A daily struggle nonprofit fundraisers and marketers face is how to make their audience (donors, volunteers, clients, etc.) feel seen while balancing the time and effort it takes to communicate with them. We all know that the more specified a communication piece is to the recipient, the more likely it is to resonate, and the more likely they are to follow through with your call to action. 

Enter an organization’s best and most feared tool – the segmentation plan. 

A segmentation plan divides your audience into different…well, segments. These groups allow you to tool your language to your audience in a more specific and purposeful way. It also allows you to track and identify giving patterns, and hone-in your strategies for particular targets. 

Here’s an example of segmentation and how it might be utilized. Your organization is sending out an email solicitation to volunteers to ask them to also make a gift. You may already have volunteers who are also donors. By not segmenting and sending the message out to all volunteers, those donors will feel invisible and perhaps even confused or hurt that you don’t know they already give.

However, by having a clear ‘donor-volunteer’ segment and a ‘non-donor-volunteer’ segment, you can email each group with their own, specific call to action, asking the first to continue their commitment and the second to give for the first time. Even if the majority of the email message is the same, tweaking one or two sentences for your audience can have a big impact in their response.

Of course there’s a balance, and finding the right number of segments for your organization is more of an art than a science. Over-segmenting your audience can be just as much of a hindrance than under-segmenting. Both leave your employees and/or volunteers doing more work while leaving your audience feeling disconnected from your organization and its mission. 

Considering a segmentation plan but don’t know where to start? I’ve compiled a list of 40 Segments for Nonprofits to consider when building their communication plans. You can find it here!

Don’t forget to follow me on social media or check back often for more upcoming information on segmentation and how to use it. 

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