We often ignore the random emails that come to our personal inboxes, or the promotional magazines and newspapers that are distributed to homes. In fact, nonprofit organizations can avoid this approach to handling public messages and increase return on investment through "donor segmentation".

In general, the concept of "donor segmentation" involves dividing the organization’s donor database into small groups based on the coalition points that unite different donors; similar to geographic distribution, the age of the institution and its type, the donor's status, donation size, and others. Regardless of the size of the nonprofit organization, donor segmentation is considered a strategy that facilitates individual communication with donors.

Focusing on strengthening relationships with donors contributes to greater success for organizations in the nonprofit sector. Additionally, attending to the desires and needs of donors builds a kind of connection, credibility, and trust between the organization and donors, which in turn will yield a larger percentage of donations.

Through donor segmentation, the organization will be able to:

● Target communications and information to a smaller percentage of the audience.

● Encourage donors to engage with the nonprofit organization, wherever they are.

● Personalize the communication process with donors to make the relationship strong and based on principles of credibility and trust.

● Request donations through a strategy based on empirical data.

● Minimize the annoyance of other donors outside the targeted sectors.

● Increase return on investment by providing useful content regarding the donation strategy to the donors.

Primarily, "donor segmentation" is based on small groups of donors. Thus, each donor feels that the content or message is personally addressed to them. According to recent statistics, sending a personalized email to the donor increases the email open rate by 14% and boosts the conversion rate by 10%. Donor segmentation also enables the sending of content that interests donors.

In a related context, donor segmentation helps build a bridge of trust and credibility between the organization and the public, thanks to directing specific content to a defined group. As a result, the rate of donors who unsubscribe or opt-out from the messages sent by the organization will decrease, and there will be an increase in return on investment.

In fact, there are many ways to "segment donors"; for example, donors can be segmented based on social, psychological, or preference factors. However, it is worth mentioning that these methods require intensive research skills because obtaining the required information can be difficult.

- Segmentation by social perspective:

This type of segmentation relies on a set of traits; such as age, gender, family size, income level, occupation, and social class.

- Segmentation by psychological perspective:

This is primarily based on the donor's lifestyle, behavior, and personality traits.

- Segmentation based on preferred communication methods:

This method is based on a subset of donors who prefer to receive email via mail services, so this demand must be met. In this case, the organization should know the method of communication that the donor desires.

Based on the three methods mentioned above, "donor segmentation" requires gathering more data based on live experiences to ensure achieving the desired results. In this regard, surveys are the best marketing tools for collecting necessary information about donors such as their motivations and commitments. For additional help, nonprofits can utilize the services of companies like "SurveyMonkey" that provide various survey templates targeted to donors.

Why is donor segmentation important?

With the evolution of social media and strategic trends in recent years, we observe that communication via email still maintains its importance. According to McKinsey, email remains the most effective medium compared to other channels.

Statistics have demonstrated the strength of improving email communication skills:

● 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists saw increased engagement rates with their messages.

● 28% experienced a decrease in unsubscribe rates.

● 24% gained a greater ability to deliver content and increased revenue.

● An 18% increase in transaction numbers.

● A 15% rise in customer acquisition.

Donor Segmentation and Creating Profiles for Them

By segmenting donors, organizations can link a certain number of messages together to reach a specific group of people. However, to understand donors' motivations, the organization will need a profile for each donor.

It is worth noting that donor segmentation complements the individualization of donors; unlike donor segmentation, the process of individualization involves an imaginative diagnosis of the ideal target audience for the organization, which helps to understand donor behavior, motivations, and desires. Hence, the nonprofit organization can develop donor profiles to create more relevant content for the donors, which will in turn increase return on investment and make donors more committed.

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