The Right Technology for Integrated Fundraising is Really a System
	Posted by Becky Odum at Nov 01, 2013 02:00 PM CDT

The question of technology always seems to come up when talking about integrated marketing/fundraising campaigns and measurement. Yes, technology is definitely required – you must have a fully integrated database that can receive and house direct mail data, online data, email data, telemarketing data, DRTV response data and everything else. Plus, you need a way to capture relevant information for each channel and transfer that data into your integrated database!

In short, what’s really required is a system -- a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, or a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method. How to build that system, or add to it when branching out into new marketing techniques, can be challenging.

I am advocating for a fully integrated system for two main reasons:

1. Having all your results data in one place makes reporting (read: measurement) a snap, and allows you to see the impact of one channel on another channel’s results. 
2. Perhaps more important, having all donor behavior and contact history in one place means you can more effectively communicate with them and improve their lifetime value to your organization. 

A Fully Integrated System – How Do You Get There?

A nonprofit client recently began discussing adding dedicated landing pages for direct mail acquisition. Another is kicking around the idea of doing some telemarketing to lapsed donors. Yet another is investigating the possibility of doing some targeted DRTV. And, every one of them is asking the same question: How do we make sure we can measure the impact of our efforts? 

Every time we, as fundraisers, consider expanding our efforts into another channel, we must ask this question. The reality is that the answer is a little different for everyone -- every system, every database, every internal process flow is just different enough that there isn’t one blueprint for the right answer. But don’t despair, because there are some good guidelines that will help make sure that each effort is measureable and the results are actionable:

1. Chart your data flow. The starting point is the donor database to hold your donor data. Just about everyone has an adequate solution here, so your first step is to make sure your donor data is flowing easily and efficiently into your main donor database. If your online donations don’t seamlessly flow into your database, if your outbound or inbound call center data isn’t being uploaded in a timely manner, if your monthly donor gifts aren’t accounted for each and every time, or if it all makes it there, but you can’t tell one type of gift from another, odds are you’ll never know if what you are doing is working or not!  Start by making a flowchart – log each individual channel, and track how the response data makes its way into your database (most organizations start with direct mail, since there is probably more existing documentation there). Document the time it takes from gift receipt through processing to acknowledgment.  If there are any holes in your existing process, fix them now!  Then tackle your new channel -- how will those efforts and results fit into the system?
2. Get your online data into your main donor database. When it comes to online gifts, most organizations these days engage a gift processing service provider, and there are some really great options.  Most have lots of technology to track all the right online metrics:  click-throughs, email open rates, donation rates, etc. What you’ll need to ask is how to get that donation data from the online system into your main database. It’s not a given that one system will know how to talk to another. And understanding what data is required in your database will help inform the set-up of your online donation system. Then talk about the flow of the appropriate data from the online system into your main database.
3. Bring it all together with coding. Once you have figured out how to get all your donor data into your database, the key to making it mean something is in the coding. Eyes tend to glaze over at this point, but the devil is in the details. So, again, chart it all out. Understand how to identify gifts by channel. Talk through all the bits of information you’re collecting about your donor and about their gift. Find the right place to store it (sometimes data that lives in your online system may not need to be held in your main database, but take the time to think through it all) and decide what data belongs with the donor record and what should be stored at the gift level. Make sure that all gifts given by any method get assigned back to the correct donor.
   
   Source codes are your best friends at this point. Design coding structures that clearly identify channel in addition to effort. If you have a year-end campaign with a direct mail, web, email, and telemarketing component, and you are featured in a media campaign, create coding that will clearly identify the channel and the campaign. Your direct mail codes will likely be more complex, but each effort should be similar enough that you can measure the campaign as a whole. And don’t forget to associate variances in unsolicited web gifts with your off-line efforts. Just as white mail increases when direct mail campaigns are strong, gifts through your home page will spike when marketing efforts in all channels are most active. 

So, to summarize: Make sure your database is functional; choose online and offline partners that will support your efforts to correctly capture donor activity; flow-chart all your channels to ensure your data all gets into one system efficiently; and code it so that the results of each effort are easy to report on. And last but not least, capture the costs of each effort separately. Without understanding the costs, you’ll never understand the effectiveness. 

These steps may not be simple, but if you do it right, the information you get out at the end will be actionable and will support your integrated marketing efforts for years to come!