Want Better Prospect Engagement? Try This Fundraising Strategy.

Prospect engagement tends to feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. You can make some good guesses about what people might like, and you can use old patterns of giving, or even try traditional fundraising tools like mass distribution and who knows, you might be able to swing it. 

But that’s a lot of work, and frankly, you have better things to do with your time. 

What if you knew you were getting in front of people who cared strongly about your cause and even mirrored your best donors — how much easier would prospect engagement be then?

That’s absolutely possible with the power of affinity.

Affinity is a highly detailed, nuanced understanding of what a prospect wants, needs, and cares about. It’s a level of sophistication that most organizations never actually achieve because it’s historically been too costly to create, or impossible to scale. (While you might have one development director who was able to cultivate deep personal relationships with your major donors, there’s no way to scale a fundraising strategy like that.)

With the power of affinity and AI modeling, it is entirely possible to create that list of people possessing a true care for your cause. And, it has become readily available to all nonprofits (large and small). There’s a lot of techy jargon we could throw at you to explain it, but the main thing you need to know is that AI donor prospecting takes into consideration so many different types of data, data points, and patterns about your current constituents, that it lets you identify more people just like them and tells you how to reach them with messaging that resonates. 

So, how do you use affinity to engage your prospects? Try this:

Target your messaging based on psychographics as well as demographics

Most organizations focus on demographics when it comes to crafting their messages — things like age, location, gender, etc. But psychographics — aka what people care about — are far more compelling. Segment your donors and find more people who look like the specific segments you want to target. This way, you are able to craft your messaging based on the needs, wants, and desires of that group of people, rather than sending a generic message to the masses. You’ll be able to speak to your prospects in a more relevant tone and elevate engagement in the process.

Target your ask amounts for maximum conversions

Knowing exactly where your prospects fall in terms of giving capacity helps you make a smarter, more targeted ask the first time around, which means you’re more likely to get those yeses. Consider segmenting your prospect pool into specific categories, like “small recurring gift”, “major gifts”, “mid-level gifts” to find people who look just like those segmented donors in your database, then use what you know about each segment from your past experience with your donors to make a very specific ask.

Use digital ads for more fruitful engagement.

Digital ads are a fantastic way to connect with all the different segments of your donors in a way that costs less and generally gives you higher rewards. You can often get better conversions with these types of ads, since you can send hyper-targeted ads to different segments, get feedback on what’s working (or not) almost instantly, and make adjustments as-needed. Plus, they’re usually way cheaper than traditional mailers.

There’s always going to be a degree of uncertainty when it comes to prospect engagement — but affinity-based prospecting gives you a way clearer picture than you’ll ever get with other fundraising strategies. Use it to your advantage!

We’ve got you! Schedule a quick chat with us to dive into your needs and desires, and we’ll show you just how boodleAI can help!