Name: Segmentation That Works: Leveraging Persona Insights for Better Campaigns
Uploaded: 2026-01-22T19:30:41.113Z
Duration: 50 min 54 s
Description: Segmentation That Works: Leveraging Persona Insights for Better Campaigns

Transcript for "Segmentation That Works: Leveraging Persona Insights for Better Campaigns": just a little bit about today's presentation. Welcome, Leveraging Persona Insights for Better Campaigns. So this is based on a forthcoming publication from the Blackbaud Institute. And today's presentation is sort of like a little sneak peek, right, of what we're gonna see. Now when that publication actually is published here in a few in a couple weeks, maybe ten days, I think. I'm gonna go ahead and send you out all of you an email with a link to that so you can find it when you have it. But today, our guest is just gonna go through and kinda give us a a preview of what you can expect and some insights because of her intimate, sort of inclusion in the creation of this document. But let me tell you about myself really quickly because I am, at my core, a narcissist. My name is Ray Borkman. I am part of the marketing team here at Blackbaud, and I'm gonna be introducing the person you really wanna hear from shortly. I'm a, bald white male. I use he, him pronouns. I'm about 48 years old. I have a graying beard. I am in the loft office of my home here in Charleston, South Carolina, which is located on the native lands of the Edisto, Cuso, and Seaweed people. Alright. So that's it for me. I'm not gonna take up any more of your time because I wanna get to some of the good stuff that we're here to talk to you about. So I'm gonna bring on to the screen my partner in crime, Marleen. I'm gonna pass the ball to Marleen to introduce herself and get us going today. Marleen, thanks for being here. So good to see you. Awesome. Thank you, Ray, so much. Welcome, everybody. My name is Marleen Lucas. I am a senior strategic analytics consultant here at Blackbaud. I have been at Blackbaud for, twelve years. I can hardly believe that's true, but it is. And prior to being on the analytics team, which I've been doing for about three and a half years now, I was an RNXT consultant working on the services side of the house, doing things like, well, all sorts of everything you can imagine pretty much for a little bit. And, I also was a project manager in the world of managed services, retainer services. The advisory plus team is in that world as well, if you've heard of that. So that's what I I used to do at Blackbaud before I did analytics. But prior to being in analytics, I actually or even being here at Blackbaud, I was a fundraiser. So one thing I have to say is that I kinda miss fundraising, believe it or not. So my favorite thing about being an analytics consultant is that I get to live vicariously through my clients and use all the cool stuff they know about now. Because I gotta say, when I was a fundraiser back in the day, I would have just really been excited to have some of these tools, these personas, the modeling, the all the things. So, super, excited to use these tools and help folks. I help clients every day use these tools to raise more money at their organizations. And, reaching those goals is what really motivates me. So get very, very excited about it. And then just so you know, a few of the organizations I've worked at. Just my background, I've worked in a zoo. I worked in a museum. I worked in higher ed numerous times. I've worked in, public broadcasting, public radio, television, all that stuff. So done a little bit of everything. And, of course, as a consultant, worked with every kind of client there is, so between analytics and RNXT Consulting. So excited to be here and excited to share with you some of the things that are going on. So first, there's a poll, Ray Borkman. I think did we talk about this? Oh, good. Here we go. I wanted to ask, who of you are using analytics solutions just to kinda get a feel in the room of who people might be comfortable with it? Because, again, I would have killed for these tools as a fundraiser back in the day. So, so if you're not using them, but you might be using them not realizing them. If you're in Razor's Edge and using Prospect Insights, you're using them. There's a lot of different things that happen with your data on a day to day basis that might be doing some of this that you don't even realize. So, but definitely continue to pump up the volume on that because it's continuing to be part of what we do. So let's get started. I have a lot to cover, so I'm just gonna dive right in. So first on the agenda here, this is what we're gonna be going over. Let me sorry. Switched my slides on my side. I have to do a little bit of dual working here with my so here's what we're gonna go over. So like I said, Ray mentioned that we have the, the supporters insight report that's been redone. So that report has, was was done originally in 2021. And it's kinda timely that we're kinda revamping it a little bit now. Because you would think not a whole lot of things have changed, but actually looking at the report, both in the past now, there has been some, some things that have not changed, certainly some general things that have come into play that are still true. And then, but some of the info has has changed. So most notably, analytics overall, and their usage has increased. So that's coming into play. AI, obviously, AI is always the buzzword. Some people that I know are turning it into a drinking game. But I'll try not to say it too often today, but it is a thing, so it does come up. And then, in this digital age, just in general, is is definitely playing an impact. The way we do business, the way we work, the way we live, the way we use our phones changes constantly. So with every update on your Apple phone Apple, you know, it's just gonna always happen. Right? So it's continuously changing. So this is why it's we're gonna start with the state of direct marketing and then roll into persona insights, look at the personas specifically, and then talk about how to use them in our day to day. So first, let's talk about, another poll question. So, Ray, do you wanna pull up that, direct mail poll question? I just wanted to ask folks before we dive into this, direct mail piece. Let me oops. Sorry. One second. I'm having to do two things at once, so my apologies. So on this slide, we're talking about what we're gonna talk about when we talk about state of direct marketing. So we're gonna talk about direct mail, AI developments, and the next generation of giving. But I did wanna, mention, if if you do that poll, just to kinda get a feel for who's using direct mail still. And excellent. Yay. Okay. So this ties in very well. So I wanted to segue, and it's true. Okay. Here we go. Segue to the next slide, which is hello. It is still a thing. And, oh, most of you probably know this, but I just think it's very helpful to kinda understand that the, direct direct marketing and direct mail in particular, indirect marketing is still a valid, wonderful way to reach out to people. The the strategy it's a preferred strategy because it's really targeting your audience. Right? And, you can also get performance matrices from those. Right? So unlike something like a radio ad or television or billboards or a lot of other communication styles that you can't really know always who's getting your message. So with direct mail, you often do. Right? So that's one of the big things. The other thing is even though it's low tech, and according to the lob.com state of direct mail in 2025, 79% of senior executives named direct mail as their top performing channel. So, yeah, low tech is kinda where it's at still in some place. And then, Nielsen reports, Nielsen reports that 61% of marketers increased their direct mail budgets back in twenty twenty twenty four. And, again, these two points are part of the supporters insight document. So, yeah. So it's still a thing. It's still being used despite being a lower tech channel. And then is it worth it? Definitely. The Direct Marketing Association reports that direct mail's average response rate is 4.4%, which seems really low when you think about a lot of other things. But 4.4% is roughly 37 times that of an email marketing response rate. 37 times. So email is getting a point, a 0.12% response rate compared to that 4.4 from direct mail. So, definitely, the return is is worth it. And though it's, email is really nearly free, the cost of effective direct mail really does pay off. Right? So but we can't just do direct mail. The best marketing and fundraising efforts don't just do a single channel. In fact, it's it's proven that 35% of direct marketing programs blend digital, channels like text and social media alongside direct mail. So while we're moving forward with all these new technologies and reaching out to people, we're continuing to be anchored in the direct mail world. K. So next the next thing that we wanna kinda give you a highlight from the report on is, regarding the, AI, of course, the buzzword at the moment. So while direct mail continues to play a role, like I said, AI is certainly having an impact. I mean, we have generative AI where it's creating all these wonderful content, this copy video. I know I use it for meetings, follow-up, and all sorts of things that I've been doing with AI recently. And then the right inputs and prompts are just really saving us time. Right? And then agentic AI, I know that's a buzzword that Blackbaud's been using a lot recently. It takes those capabilities a step further by really automating key fundraising workflows. So this would include things like segmentation. Think about how long it takes you to do a query for a direct mail project. You know, outreach, performance analysis, activity tracking, all sorts of things that frees up your team to really work on more strategic relationship building type activities versus that busy work that they spend a lot of time on. Right? And then just improved efficiencies are built into AI. So you can, employ that machine learning, and it just does predictions and adapts to behavior in real time. So you're getting hyper focused targeting, and and it just happens so quickly. So you don't have to use your brain on those activities as much, which is really quite cool. So this part of the report that comes directly from the state of fundraising in the AI era from the Blackbaud Institute is, showing that 80, shows that 82% of fundraisers surveyed are using AI in their daily workflows. So, and the adoption of these, platforms are continually increasing from one year to the next. And on this slide, in particular, a vast majority of organizations are using AI tools at a higher rate than they ever have before. So content creation, note creation, like I mentioned, that's what I've been doing. Finally, Copilot and prompts are my friend. Right? It's taking me a hot minute, but I'm working on it. And then to a lesser extent, you can see here on this graph, the the or some organizations are leveraging AI for prospecting, well screening, and AB testing. And I feel like your little survey at the beginning about analytics kinda speaks to that a little bit. And then, increasing over time, we're also looking at chatbots, predictive donor behavior tools, etcetera. And those aren't being quite used quite as much, but they're definitely getting there. Right? So, the next thing that I wanna talk about as far as the direct, the report of direct marketing in in the world right now is going to be this group, which is Gen z. So Gen z is actually now also on the scene, of course. And this group is kind of the third piece of what the report shares in having an effect on how things are being done. Right? So, according to the Blackbaud Institute report on Gen z at the table, that was one that just came out a few months ago, I think it was. It was at BBCon. So just before BBCon, I think. 84% of Gen z say that they support causes, whether through donations, purchases, or activism. 84%. That's quite amazing, actually, of those surveyed. The report also says that Gen Zers in the work workforce, in particular, are bringing a strong desire to give back through their employers. So they're really going gangbusters with those volunteer programs and their matching gift programs. In fact, eighty nine to 92% of Gen Zers participate on the in those kind of programs when their workplace offers them, which is amazing. Never got that kind of participation when I did a combined fund drive at my university. Just saying. Right? And for those of you sending out SMS messages and wondering if anyone gets them and might ever reply, Gen z will. They're apparently, they are according to giving by generation, the 2024 update in Giving USA, Gen z are significantly more likely than older generations to respond to text messages. Look at that. The rest of us are just delete, block, but no. Gen Z are actually responding. And also a tip from one of my colleagues who did a BBcon presentation on this topic. She actually shared another tip, which is if you are wondering how to reach this group of people, hire some of them to work for you. When they're working for you, they will be dedicated, and they will be trying to fundraise for from Gen z. And they'll help you learn how to reach out to this audience. Rather than trying to learn all the ways you could do it in the old ways, you can hire some of these folks to work for you, and they will help you. So just using these channels, you really have to fit into their lifestyle, and they're doing things that are really definitely out of the norm. You have to consider sometimes you may not always know they're giving, but you definitely wanna meet them on the channels they're in. Just they consider $5 to in the McDonald's drive through to the Ronald McDonald House, their gift. Right? So that is a whole another way of doing business. Right? So very different than, generations in the past. Alright. So now we're done with the direct marketing part. We're gonna move into the persona insights and kinda how they got built. But before we do that, just wanna take a quick moment to ask if any questions have come up, Ray, that you think I should answer. I have not had any questions. I did encourage in the chat, but I do want to re encourage any of you. And I actually have I don't know if this is a question or an observation or, Marleen, something you might could add some color to. But I work very, closely on our agentic AI solution, the development agent, agents for good, which has been a lot of that buzz. You were talking about a lot of the. things we're talking about. I'm you I felt seen when you said we're we're we're talking a lot about that these days, and I know I'm the one. One of the things that I've observed, because I also work with our analytics and data intelligence group, is, among those really smart early adopters with the AgenTik AI development agent, they're simultaneously beginning to take on a lot of data cleanliness and data improvement tools from our analytics solutions area because. they sort of the the the more progressive operators understand that, like, the data these AIs will be working off of, the better it is, the better the results are gonna be. So sort of interestingly, I've seen an uptick in engagements with those solutions because people are trying to prepare themselves for this new AI ecosystem. I I just wondered if you've noticed anything like that or had any additions for that. Beautiful. Definitely. We're two slides away from that, actually. Absolutely. Okay. Well, there we go. I talk about that specifically, but, good data begets good data. That's kind of the rule. And it's always been the rule. So definitely. keep your data clean. I I will help all of it. I did get one question just now, so maybe we'll knock this. one out really quickly. Yes. Christina, so this is all part of the Blackbaud Institute report, supporters insight. And it's gonna be published here, I think, in the next few weeks, I believe. Yes. Haven't got an exact date. But, so there is a website that we'll put in this chat, I think, at some point, but it's also in this deck. So when, Ray sends a deck out to everyone, it'll be on there, the link to that. It's there's a resource, for all the Blackbaud Insight, documentations. All those reports are all in one place, and you can just get access to that. And so anything new that comes up in the future, you'll have access to as well as past reports. So good question. Yes. And so to clarify, today is a sneak preview of the report. that's forthcoming, and you will receive an email with that in it. But I'm gonna go ahead and put this link to just the Blackbaud Institute in there so you, know broadly. where it's coming from. Excellent. Thanks. Alright. Alright. Carry on. Okay. And then I'm gonna also turn off my camera real quick because I keep seeing and I have to turn to look at my notes. So I'm gonna do real quick. Hide my camera. Okay. So now we're gonna talk about what is a persona. So let's move forward on that. What is a persona? And then I'll get to Ray's question here in a second. So personas are literally just wait. Oops. Sorry. Wrong slide. So we are doing it on two screens. Okay. So personas are data driven but fictional representations of your segments. Right? So this is gonna describe your demographics of the core supporter segments. It's gonna describe supporter motivations, channel preferences, and even personal details like hobbies. It can just give you a fuller picture of your donors beyond just the dollar amount they give. Don't know about you, but back in the day when I was doing fundraising, last gift amount, largest gift amount was my friend best friend. Right? I don't have to do that all the time anymore because these kind of, information points will really help you go outside of those in addition to adding those. Right? So, personas really allow you to engage with your constituents in more personal ways. They recreate the benefits of many of the one on one communication style, but it it allows you to do it en masse. Right? So personas also allow you to more effectively segment the highest impact supporters who need your team's individualized attention. So one thing we're always talking about in analytics when I work with my modeling clients is we're boiling the ocean for you. We're bubbling those people up to the top to help you focus. Right? And that's what this is doing as well, for both marketing and for fundraising. Right? So whether you're talking about communication channels or you're talking about fundraising. Personas also provide a deeper understanding of your supporters. And with that information, you're able to write appeals that are really more targeted toward that particular group. Acknowledgements and stewardship activities can be affected by this. Communications just across all your channels of engagement, right, can play can be changed and altered and updated. So how do we create these and, you know, how do we make sure they're good? Well, that was this is addressing that question that Ray just asked, which is you need a clean database. For sure. Like I said, good data begets good data. So if you have, for example, people without addresses, they're not gonna get good successful information. We need addresses. Right? That's always gonna be a thing. But other thing out there's other additional things besides address. But, you know, you're just gonna wanna get rid of the deceased folks. You're gonna wanna make sure people who are active in your file and all those types of things you do with your clean data. In addition, you're gonna wanna know, that, you know, you don't wanna do the infamous assume. So nobody wants to assume because of what that means. Right? So just because you think something is predictive does not mean it is. So, for example, you might have a strong intuition that the alumni at your university, who are part of the Greek system are good donors. But this may or may not be true. So the data may point it out as a cluster of related factors that predicts their giving or not, but you can't make that assumption. Right? So just because you think that's a trend doesn't mean it is. And then, of course, not all variables are the same. There's, different types of information points that will, be useful and not useful. So I like to think of the well, I never can say this word, endogenous. And and anyway, that word that's right here on your on your presentation, screen. That, it those those are definitely, like, I envision a dog chasing his tail, kind of variables. So you wanna watch out for those. So, for example, the majority of donors to a woman's college might all be female, but that doesn't mean that they're more likely to give just because they're female. Right? So that's a correlation that can be a little dangerous. And then, of course, give the correlation does not equal causation. So if you find that, like, most of your donors are born before 1965, that might be valuable insight, but not if your entire constituent population are that age. Right? So that's not gonna help you. So it's personas aren't just going to be telling you who your best owners are, which maybe is the role of some of the other modeling tools that we have. Personas are trying to show you what makes the segments different from one another, and that's super important. In addition, strong historical data is super important, making sure that you have more than just one year of giving, more year of information, accurate information. What makes a one to one donor different than a truly committed supporter, maybe who's been a sustainer for many years, that type of thing. And then we just, in general, can't get enough data. So the more data you have, the more we can use to create these these tools. And, additional data, like an age append, kind of the services Ray was pointing out. Right? So those are the kind of things that address any sort of things that give you more information. Consumer marketing data, econometric data, all that kind of stuff can come into play. So the more you have these things in play, the more accurate your results can be. And then as far as what the actual personas are using as indicators, these are some of the indicators. It's not just address. Like, people always think, oh, it's their location, location, location. Certainly comes into play, but, there's a lot of different things that come into play. So it's broken out by three kinda main indicator areas, demographics, which I'm not gonna go over each of these in the interest of time. You guys kinda know what they are, so don't need to tell you what age is. But age is also connected to, investments. Right? So if the older you are, the more likely it is you've had time to build a four zero one k. Right? So the more likely it is you might have more wealth than someone else. Geography, your location, whether you're in a urban or suburban or a a rural area might change the kind of causes you support and how you are influenced. Gender, of course, female giving has been exceeding male giving for a number of years now, with the exceptionally happening during COVID, which is in the report. But that's another trend. And then household composition is gonna be things like, people with two or two people in the family are gonna be stronger donors possibly than a family with kids. Right? Because maybe they haven't had as much time or they don't have as much investments. Right? So, these are all kind of indicators. And then for inclination, we're looking at giving history. The longer somebody's been giving, the more likely it is they have some connections there, as well as just giving history to other organizations that are maybe like yours. Right? And then volunteering, of course, there's a direct correlation to people who volunteer and give their time that way to people that are also donating. And then community affiliations, whether they're, you know, part of the Key Club or the Masons or whatever those types of organizations are in your community that they're participating in. Civic civic, political, social, recreational, all those things could come into play with inclination. And then finally, wealth and assets. This is another big piece. You know, folks with higher incomes tend to have more ability to give. Right? That's a no brainer. And net worth, we're looking at, you know, folks that, you know, the correlation with with a sense of wealth and ability to support philanthropy because, these are all just ways that really indicate that they could be strong supporters. Alright. So the last thing I wanna point out about the personas before I actually talk about the personas specifically is kind of the development of these. And now this is the science part, and, I am not a statistician. So I always like to say start with that caveat. But, there is a real science and real, powerful statistical methods that go behind creating these. And this is true for all of our modeling, packages, but for the personas as well. So some of the things that come into play with personas specifically, these are the three types. If you are a data person and you know all these things, I am not gonna go into deep deep informations. But, basically, cluster segmentation, they're kind of self explanatory a little bit. But cluster segmentation is using machine learning to, identify similarities with large volumes of data. Meta meta analysis is gonna be a statistical method used to combine findings from multiple datasets. So when you're looking at different things, finding those discrepancies and making sure that things are precise and that you're looking at the right people. And then identity resolution takes it a step further. That's a process where you're accurately associating data with a specific individual. And so, Blackbaud actually partners with a firm called LiveRamp, and that's kind of a newer development that we've done the last few years. And, it's really helping to connect things beyond just ZIP codes. Right? There's a lot of other fields that are used now to identify people and make sure that we've got the right the right John Smith in New York City, right, when we're looking at their things. So, again, I took stats in college, so I let the statisticians and analysts on the team deal with this. But but these are in play, and these are part of what we do. Alright. So next our next section is gonna be to dive into the personas specifically. And before we do that, I guess, let's just throw out if there's any questions real quick. I'm happy to see if there's anything that anybody has question about. Hopefully, not too much on the methodology stuff. I showed the wrong one. No worries. Any questions? Here. There were there was. Where did it go? Did I lose a. question somehow? Did I delete a question? I swear there was a question. No worries. Well, Alright. you can ask it next time, the next break. Got it. Alright. So, hopefully, everybody kinda understands where all this data is coming from, how it gets put together. But now we're gonna talk about the personas specifically that are created here at Blackbaud. If I can get my side to go. Oh, there we go. Sorry. Again, clicking two things. So alright. So there are seven personas. They're right here listed, and I'm gonna go over each one briefly. But each persona highlights basically six primary areas. They talk about who they are, which includes things like education and family experience, net worth, where they live, kinda what makes them tick is one of the things. Philanthropic style, so what inspires them to give, continue to give, and when to give. What they care about, what are their primary philanthropic interests, how they give, what marketing and social media channels will you find them participating in, what resonates, that's gonna be additional underlying motivations for engagement and messaging preferences. And, an example message is also included with each persona. So it's an example how you might communicate with this person to kind of put that in action so you can kinda see how that works. So remember, the personas provide insight on how someone might interact with your organization as a donor. But, again, with my analogy of us bubbling people up to the surface, and boiling the ocean for you, we're bubbling people up who have this interest, who use social media in a certain way, who have more or less capacity to give or not give at this time, who give to Giving Tuesday, to attend events, whatever, all those different things. Right? And you get to decide how you communicate and use that data in your fundraising campaigns and, continue to build those relationships based on what you continue to learn about your donors. So personas don't survive in a vacuum. Right? So you don't just get them and just use them and do a bunch of communications, not care about them anymore. They get you started and provide opportunities for impact, opportunities for engagement, further engagement. You know, they take you to that next step. Right? So they're the beginning part of how you can do some of this. And, of course, you can use it on an ongoing basis, but it's definitely part of the, the identification part of things. So on that note, let's start diving into the individual personas. First, we have our world changers. Here we go. So world changers, I'm just gonna highlight a couple of things on here because you can read this later. And there's a lot of detail here. So the things about world changers, they are typically highly educated. They're big picture thinkers. They're loyal large scale donors. They prefer to give online and through the phone. And messages that appeal to them are when you're emphasizing reason and demonstrating large scale impact. So they wanna make a big difference. Right? So that is definitely part of this group. Alright. The next group is going to be oops. I skipped one. Yeah. Movers and shakers. So the movers and shakers are, achievement oriented. They want to contribute and feel valued. They, give very active or they're very active on social media, and that's how they give. They they like facts and figures that demonstrate resource efficiency. I actually think, immediately of several people. Maybe you do. Maybe it's my public broadcasting background. I start thinking of people who have this MO. Right? So you you know these folks. Right? So this is giving you a few highlights of what these what make these people tick. The next one is let me go to busy bees. So the busy bees are going to be younger family oriented folks. They give sporadically and during campaigns. They prefer giving online, and they really enjoy the personal stories and anecdotes that show impact. That's what inspires them to be giving and what resonates with them as a donor. The next group is the happy go luckies. And this group is moderately urban, so that's one big piece about them. They are risks takers who like newer, less mature causes. Again, I feel like I have relatives who are this already. I'm already thinking about relatives. They are open to progressive change, and, they like to one time events and emotional anecdotes. And they their gratitude and encouragement for impact. So they like to know that their impact made a difference. And then the next group is going to be the easy goers. These folks are traditional risk averse. They prefer stability and those established causes. They, gives they give slight they have a slight preference for male, and they don't have much of a social media following. They they like achieving something big even with a small contribution. And, again, I'm now thinking of my father-in-law who's 83. Well, here's my $50, and that's all I can do. I've been trying to get him to give a plan gift to this place that he's been talking about. Anyway, but that this is that. And then the next group is the solid citizens, and they are gonna be dependable supporters who value lasting improvements over feel good fixes. They give during sudden needs or at year end, so they're gonna be, folks that are gonna be your holiday giving. And their extreme preferences for mail and phone, and their resonate that what resonates with them is emotional appeals that are sincere, not traumatic, especially for local traditional causes. And then next, we have everyday people. This is our last group. And these folks are highly patriotic. They prefer causes that reflect traditional values. They have a low social media activity. And then, they also have personal they they resonate with personal connections through family or community. So you can see how these are all very different approaches and sorry. My notes just disappeared. All very different approaches and and just different insights on how you might communicate and steward these folks. So part of these personas, as you saw, include hello. We're going back to what we talked about earlier, donor channels. So I know I talked about direct marketing, but I just wanted call attention to the fact that donor channels are part of your personas. Right? So in addition to, some of the information that we've gotten on the report about just marketing in general, there's also some details about giving and age and some of the things that are coming up and point being pointed out through these personas about giving, through donor channels. So one thing that this particular, demonstration or this particular graphic is showing you from the report is that younger donors prefer to use online. Well, hello. Duh. We all knew that. Right? But something interesting that's happened, in the last few years, donors aged 55 to 74 have shifted to online. In fact, more donors in the 55 to 74 age group gave online more, only more than a a flight only, which is a change from the past. That not used to not be the case. And then, again, through all the ages, both channels are the best performers. In addition to the data that's showing here about different ages and what they're they're, giving is online or offline, There's also some reports, about retention in the report. And one thing that's really interesting is retention was nearly identical for online giving and offline giving. It was online was 44% retention, so one year over another, and offline was 48%. Where it jumped significantly was if you had folks giving in both channels. That would jump up to 75% retention. So that dual, combination omnichannel thing is definitely in play. And then offline donors on average give an average of a $112 a year, or the following year after their first gift, whereas online donors give an average of a $115. And the multichannel, wait for it, $409. A lot more. So, again, maybe that's because they're making multiple gifts and they're looking at the total. That detail is not specifically in the report I was looking at, but that's in the Supporter's Insight report that will be coming out. So, again, although online donors give more per gift than offline donors, they, they actually do retain at a lower rate than their offline donor. So you may keep people longer if they're a direct mail donor, but you might get them more often as an online donor. Right? So whatever. And then multiple channel donors, while fewer in number, are definitely still the most valuable. So the takeaway overall, all this stuff about donor channels is just engaging donors across multiple portfolios or where multiple platforms will engage, will yield the highest return on investment. Right? Your ROI will be best if you do everything, a little bit of everything, which is, of course, what you need to do to reach all these people. And then the last bit around, the personas and and how you can use them this way and kind of what they're kinda telling you is timing of giving. So timing of giving is gonna is is definitely expressed in those channels. Like, you saw the end of year giving. Well, some of the Blackbaud Institute reports have been expressing this over time consistently for the last few years that one fifth of all charitable gifts happened in December. So, that's still the case, and it continues to be a case. So you're gonna wanna use the personas, to apply to your end giving campaigns. Right? The same is true with the, GivingTuesday and GivingDays. So those universities and k through 12 schools that do GivingDays, those types of things are also very specific. You might have certain personas that respond better to those types of solicitations and those timings of giving. Alright. So now we are at another break point. And channel and timing are part of the persona's success. And one thing before I answer a question, if, Ray, if there's any questions, I do wanna just let you know that with my clients that I work with who have these personas, they often will have well, they do. It comes with it. They often get channel information as well as, gift array information that comes with that package, just so you know. So there's things like scores and ratings around likelihood to be a sustainer, what their likelihood and their influence is about giving through direct mail or giving through online giving, In addition to, whether they give through GivingTuesday or they give as you know, they they're philanthropic. You know? All those types of things that, that kinda give you a score that you can use to take to take just that one little piece, like channel or that little piece, like, giving preferences timing out of the persona as its own thing that you can use. So just FYI. And then gift array, of course, you can build bass strings around and things like that. So okay. Any questions real quick, Ray Borkman? Yeah. We've got one here I just pushed up to the. screen. So for direct mail, do you know as an example? I ahead. think a postcard with the web page is is a is a direct mail. That's my personal feeling about that. Anything that has postage that you're sending physically to someone. So that's all part of the stacking of the multiple channels. Right? So they get that postcard. They go on Facebook. They see the thing. There's a TikTok video. There's a, you know, all the different things kind of combine to to remind them that you're out there for them to support. Great question. And as long as there's a QR code and they know how to give, that's the biggest, most important part. Yeah. So now that we've viewed everything about personas and you can inform you kind of understand the strategies a little bit, I'm just gonna spend the last few minutes here showing you some ideas of how to put these in action. And I started off with this guy, which, I kept debating on whether or not I wanted to use this or not, but I love it. It's so fun. So I completely went outside of the Blackbaud personas and had AI generate some wonderful little personas from some of the information that I had with all this stuff from the report. And I thought this was fascinating. So this is really demonstrating that you can use AI to kind of help tailor some of this stuff. And one of the things, you can see that each one has been given a bit more stereotypical type of title, but it just clearly shows what you're gaining from the information. So the first group is the, tailored stewardship journey for the mission driven millennial persona. Right? The optimized direct mail strategy for reliable retiree, and then the hyper personalized website experience for a community focused volunteer, and then AI powered engagement for a Gen z emerging supporter. There it's just really kinda showing you all the pieces that are kinda coming into play with this information and how you can focus. And and then segmenting donors by persona allows you to tailor the communication. So as these things are indicating, you're you're kind of identifying a few a few major things, and this is all in the report as well. The who, the when, the how, and the what. So the who is telling you that you can craft messaging that aligns with the group's motivations, preferences, behaviors. The when is telling you, again, the optimal timing, the duration, the frequency of outreach. The how is addressing how you break through the noise of the channel, maybe with your specific message that's capturing their attention because of their persona type. Right? And then the what is guiding your personal message that speaks to each persona's unique motivations. So, and this example also shows how AI specifically could be implemented as a tool to to really target some audiences. So you can see at the bottom of the first one, it says AI generative AI creates micro stories. Agenic AI tailors website tone. So cool. This made me excited because a lot of these things you hear, and you're like, how in the world would I implement that? Right? At least that's me. And this gives me clear ideas of what that is. And and by the way, CTA is, a call to action, in case you're wondering what CTAs are because I did, and that's what it means. But just imagine that you could have an AI agent on your website that actually tailors its tone, vocabulary, and calls to action based on this person that they're talking to. Right? So they know their persona, and they're able to tailor that. Not just, you know, simply based you don't have to base genetic or agentic AI just on which button is clicked or which page is visited, which is scary to all of us. I know because I talked about this at BBcon with people. Everyone's terrified, right, so of doing it wrong and and making the donor upset. So, anyway, so this this, I thought, was some great ideas to kinda think about how you can play with these things. And lastly, this next slide is kinda giving you some of the highlights and specific action items here. So looking at understanding, what inspires your donors to engage, you, you know, you wanna connect meaningfully with your supporters through direct marketing and just really understand what inspires them. So donor personas empower direct marketers to focus on the supporters that are most likely to give. And then the personas also reveal how donors prefer to give, communicate, and stay connected. Right? And whether a donor first connects with your organization online or in person, a consistent omnichannel approach strengthens those relationships and drives the long term support. And then reaching donors across their favorite platforms makes every touch point count. That's to me huge. Gen z entering the workforce in waves brings this new energy and digital fluency to the giving landscape. And their comfort with texting and, it's just all a powerful opportunity for long term engagement. So it's important to start working with that generation now. I can tell you in some of my, modeling calls with clients, we work with plan giving likelihood scores, and Gen Z's popping up on there as possible plan giving prospects. I I find it crazy. I have a I have a 25 year old. She was born in '21. So or o one. So it's crazy to think of her giving a planned gift, but some of them are really good with money. My son, who's 26, you know, he has more in savings than I ever had in my twenties. Right? These kids are savvy. Anyway, and then data driven insights challenge fundraisers to reimagine how to connect with donors, just helping us understand their needs, their behaviors. And this is good for organizations and our industry. Right? We we need to get better at all this and doing it faster and more efficiently. And then the emerging role of AI, of course, is intensifying the need to develop these personas. They help the generative AI, and they also help, lay the groundwork for, any sort of other AI powered tools that are to come in the future. And finally, just in closing, I just wanna just kinda do a little thing here. Let's just kinda end. And your your little fireworks earlier made me think. Let me so, personas just offer a practical framework for you to shape your fundraising channels, methods, and messages that reach the right audiences, and most importantly, inspire their support. So it's not like generically putting people in boxes. We're trying to think of ways that we can inspire our audience to to support us. So, hopefully, that answered questions. Hopefully, got you kind of interested in thinking about all the ways you can do this, and and, you know, just learning more because that's where we're at. Always learning more. And also, of course, excited for the report. Yes. Absolutely perfect. And let's see. Yeah. There's some of the information on the report, and we let's see if we can chin up some more questions. By the way, Marleen, I actually did the fireworks thing while I was offstage. So in, an sorry. in an in an opportunity to buy myself some buy people time to ask more questions, I'm gonna see if I can recreate it now. Yeah. Look at that. Oh, That's you go. that's a little. fan that's a little fancy thing that I've added to my little nerdy presentation. So a different hand gestures. Like, I think if I do the thumbs up, it'll give me the old thumbs up there. So Oh, cool. yeah. Yeah. I want those. that? You need. to show me how to I that. will absolutely show you how to do it. And it has been moderately successful because I do believe we got at least one more question. So let me pop this up here. Alright. If an organization is trying to avoid the use of AI, especially with sensitive donor information, how would you recommend developing these personas on a large scale? So remember the data that we use and when we're building those. So if you have Blackbaud build the models for you and we do the personas, I like to say we know and we don't know. I don't know. It's anonymized aggregated data. K? So we we you know, I when I talk about I'm gonna put myself on camera because I always do my little visuals with my clients. If you think about, people live in this zip plus four. People are a certain age. They belong in this bubble, this aggregate. People are, you know, shopping online. They're, you know, they're using, credit cards. They're doing thousands upon thousands of things that go into some of these these types of models, right, and these personas. And when those are all aggregated, anonymized, and then we know, oh, they do one, two, 3, they are this. They do three, four, 5, they are this. Right? So we're plucking it like that. So it's not necessarily sensitive donor information. And then giving history, of course, is known. They give. You know? But, you know, if you have people you wanna exclude from these types of things, board members, things like that, then definitely do that. But that's always been the case. Right? Like, who do you send direct mail to? Who gets the annual fund appeal? Who gets the email blast that we're sending? I mean, it's always been that way. So this is just another way you're doing your regular job and then making sure to exclude people that maybe you don't want involved in it. Right? That I mean, that's and then I have clients who like a university who won't give me faculty and staff records when we do their modeling project. Fine. Don't do that. Don't give us that. That's an example. Or, you know, our patient our grateful patient solutions. We we don't put patients in razor's edge and do any of this stuff with them. We have a different process for grateful patient patients. So here, there's all sorts of rules and, ways your organization can do this. But you're you're gonna want to, I feel, because the the scalability of this is so huge. There you could just access so many people and do so many things at once and get it so personable that, to not do it, you're gonna be missing opportunities. At least, how that's how I felt about it. But I get it. It's scary. If I was working at nonprofit, I might be, like, hunkering down really trying to figure it out. Yeah. Good question. one of my that's one of my big things right now is, like, we've as a company at Blackbaud, we've been on this AI journey for, like, a couple of years now. Right? Right. And and I remember the trepidation twenty four months ago, but I have to remind myself to carry that empathy with me when I'm talking about this to peep with people for whom it's a little doer and a little scarier. And I'm not necessarily insinuating that in this particular. question. No. I'm get you. saying that, you know, I am constantly having to remind myself that just because, you know, I've had both feet in this for a while now doesn't necessarily mean that you know, that just means I need to be, like, sort of I need to con continue to remind myself to, like, level set, like, where people are and meet them where they are instead of. getting so enthusiastic about something that I can't you know, I'm stumbling over myself when I'm like, oh, wait a minute. If we're not on the same page yet, then that's so this was a I didn't look at this one very closely. Yeah. No. This is, this is a part of I believe it's still called the direct marketing analytics package, Mhmm. that we have here at Blackbaud. So it is an additional modeling type of project. So, yeah, there's a cost associated to that. And, Sarah, if you'd like to I'm sorry, I was just gonna say if. you'd like to learn any more about that, Nate is a good good contact. He can get you the information on, like, you know, who to talk to. He can connect you with the person who can give you an idea of, like, what what's involved in that if you're interested. Well and if you have a big enough shop and you have, you know, data scientists on staff, you can you can do this yourself. We're using some of the things that I shared with you today. Mhmm. I mean, it's all kinda outlined here what's done, and it's in the report as well. But a lot of people can't don't have the staff like that on board. But, you know, I've worked with major hospitals and major college you know, re regional national colleges that will definitely have that kind of support and could do that themselves. They don't need to use these. So but I think they're they they've been very handy with the clients that I that use them. So, again, both the personas and then as well as the additional scores that they get to identify channel likelihood score type things and gift arrays. They use that a lot, with a lot of success. So I've seen it work really well for folks. Beautiful. So. I think we've wrapped on the questions. So what I am. going to say is, quickly, a reminder that everyone is going to get an email in about twenty four hours with a link to the on demand recording of this presentation. So if you'd like to review it, you'd like to share it with other stakeholders within your organization, you'll be able to do so. And then in a few, I think, ten days from now, I don't quote me, but as soon as this report is published to the Blackbaud Institute, we're just gonna shoot you a real simple email that says, hey. You attended the webinar about this publication. Wanted to let you know it's live. Here's the link. So you'll see that come to you here shortly after today's preview. And I appreciate everyone attending today. Marleen, I appreciate you for being here. You have any, last, comments before we wrap this thing up? Don't be afraid.