This January, like all previously, my in-box is full of marketing prognostications about the coming year — which channels must get more attention, new skills that must be mastered, where marketers are going to spend more money, plus expected trends, trends and more trends.

I plow through most of them, and most recently, from Direct Marketing News, read What Change in Customer Behavior Will Impact Marketing the Most in 2016? The article was based on insights from fifteen marketing agencies.

I gleaned two key points.

First, clearly the commercial marketers are heavy into more and more data-driven personalisation. That’s not surprising in itself, but maybe less apparent is the feedback loop this creates. The more consumers are approached as individuals (i.e. as individuals with a known interest or existing relationship with the company/brand), the more they expect to be treated that way by all marketers.

Here’s a typical comment: “As brands begin to realize that marketing is a privilege instead of a right, marketers will have an added urgency to improve their efforts at personalization or risk being excommunicated. The winning brands will focus their efforts increasingly on providing personalized, contextual messages that are driven by data.”

So all marketing is getting more personal.

And that includes fundraising. So you need to be looking at how well you are using the information you have about individual donors in your fundraising approaches to them. Not just simple personalization (‘Dear Tom’), but using knowledge to build relationships (‘Dear Tom, just a quick note about how we used your $50 contribution toward our Save the  ____ Campaign and ‘where to’ from here.).

And second, a key part of ‘personal’ is the experience offered each individual when they engage with the brand or company. The commercial world is investing heavily in the ‘customer experience’, often to the point of having designated staff to champion improvements in this area. Commercial marketers these days have no doubt that consumers are getting more finicky and less patient. When they are disappointed — by call waiting times, slow downloads, clunky online processing, inconsistent messages, mobile unfriendly displays — they leave … simple as that. Often never to return.

Another typical comment: “Now there are ever-increasing touchpoints where customers expect to be served and delighted. In-store, online, mobile, social, smart watches, smart televisions, connected devices, in the car, in the air, and many more are already available or coming quickly. This 360-degree experience continues to expand, and brands must now account for all ways that customers might want to engage with their goods or services. No longer is it enough to have a great website but a mediocre mobile experience.”

And again, that applies to donors engaging with charities and nonprofits. Take a fresh look at each of your points, processes and channels of engagement with your donors … which ones might be likely to disappoint? Triage and get’em fixed!

Tom