Multi-channel marketing is commonplace within fundraising. It’s common for markers to be employing in their fundraising direct mail, email, social media, face-to-face/canvassing, telemarketing, paid search ads, programmatic display ads, and some form of digital video via connected TV or even DRTV.
With all of the multi-channel marketing taking place, understanding the revenue attribution associated with each channel remains a challenge for most nonprofit organizations. The lack of revenue attribution reporting is becoming the fundraiser’s Achilles Heel. It’s a weakness or vulnerable point that’s stunting your potential growth trajectory.
This was the key conversation point during the session “The Fundraiser’s Achilles Heel” during the Bridge To Integrated Marketing And Fundraising Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Presenters were: Roger Hiyama is executive vice president at Wiland, Shiloh Stark of the Nature Conservancy and Patrick Frame of Further.
How do you know which integrated fundraising expenditures are truly making a difference? In an industry dominated by multi-channel fundraising, few fundraisers are using multi-touch attribution to understand the integrated nature of their multi-channel fundraising expenditures. With lingering supply chain issues, rising paper and postage costs, significant changes in the internet of things and an uncertain economy, how do you know if you have the optimal media mix?
Fundraisers avoid revenue attribution reporting for a variety of reasons. Here are some of the most common reasons and how you can overcome these challenges:
- Organizational Structures: Too often revenue attribution becomes an “organizational battlefield” instead of the “organizational proving ground” needed to optimize limited budget resources. Since fundraising responsibilities tend to span across larger departments like development, marketing communications and IT, it can create almost a physical obstacle. At some point, it’s important to break down siloes and build a cooperative environment — an organizational proving ground that will.
- Expecting Perfection: Expecting perfect attribution reporting is unrealistic. It’s not necessary to be exact. It’s got to be like “horseshoes,” where getting close scores points. However, make sure that your reporting is founded on a desire to be fair, believable, and defensible.
- Lack of Data and Analytic Resources: Lack of data and analytic resources are somewhat different but certainly integral to the process. Unfortunately, many avoid doing attribution reporting because they’re overwhelmed by the task. Also, you might be pre-disposed to believe that the deprecation of 3rd party cookies for tracking purposes makes it pointless anyway.
You don’t have to do all of this by yourself and, there are evolving techniques, emerging software tools, and expertise among your service providers that can assist.
