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Personalization Is the Engine That Drives Today's Givers

Posted: 08 Sep 2019 12:00 PM PDT

As the founder of a tech company, I have a healthy respect for the power of software. In our modern world, great software is at the heart of nearly every fast-scaling organization.

The problem with software, however, is that one size does not fit all. When I started Virtuous, plenty of experienced advisors offered their opinions on the software we should use to grow our business. I learned quickly, though, that what worked for others didn't work for our organization, not because the recommended systems were bad; they just didn't fit the unique needs of our business.

If you're the leader of a nonprofit, you've likely felt this in your organization. You've tried out a tool or a service that's supposed to be the best at (fill in the blank), only to find that it didn't work at all for your organization.

When it comes to marketing software, in particular, nonprofits have long tried to make square pegs fit in round holes, getting locked into software and marketing practices that are fundamentally designed for for-profit marketing or that are based on legacy fundraising practices. This has resulted in mass marketing efforts that make your donors feel like "sales opportunities" rather than crucial stakeholders in your cause.

When you think about your top 100 donors, you likely know who they are, how many kids they have, where they work, their favorite restaurants, etc. There is no shortage of consultants in our world whose jobs are to ensure a personalized approach with those top donors. The problem, however, is the personal touch completely falls off for the next 10,000 people on your donor list. They're on the receiving end of the exact same generic institutional email or mail piece, with the exact same message, and the exact same ask. Nothing kills generosity faster.

In our modern world, impersonal fundraising is a wet blanket on generosity, and that's a problem when you consider that nearly three-quarters of people who give a single gift never give again. They simply don't feel appreciated. That's where personalization through marketing automation comes in.

Personalization allows each and every donor feel as though you're talking directly to them. It's more than just referring to your donors by name and recognizing the date of their last gift (they know that's automated).

Great personalization provides every donor with the right message at the right time based on their individual passions, capacity and relationship to your organization. Personalization, in this way, creates extreme loyalty. With so many brands finding their way into your donors' hearts and wallets every day with personalized experiences (think of Amazon and Netflix), loyalty might be the only thing that ensures consistent giving.

Introducing personalization within your communication plan and donor marketing efforts doesn't have to be overwhelming, costly or resource intensive. One of the easiest ways to apply personalization is a process I call know, automate, amplify.

Think about how you meet and get to know someone at a party. You start by asking them questions about themselves to get to know them better. Then you'll tailor the conversation around topics they bring up and their specific interests. Perhaps they enjoy bowling, so you ask them about their best game or the last time they went bowling. Finally, you might make an "ask." Do they want to go bowling with you sometime?

Here's how to break it down as a marketing process that fits for nonprofits.

How to apply personalization to your nonprofit's fundraising efforts

Know

Gather as much information about your donors as is possible

If you're using a donor engagement system designed for nonprofits, this is a lot easier than if you're gathering data manually. You can collect info like their age, income, level of social media activity and the reason the initially gave to your cause.

To make personalization really work, it's important to gather attributes about your donors as well as behavior as it pertains to their engagement with your nonprofit. Do they engage with you on social media? Do they attend your events? How often do they visit your website?

Automate

Use marketing automation software to send tailored messages - at the right time - based on what you know about each donor

It's not enough to have good data; you need to know how to use it. The donors who only gave once get different messages, stories and marketing cadence than those who give regularly, and so forth. By automating these donor journeys using software, you can dramatically increase engagement, without increasing demands on your staff.

Amplify

Use data analytics to understand what the right "ask" should be

For instance, based on donors' behavior and attributes, should you ask them to volunteer or give money? Is it more appropriate to ask them to buy tickets to your event or donate items for a silent auction?

Here's a great example of personalization in practice: One of our customers is a nonprofit that helps people living in poverty. Most of their communication is related to the work they do with the poor. When the most recent hurricane hit South Carolina, they  used geolocation data to identify all of their donors who had been affected. Rather than ask for money, they set up an automation workflow that sent emails and prompted their team to call and check in with their donors. The response from their donor base was huge. They felt that this nonprofit was there for them right they needed it. Their connection with the nonprofit was strengthened and their loyalty solidified.

If this nonprofit didn't have a personalization practice in place, they wouldn't have been able to locate their donors within a very targeted geographical area, contact them in a timely/scalable way and forge that connection. This is reciprocal generosity at work.

Other ways to personalize your marketing efforts

Here are four other suggestions to add personalization to your marketing efforts that can have tremendous impact on giving right away.

New donor campaigns

Most nonprofits don't follow up with their donors until 60 days after they've given. By that time, the "emotional" aspect or whatever drove that person to donate has probably been stifled, and the follow up/thank you feels a bit "too little too late."

Set up an automated email campaign specifically for new donors that welcomes them to your nonprofit. It should include invites to events to engage on social media, links to pages that outline ways to volunteer and stories about the good you're doing every day.

How those new donors engage with you from there should be tracked and scrutinized regularly so you can further tailor experiences for them. In other words, strike while the iron is hot, and give them something in exchange for their generosity. They'll be more compelled to keep giving.  

Persona segmentation

Identify three to five personas that love to give to your organization (e.g., Chase, the activist college student, Cindy, the art lover, etc.). Once you've identified your key donor types, find the stories and content that connect best with each persona. Segment your database so that each persona receives the targeted content and asks that are most relevant to them.

Personalization tech

Implement marketing automation technology that's designed specifically to help nonprofits automate communication and create personalized experiences for donors.

You don't have to get locked into using systems that aren't designed with nonprofits in mind. You have unique marketing needs, and your systems should meet those needs so your organization can grow.

Bottom line

Taking a more personalized approach to your nonprofit fundraising efforts can result in more donor engagement, higher average gifts, big increases in donor loyalty, and most importantly, you donors will feel that they're part of your cause.

5 Types of Manufacturing Errors That Kill Your Profits

Posted: 08 Sep 2019 06:00 AM PDT

Unexpected or uncounted errors can sabatoge the success of a company and its leader. Any number of errors can also hurt production and profitability. When companies look to grow profits, they can turn the focus to improvement management to ensure tasks are being done with excellence and not errors. 

To improve performance and become a highly profitable company, you should consider the five places where mistakes are most evident. These five areas are what this author calls "the fatal five."  

1. Processing errors 

These are errors made by individuals who do not follow standard operating procedures or companies that have never established set procedures and clear processes to follow. Clear standards are essential in the error reduction process. Many companies continue with a high level of errors because they have no model to set the standard for production or performance. Helping the whole team commit to the standard is a vital but often overlooked component of small businesses. A necessary step in overcoming processing errors is to explain to all team members why the standard process has been created and why it is essential that the team member follow it.  

Great companies work to build effective and repeatable processes. Companies that spend time on process improvement often find a higher level of buy-in from employees. When employees are engaged in following and then improving the processes, a company will realize real profits and a reduction in processing errors.  

2. Part errors 

Equipment and its components can and will fail. Every item and every person has a limited production capacity. Companies experience a higher level of errors when people or equipment are pushed past their capacity to produce. When a part has reached its capacity, it is doomed to fail.  When people are past their level of capacity, they also tend to make more errors. 

It is imperative that every leader and every organization know which parts and people are critical for success and what the limits of those vital parts are so that a plan can be put into action before unnecessary errors are committed. The proper care of equipment can extend its life and usage. Team members should be trained and encouraged to extend the life of equipment and treat it carefully so that more can be produced with fewer errors.  

3. Production errors

Companies that wish to provide continuous operations will learn the art of redundancy. Smooth operations occur when every aspect of production has a backup in case of failure. A backup or contingency plan ensures that production won't lag if something goes amiss. 

Many things can hurt an organization's production, from a late employee to a breakdown in the system. To ensure smooth operations, emphasize the critical aspects of production. Smooth production happens when strong plans are in place to keep production moving. Good processes and good planning make for great companies. CEOs and leaders should review production methods and metrics to ensure operations are running at peak performance.  

4. Portion errors 

Errors can happen in production when a wrong measurement causes a machine breakdown or stoppage of production. Signs and checklists are two excellent tools to help employees determine what portion sizes should be used in various equipment along the production line.  

Signs in a workplace can be a simple solution to spread awareness of how to operate equipment effectivly. They should contain the key messages that will help team members stay focused and complete the task at hand without placing the wrong part or wrong amount of a part in a piece of equipment.  

A simple checklist can go a long way in helping people take the right action or follow through to the next step. Checklists should be placed along the production line to serve as a tool for any employee running a piece of equipment.  

5. People errors 

People errors are often the least expected and the most costly. Sufficient training and clear processes can reduce the element of human error, but no company can avoid errors from individuals forever. What you can do is learn from these human mistakes and develop stronger processes to reduce future errors. One tool that has proven effective in reducing individuals' mistakes is the concept of poka-yoke.  

Poka-yoke: Become an error reduction engineer

The idea of poka-yoke (poh-kah yoh-keh) was first discovered by an industrial engineer for Toyota named Shigeo Shingo. His goal in poka-yoke was to reduce the number of errors in the Toyota production to zero. Shingo was passionate about reducing all errors in the production process. One statement that communicated this passion is when he wrote, "The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize." It is good for companies to track errors and to become aware of where errors are happening in the production process. 

Poka-yoke is the process to prevent mistakes and, if possible, eliminate them from the final deliverables. Many manufacturing companies have used this process, or one closely related to it, to enhance their performance. Poka-yoke can be used in many industries and processes and is an excellent model to consider for reducing errors in your company or processes. It's a straightforward process with six steps:     

  1. Establish a perfection model or strong standard to measure against. In other words, your company should examine the goal for prodcution and describe that goal for your whole team in clear and concise terms. 
  2. Examine all the ways that your process has previously failed, both during and after implementation. It is also wise to create a list of all potential failures you can think of.   
  3. Expand possible solutions through the Five Whys question process to find the root cause of the original failure. If you're ever going to successfully reduce errors, the root cause must be identified and corrected. 
  4. Employ corrective action. The use of a sequencing method or a checklist that highlights the complete process might be the most useful course. Another possibility is to commit to a consistent action that is triggered when a certain number of errors have been made. 
  5. Evaluate outcomes through testing and documenting actual results and real numbers.   
  6. Inform your employees, operators and supervisors of your findings during performance reviews.

There are many ways to apply the poka-yoke model in service businesses. A focus on reducing errors can lead you down the path to turning around a poorly performing company. 

An example of this process in practice is Delta Air Lines. CEO Ed Bastian developed a turnaround strategy using the poka-yoke model that led Delta back from the brink of bankruptcy to sustainability. In 2010, Delta canceled thousands of flights due to mechanical and maintenance issues. Under Bastian's leadership, the company understood that it had to reduce the number of canceled flights to improve its profits and bottom-line performance. After reshifting the focus to reduction of maintenance issues in planes, Delta reduced its number of flights canceled due to maintenance issues to less than 100 in 2018. Great plans lead to great performance.

Errors and mistakes can always be reduced. A focus on numbers can help you measure your execution and progress toward being a zero-defect company or organization. How people have come to make errors is also essential to consider as you strategize on how to become an error-free organization.   
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