The very morning of the Agitator-DonorVoice Webinar on Understanding and Fixing the Donor Experience, the Center for Media Research issued a Brief titled Customer Experience (CX): Top Strategic Choice for Retail Marketers.

In reporting on a study by SDL that you can download here, the Center noted that 89% of the retailers surveyed recognized that providing an exceptional customer experience is “simply the best way to nurture shoppers throughout their entire journey; from initial research to purchase, to repeat buying and eventual customer advocacy across all channels.”

Unfortunately, most nonprofits don’t place much priority on the importance of customer or donor experience, let alone some 89%.

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However, the morning that report came out I was delighted that we already had 437 folks registered for our Donor Experience Webinar.

Customer/Donor experience is an old idea that’s sparking a great deal of interest among forward-looking nonprofits. They realize that the expectations of donors have increased, that providing exceptional experiences are a central pillar of loyalty and retention, and that today’s technologies make all this possible in a seamless way.

A good experience increases the likelihood the customers or donors will return and probably do even more. A bad experience will drive them away. This is as true for a corner grocery store, a local shelter, and giants like Amazon or the American Cancer Society.

While most direct response fundraisers tinker with marginal stuff like testing teasers on carriers, ask strings and the type and number of inserts, they’re ignoring the one area that could post more to their bottom line than all the A/B tests in the world — understanding and paying serious attention to understanding and fixing the experiences their organization offers its donors.

Doing so isn’t expensive. In fact, most organizations will end up saving money. But doing so requires thought and far more time than simply signing a purchase order for more acquisition mail to make up for the donors they’ve lost.

For Agitator readers who couldn’t attend our Webinar it’s not too late.

• We’ve archived a recording of the Webinar with all the slides and audio and you can listen to – or even download – the session here.

• If you only want the slides from the presentation you can download them here.

• We’ve even prepared a White Paper that’s well worth the read and covers and covers aspects of the Webinar in greater detail, plus topics not covered in the Webinar.

Do you consider exceptional Donor Experience a top strategic choice? If not, why not? If so, please share your reasons.

Roger

P.S. Part of the Webinar focused on the important role of donor feedback in determining which experiences are good, which need fixing, and those that should be tossed.

You can self-serve your way — in mere minutes (seriously) — to getting in the donor feedback and donor service on your website, on your donate pages, etc. by setting up a free, forever DonorVoice Feedback Widget account here.