When people are deciding to give for the first time, they aren’t yet our donors

When people are deciding to give for the first time, they aren’t yet our donors

by | Aug 19, 2021 | donor engagement, donor-centric, Sustainable Fundraising

At LemonTree, we believe that donor-centricity is the ongoing dedication to increasing the depth and breadth of your donor understanding. In doing so, you generate insights that can be used to tailor your communication and engagement efforts and demonstrate to your donors that they are at the heart of your entire organisation.

Why you ask? Well, essentially this builds trust and loyalty – the critical foundations of any lasting and sustainable relationship.

I recently read an interesting article from the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy, which made a powerful observation:

“When people are deciding to give for the first time, they aren’t yet our donors. But they are a parent, a cancer survivor, a humanitarian, a moral person, a liberal, a patriot and so on. So the key to raising more money is to resonate with who the donors are, or rather that aspect of the self that is activated during their engagement with your organisation.”

Long ago the commercial world realised that the ‘customer is king’ and so adopted a customer-centric approach to their business strategy. Marketing teams work tirelessly to get inside the hearts and minds of their customers so they can position and promote their products and services in the right way, at the right time and with the right message to engage and nurture the customer and eventually make the sale.

A positive customer experience makes us feel something and – as humans – we are motivated to act based on how we feel. We tend to make decisions based on emotion, then find a way to justify that decision based on logic. This is why we choose to walk that little bit further to get our morning coffee, even though it costs 50c more…but the barista greets us by name, remembers our order, and takes the time to ask how our kids are getting on with that school project. We walk further and pay more because of the way the experience makes us feel; that’s what keeps us coming back. It makes us trust the barista; makes us loyal to the cafe and gives them a competitive advantage. 

In today’s challenging times with COVID-19, this entrenched loyalty – built up from years of providing a positive customer experience – is keeping many businesses alive, and for that, we applaud them and wish them every success.

To deliver the best customer experience and earn a sustained competitive advantage, businesses need to earn trust and build loyalty by adopting a customer-centric approach:

  1. Understanding what their customers want, need, like, dislike, hope, fear, and value at each stage of their life:
  2. Infusing these customer insights across all their business functions to help shape decisions.
  3. Creating a unique and ongoing value exchange for their customers.
  4. Engaging in open, honest, and transparent two-way conversations with their customers, across many different channels; and
  5. Empowering customers to interact with their brand on their own terms.

This same approach applies to not-for-profits looking to secure sustainable giving. You need to earn trust and build loyalty by adopting a donor-centric approach, and that starts by increasing the depth and breadth of your donor understanding.

So how can LemonTree help you understand your donors more and implement practical solutions to help you connect with your donors in a more meaningful and valuable way? We have a range of proven solutions for acquisition, growth, and conversion; used regularly by charities such as Cancer Council NSW, World Animal Protection, The Shepherd Centre, and many more!

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LemonTree discusses the subtle impacts of language

LemonTree discusses the subtle impacts of language

by | Aug 21, 2018 | Customer Journey

By Joel Nicholson – LemonTree Founder The questions… Do you find yourself in a similar challenging position to many marketing professionals that attended our recent industry luncheon event on “a new language to modern customer life cycle messaging”? The collective group of around 30 senior professionals in Sydney nominated key challenges in growing customer life cycle programs as:
  • Resourcing/financing projects
  • Data visibility and access
  • Relevance of communications vs personalisation
  • Measurement
  • Training internal teams
What else do you find getting in your way of growing your biggest competitive advantage of meaningful and sustainable customer relationships? The concepts… Firstly, relationships matter. Science is continually proving our health is closely linked to us holding meaningful connections with other people. Customer relationships is no different. NPS in organisations like Vodafone and Citi are proving to average higher for extended periods over a given customer life cycle. How? By simply changing the internal language from traditional segments like onboarding, nurturing, retaining, etc, to more customer-centric language like teach me, grow me, endear me, etc. Finally, accessing or gaining visibility of trustworthy customer behaviour data is more often a process of looking within your organisation rather than searching externally. Recently we helped a brand recover 20% of its customer base that it didn’t previously hold a dialogue with on a key channel. We find there are typically numerous pockets of opportunity that are not immediately visible. Actions to consider… Start putting customer relationships at the heart of strategy and decision making. Measurements like NPS, LTV, and engagement scores are a start towards gaining stakeholder buy-in on both short and long term ROI Create a customer journey framework that everyone can understand. The customer centric segment language described above is but one good example. Think about how to better capture customer interactions that map to the customer journey dialogue and ultimately their needs. A simple example is when a customer buys a car baby seat, what else does this tell you?! A special thanks to Kara Every for sharing her experiences on this topic.