Better understanding your data using a tool such as DataSalon MasterVision can lead to clear financial benefits for your organisation. Below we list 5 ways that effective data analysis will help to improve your bottom line:
1. New prospects. Analyse your data for new contacts who have made any non-financial interaction in the past month (eg. free newsletter signups) and who are not current customers or donors. This group can then be offered specific incentives to buy or donate, helping to maximise conversion of new ‘browsers’ to paying customers.
2. Cross-selling. It can be rewarding to analyse your data for patterns (eg. people who buy X frequently also buy Y), in order to identify segments of contacts who are likely to be interested in related offers. This can enable highly targeted promotions which can achieve excellent conversion rates, for example, selling cookery books to customers with a known interest in food and drink, or promoting ‘green gifts’ to contacts interested in environmental issues.
3. Up-selling. If you offer both ‘one-off’ sales and a subscription service, there is an opportunity for targeting ‘one-off’ buyers with offers of relevant subscription purchases. Successful conversions here will turn a single purchase into a recurring source of income. For charities, this is an essential fundraising technique for converting one-off donors into regular givers.
4. Re-activation. Targeting lapsed contacts whose past purchases or donations have significant value is an important way of extending ‘lifetime value’ and making the most of your existing base of contacts. Relevant, targeted communication with existing customers will also help to increase loyalty and so reduce lapse rates in the first place. Introducing searchable variables for recency, frequency and value will make it easier to target groups of contacts for re-activation campaigns.
5. Save staff time. Effective data analysis tools should be easy to use, and available to all staff within your organisation. This removes the ‘bottleneck’ of requesting queries and reports from your IT team, freeing up internal resources. With sales and marketing staff in direct contact with all of your data, further benefits include improved speed of research, more creative thinking, and quicker development of new campaigns.
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