To tie up this series on supporter experience, I wanted to pull together some of the themes from the last six posts and share my recipe for delivering supporter journeys that work.

PLUS…for Early Birds in North America and Mid-Day folks in the UK and EU I also want to invite you to join our free webinar “Nailing supporter journeys and experience” at 1.30pm UK/2:30pm EU–and 8:30 am ET on Thursday 16 May.

Culture – get this wrong and you’re doomed before you start

Any effort to improve your journeys will be undermined if you don’t take time to create the right team culture. Before undertaking any change initiative, I’d spend a significant amount of time thinking about what behaviours and attributes you need from project team members and how you get their buy-in and enthusiasm.

Mapping – knowing where you’re starting from and where you want to get to

‘Well, I wouldn’t start from here’ is the punchline to an old joke about someone asking for directions. It applies to many supporter journey initiatives too.

Before making any changes, it is important to know the current state of your journeys. It can be sobering and surprising to see the mish-mash of communications that your supporters receive from you. Visualising this or even printing out the documents and laying them out to view can really emphasise why a change needs to be made.

Once you’ve done this, you also need to decide what your new world will look like and your destination. Only then can you plan a course to get you from A to B to C to D.

Gratitude and wow moments – making people feel good about giving

Anyone can say “thank you”. Just ask my teenage daughter when she begrudgingly grunts when I do something for her. Gratitude is thanking with feeling and is the start of all new supporters’ relationship with your cause.

Some supporters say they don’t want thanking. What they really mean is they don’t want rote, uninspiring thanking. In 20 years, I’ve never had a donor complain about a personal, authentic and memorable thank you.

When you also sprinkle in ‘wow’ moments throughout your journey plus opportunities to get involved in ways that resonate with your supporter, then you will be way ahead of 99% of other charities.

An important caveat is that not all supporters want the same thing. Understanding the needs and then responding appropriately to different supporters is crucial. See the next section on identity for more on this.

Identity – helping us go from one-size-fits all to two rows in your journey

Identity helps us get from a one-size-fits all journey to adding at least one more row.

An example? We recently worked with an organisation where the supporter base split into two distinct camps. Those people who just wanted to give to help solve the problem and those who also wanted to volunteer, campaign and help in multiple ways. Treating them all the same results in seriously annoying the first group.

If we capture which group someone is in at sign up (information which people are surprisingly happy to do without lowering response rates), we can begin to give a much more personalised and tailored experience based on the supporter’s needs.

Feedback – how did you do? What can you do better?

Feedback surveys are everywhere in the commercial world. Every time I interact with a bank, utility company and even my local takeaway I’m asked for feedback on how the experience went.

Charities lag seriously behind on this front.  I’ve never been asked by the numerous charities I support for my feedback. This is a missed opportunity because knowing instantly whether someone had a good or bad experience allows us to fix the problems and accentuate the positives. Whatever type of fundraising you’re engaged in, find the time to build feedback into what you do.

Commitment – the best indicator of lifetime value

Just like knowing someone’s identity, understanding their level of commitment and loyalty also helps us plan better journeys and experience. You’re likely to be wasting your time sending your legacy message to a supporter with low commitment.

A slightly counter-intuitive finding was also identified among high commitment supporters of one charity – less is more – they’ve already bought into what you do, so you don’t need to send as much stuff or try to ‘educate’ them. They already know what you stand for and like what they see! Too much, too often will drive them away.

Invite to join our free webinar

Interested in learning more about pitfalls and opportunities around supporter journeys and experience? Join our free webinar “Nailing supporter journeys and experience” at 8:30 a.m Eastern,  1.30pm UK/2:30pm EU on Thursday 16 May.

I’ll talk through some of these ideas and share some examples that you can swipe and try for yourself!

Craig