Last week I lamented the fact that so little seems to have been researched or written about regarding the ‘donor journey’.

Whereas, in the commercial space, marketers can describe in excruciating detail how consumers proceed to consider and eventually purchase their products. If you google ‘customer journey’ you’ll be treated to 21 million results, replete with templates, mapping tools, case studies etc. Here, for example, is an item from Salesforce, who calls 2015 “The Year of the Customer Journey”.

In a previous incarnation, I became relatively intelligent about how consumers bought (and remained faithful to, or not) two things — bourbon and cable TV services. I know … ‘Get a life Belford!’

But seriously, working with marketers as they broke down the entire purchase process was quite illuminating … and importantly, the process indeed served up actionable insights and opportunities for interventions that made a difference.

I’ve never seen that rigour applied in the nonprofit donor acquisition space.

If you google ‘donor journey’, by the third page of results you’re likely to be reading about donors giving away (or seeking) sperm, eggs or kidneys. Jesting aside, 101 Fundraising has written some good donor journey stuff (including useful dissent). Check out one of The Agitator’s heroes, Tony Elischer, on the subject.

Tony praises the ‘journey’ as “a fabulous piece of thinking as it helps charities to see all of their programmes mapped out; how each programme can draw prospects from other programmes, offering donors new propositions, products and gift levels.”

I agree.

If, for now, I focus on acquiring new donors, I would argue the first step in mapping the ‘journey’ is to truly know your current donor. Know everything — where they came from, how they found you, why they chose you, relevant demographics, key attitudes toward the work you do/the cause you serve, channel preferences, giving potential (via scoring, appended data) … everything … their persona.

Because the ‘journey’ you want to create should be intended to first, replicate them; second (resources permitting), appeal to their closest cousins; and third, begin from the outset to identify which might be of greatest long term value (and therefore worthy of special targeting and investment).

For many direct marketing fundraisers, this all seems too conceptual. They just want to dive in and go with the flow. If we send something out that works, let’s do more of it. There might be some shadow of a theory as to why the appeal might have worked, but no real interest in dwelling on that.

For these fundraisers, the ‘journey’ pretty much begins and ends with list selection (or maybe search term selection).

And while I consider that perspective limited (simply put: your donors swim with other likely donors), I’d have to agree in the sense that getting your acquisition appeal in front of the right prospect is the single most important factor on which your success rests.

That might sound like a truism, but how carefully or deeply do we really think about it as we make our acquisition plans? I rated that factor as accounting for 98% of acquisition fundraising success in my last post, exaggerating only slightly for effect.

OK, so your acquisition appeal is in front of the right prospect, what next? I’ll turn to that in my next ‘Donor Journey’ post.

Tom