For the sake of this post, “segmentation” in air quotes or lowercase ‘s’ isn’t segmentation at all.

Most “segmentation” is real Segmentation’s lazy understudy—unprepared and ineffective.

Here’s what real Segmentation is not:

1. Mailing the same thing to different audiences
   • Example: Renting humanitarian and social service lists and sending them the same mailing. This isn’t segmentation; it’s copy-pasting your appeal across audiences.
2. Mailing different packages to the same people
   • Example: Splitting your house file into random groups and sending one group a “we help seniors” message and another a “we help kids” message. What you’re really doing is searching for the best weak average. People are not random; stop treating them that way.
3. Breaking out results after the fact
   • Example: Running reports by RFM buckets or other post-hoc labels. No matter how many ways you slice it, if you started with weak segmentation, no report can fix that.

What Real Segmentation Looks Like

Real Segmentation involves creating groups based on differing needs and messaging them accordingly because you believe the juice will be worth the squeeze. Here’s how:

1. Define Meaningful Groups
   • Start with two groups, A and B. Write detailed guidance on how fundraising imagery and messaging should differ between them. These groups must be defined by differences that actually matter—their intrinsic motivations and reasons for giving—not surface-level traits like “online” vs. “offline” donors or demographics.
2. Tag Your CRM
   • Assign every donor to a group (A or B) in your CRM. If you’re making arbitrary choices about placement, go back to Step One. It’s fine to have an “unknown” category for some records.
3. Create Differentiated Offers
   • Develop messaging tailored to each group. Offer A goes to Group A, and Offer B to Group B. If you feel compelled to test both offers with both groups, do it in a fast, inexpensive digital test first.
4. Establish Controls
   • Each group gets its own control. Test and refine within groups over time. Growth comes from continuously iterating on your Segmentation, not applying one-size-fits-all solutions.

The Real Path to Growth

Effective Segmentation starts with understanding donors as they are, independent of your organization. Donors don’t inherently care about your charity or beneficiaries. Their motivations are pre-baked and often hard-wired. Your job is to align your pitch with their intrinsic motivations, not your internal branding.

Consider this:

• I’m a Conscientious parent who responds to loyalty frames and attentiveness messaging. I’ll support kids if framed to match who I am.
• My neighbor—also a parent—is Agreeable and prefers compassion-based messaging.

In bad “segmentation,” we both get the same generic appeal, and maybe one of us bites. In real Segmentation, we each get a message tailored to our motivations. If the messages are switched, neither of us responds.

Bottom Line

Real Segmentation isn’t about personas in PowerPoint or a few broad strokes in Excel. It’s about starting where the donor is, with their hard-wired motivations, and building a connection from there. When you achieve that, you’re no longer doing “segmentation”; you’re doing Segmentation.

Kevin