If you’ve recently pivoted to an integrated fundraising strategy, it’s critical that you decide up front which success metrics are important and how you will capture the data and report on the results. This is especially true if your organization is accustomed to uncoordinated tactics in fundraising.
Measuring the effectiveness of your integrated fundraising strategy is important, but it looks slightly different than some of the traditional ROI metrics you might be measuring. The more relational experience created by integrated fundraising produces long-term ROI and higher lifetime value from your donors.
Are you using the right ROI metrics for your integrated fundraising strategy?
Here are some common metrics your organization can use to measure your efforts to create an
integrated donor experience:
1. Engagement. Tracking engagement is essential for understanding if your efforts are moving donors toward a deeper relationship with your organization. Here are a few engagement metrics to monitor:
- Email opens and click-through rates by individuals
- Length of time a constituent watches a video you share
- Rate of response both online and through direct mail
- Length of time between message sends and recipient responses
- Website traffic and other online interaction
- Cross-channel movement, such as direct mail recipients who go online to an enclosed URL or email recipients who give through a custom landing page
2. Average Gift. Be sure to watch for the average gift of your donor base to rise over time. This is the metric that will help you see past any short-term slump in ROI in the first forays into integrated fundraising.
3. Multi-channel Givers. Look for donors who respond to multiple channels in response to your integrated strategy. According to recent studies by Kimbia, donors who use more than one channel have twice the retention rate in the first year over single-channel givers.
It’s important to note that shifting your current efforts to an integrated approach might impact some short-term gains. When an organization changes its strategy to create a more relational experience for donors, the short-term ROI might suffer compared to previous campaigns.
However, the approach ultimately creates a far better long-term value (and lifetime value of the donors) than the “churn and burn” strategies most organizations are currently applying.
Learn more about our integrated fundraising approach by downloading the full-length free resource: the Intelligent Fundraiser’s Guide to Integrated Fundraising.