A couple weeks ago, I argued you haven’t truly acquired a donor until you get permission, information, or a second gift.  Now let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum – when does your relationship with a donor end?

This is an important subject for me, because most organizations of my acquaintance spend too much trying to acquire new donors and too little trying to reacquire lapsed donors.  (Even if you are spending the same amount on each, reacquired donors are almost always more valuable and thus you should be spending more to reacquire than to acquire.)

But a UK member of our DonorVoice globe-bestriding team just received a mailer from a charity from which he bought something from the gift catalog six years ago.  Since then, he has made no other gift and, more importantly, opened none of their emails.

This is a weird, unintended consequence of GDPR — this organization thinks they can no longer solicit him by email so they are doing so by post. (I say “thinks” because PECR in Europe and CAN-SPAM in the US has always meant you need some form of pre-existing consent or relationship to solicit by email.)

One reason email consent was always required is that the marginal cost is so low.  Mail, on the other hand, may often be cost-prohibitive.

And in this case, it definitely should have been cost-prohibitive.  This is money that could be used for almost anything else.  For example, this being the UK, you could use the money to ponder why there’s a picture of a monarch on it, or why the idea persists that a supreme being of any stripe would select someone-in-particular’s family to rule (increasingly theoretically) over a nation.

Or for your mission.  Really either way.

Regardless of how you do your segmentation, this person is not this organization’s target audience:

• If asked, he would say his commitment to the organization is very low.
• His donor identity does not line up with their organization.
• His behaviour ( “u “i because he’s British) shows no interest in the organization.
• Even if you are using an RFM segmentation, he’s in the 60+ months single donor category, which can not possibly be a highly profitable segment. (Plus switching from a gift catalog gift to a standard gift is usually a lower percentage proposition.)

GDPR requires this – to have an actual relationship with the recipient.  It’s hard to argue that such a relationship exists.

There is a point at which you need to put down the boombox, turn off the Peter Gabriel, and drive away.

As an aside, if you think I’m exaggerating the stalker qualities of this, just consider:   you’ve “previously said you’re happy to hear from us by post (for example, … by not objecting when we’ve asked you).”  Or, to rephrase, “you threw away the mail piece where we asked you about getting our mail pieces, so clearly you are happy to get them.”

So, how do you know when it’s time to bless and release a donor?  When it’s no longer profitable to try to re-acquire them.  You aren’t there to subsidize mailings to people who no longer want them.

But more than that, the earlier you can get someone to tell you they aren’t that in to you, the better.  You won’t embarrass yourself with pieces like this one, nor will you have to pay for them.

That’s why we advocate asking for commitment, satisfaction, and preference immediately upon first gift and urge you to keep asking until you get this information.  Not only does getting this information greatly inform how far, and in what ways, you can communicate with a donor, but failure to gain any additional information from a donor is in fact getting information (just like not having someone open your emails).

Yes, you will have people opt out.  Yes, you will have people tell you how they want to hear from you and how often (this will help you make them more, not less, valuable).  They will be setting the parameters.

But the alternative to not having this information is a continual stream of one-way missives until, eventually, the organization gives up or the heat death of the universe arrives, whichever comes first.  That’s not good for our donors and it’s not good for our organizations.

Nick