Attentive.ly Partners With WealthEngine, Here’s Why

WealthEngine is excited to partner with Attentive.ly to bring wealth intelligence together with social engagement. Hear from Attentive.ly CEO, Rosalyn Lemieux, on why they decided to join forces with us.

How were you first introduced to WealthEngine? 

We were first introduced to WE at the Nonprofit Technology Conference. With data driven fundraising on the rise, they immediately caught our attention with their innovative solutions around data driven marketing in an area (nonprofits) with few players. We were drawn to WE’s forward-thinking, yet incredibly practical, use of social data for modern fundraising, and have come to see WE as a key leader in the fundraising data space, who is also used by many of our customers.

When it comes to your current customers, what does the demand look like for solutions to help personalize communication?…

WealthEngine is excited to partner with Attentive.ly to bring wealth intelligence together with social engagement. Hear from Attentive.ly CEO, Rosalyn Lemieux, on why they decided to join forces with us.

How were you first introduced to WealthEngine?

We were first introduced to WE at the Nonprofit Technology Conference. With data driven fundraising on the rise, they immediately caught our attention with their innovative solutions around data driven marketing in an area (nonprofits) with few players. We were drawn to WE’s forward-thinking, yet incredibly practical, use of social data for modern fundraising, and have come to see WE as a key leader in the fundraising data space, who is also used by many of our customers.

When it comes to your current customers, what does the demand look like for solutions to help personalize communication?

In our own client base, we see the demand for personalization to increase engagement with the goal of driving action. Specifically, our customers are looking for ways to reverse an industry wide decline in email conversions through greater personalization. They’re also looking to boost engagement on social and improve donor retention by using social listening to drive action on fundraising, advocacy, etc. through increased engagement.

Donor retention is an ongoing problem for many nonprofits. The 2014 Fundraising Effectiveness Project report evaluated data from 3,576 nonprofits which showed that the median donor retention rate was 43% in 2013. That means only 43 % of 2012 donors made repeat gifts to the surveyed nonprofits in 2013. The report also cited that that for every 100 donors gained, 102 were lost through attrition. That is, 102% of the donors gained were offset by lapsed donors.

Broadly speaking, donor revenue often depends on how engaged an audience is with their programs. The more engaged, the higher donations per-supporter. Retaining donor engagement is, in some ways, more difficult than recruiting new donors because of higher expectations around personalization. Social listening gives organizations unprecedented insight into their donors’ lives and an opportunity for richer engagement. Combined with CRM data revealing prior-interactions and 3rd party data like demographics and wealth — organizations can put together a sophisticated picture of each donor, including their propensity and capacity to give.

We’ve found that social data enriched with social listening enables organizations to better engage their donors in three simple ways, which we wrote about this week in our blog post “Social Listening is Key to Donor Retention.”

1. Know which donors are on social. Just knowing if they are active on social, their Klout score, age, preferred network, etc. isn’t enough. You also need to listen and turn unstructured social chatter into actionable insights.
2. Create actionable insights. By listening to what a person is saying on social media, your organization can really understand which issues resonate with them by using relevant search terms…
3. Provide personalized multi-channel responses at scale. When a donor talks about your issue on Twitter or Facebook, it’s key to have the ability to easily segment and respond.

Even simple, personalized donor communications like thanking donors or favoriting their posts on social, pays off. According to Attentive.ly client Project Hope, “We’ve never seen so many donors thank us for following them on Twitter – it was very exciting to see that level of donor engagement!”

What do you think the biggest advantage is for fundraisers who integrate Attentive.ly & WealthEngine?

Understanding a donor’s ability to give combined with social listening gives modern fundraisers clear insight on who to spend time with and the best ask. With WE, you can easily see the net worth of a given prospect — or even build a new prospect list from scratch. Social listening allows you see what these prospects are talking about on Twitter and Facebook, and most importantly, if they are posting about your area of focus. Who wouldn’t want to know if a prospect for new or increased giving is talking about your work, and best of all, has the ability to give twice as much?

What do you predict will be the most valuable strategy for consumer engagement in 2015 that is just emerging now?

Influencers. We’ve known for years that organizations have influencers on their lists and that those folks have a large reach. We took a deeper look at our own data  — 90 nonprofit clients representing nearly 20M supporters. And the result was clear: Nonprofits can massively extend their reach through the social networks of their supporters (see infographic).

We found that the top five percent of influencers (those with the greatest reach) on an organization’s email list can reach an average of 34 million people, or 85 percent of the network’s total reach. This is 200 times greater than the number of people sitting in the organization’s CRM. As such, influencers should be a part of your 2015 marketing mix because they are best positioned to drive action with your call to action and content.

Where are the big opportunities with data driven fundraising?

Through unprecedented connectivity and the availability of social data, nonprofits are sitting on a wealth of social data about their supporters and donors, and there are influencers, advocates, and “friendraisers” hiding out in everyone’s email list that could share your message with their networks.

Donor driven fundraising on social media is on the rise. It’s important to recognize that your social network is a financial asset.  One of the most powerful resources to increase fundraising are you existing donors. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people that regularly give to your organization and many of which have robust social networks that could help meet your next fundraising goal. The key is to engage with these existing donors in a way that persuades them to recruit their friends, family, and coworkers, which ties back to personalization.

While some of that giving might be the result of a few wickedly clever fundraising posts from an organization, we believe that a well crafted, personalized ask for supporters to engage and recruit their own friends will help attract and persuade donors that may otherwise not be receptive to giving. As important as it is to get past donors to give again, you want to increase the pool of existing donors and social word of mouth has proven to be successful.

What was the deciding factor for you when it came to partnering with WealthEngine?

The partnership made a lot of sense because combining social listening with wealth information provides core data points required for modern fundraising. Utilizing both pieces eliminates the guess work of what to ask and who to ask. With the growing demand for data driven fundraising, and few leaders in the space, it was clear that partnering with WE was a natural choice.

Want a demo of WealthEngine to see how WE can help you with audience development, marketing personalization and wealth insights? Share your contact information and we’ll be in touch soon.