Making the Most of Birthday Data
Crowdfunding Advisors, FundRazr Team
Everyone has a birthday (whether they like it or not)!
Birthdays present a tremendous opportunity to make your donors feel valued. In the corporate space, it’s not uncommon to collect birthday data from customers to market specialized deals to them. For example, Sephora’s inexpensive birthday gifts and greetings for customers keep community engagement high and increase foot traffic into stores. They’ve figured out that making customers feel valued and engaged is good business – and the same goes for donors!
When you collect data regarding your donors’ birthdays, you are getting incredible personal and demographic information that can be used in a multitude of ways – least of which is the ability to interact with your community members in a more intimate, personal way.
You can use birthdays to increase donation volume and strengthen the relationship between your organization and your supporters.
Data Segmentation by Age – Who Gives What
Part of what makes the digital space so beautiful (and useful) is that it is not dominated by any one particular generation. Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen Xers – they’re all at the party and they all have different communication preferences. To make sure you’re communicating your message effectively, you should have a different process for engaging with each age group.
With birthday data, you have a valuable insight into the actual makeup of your supporter base and the preferences of each of your target demographics. Who should you be emailing vs. calling, texting vs. tweeting, or sending direct mail? With some data, quick polling, and creativity, you can create a more enjoyable experience for everyone without risking donor irritation.
Birthday Gift Campaigns
It’s becoming increasingly popular to request that donations be made to a charity of one’s choice for their birthday in lieu of traditional gifts that get donated when you look the other way. Using FundRazr, it’s easy for fundraisers to share their birthday fundraising goals with their friends and family.
With the right data, positioning, and planning, you can reach out to your donors in the weeks before their birthdays and ask them to pledge their birthday and set up a peer-to-peer sub-campaign to raise money directly for your organization. This shows the donor that you’re thinking of them on their special day and invites them to make their day mean even more to the cause. They can personalize their birthday wish using the content you provide from your master campaign and make the ask on your behalf using our optimized social integration.
If you haven’t already started collecting donor birthday data, set up a simple landing page asking donors to share their birthdays with you to kick off the campaign set-up.
Just Say ‘Happy Birthday!’
The most simple, yet indisputably impactful point to highlight is that most people like being wished a happy birthday. You can fight donor fatigue by merely wishing your donor a happy birthday – with no ask involved.
Send your donors a ‘happy birthday’ note just to be kind. If you send the message without a fundraising related ask, your contributors will feel special, respected, and valued as a member of your community. It’s a very small gesture, but one that leaves a string of good feelings behind it. Make your donors feel like you like them for who they are as humans, not for their wallets alone. This is an easy way to engage and stay top of mind, which nearly no effort.
