleansing tool for this purpose.
• Hiring volunteers to keep your database clean, consolidating all data at one place, cleaning your data on a regular basis, or documenting all the details for future reference, are a few more things that you would need to keep in mind.

So, keeping your database clean (especially the information of the donors) by using efficient tools from trusted data cleansing companies, will make sure that you get the maximum benefit out of “cause marketing” with the increase in fundraising and a positive impact of the non-profit organization.