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What to Do Now to Maximize Holiday Spending This Year

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The current retail landscape presents many challenges that can be difficult to manage including decreased customer growth, little transaction growth, growing competition, shifts in spending, and unfavorable demographics. With a rapidly approaching holiday season and only 114 days until Black Friday it can be daunting trying to develop a successful strategy to overcome these challenges.

It’s no surprise that using data and analytics can dramatically impact your revenue, but analytics can only go so far if your data is vague or incomplete. Having complete, rich customer profiles will provide a stronger foundation for your analytics, and thus a stronger foundation for your marketing and sales strategy.

How can you enrich your customer data? Conduct a wealth screening to gain transformational insight into customers and prospects. A screening appends data to your customer database so you can better segment your database and determine who to prioritize in your marketing and sales efforts. This insight is helpful to not only identify your best customers, but to uncover those individuals who may show potential for additional business. You may be missing out on potential opportunities because you don’t know who has the capacity to spend more.

A wealth screening supplies you with wealth, income, lifestyle, and affinity information on individuals. This includes net worth, income, assets, real estate, stock holding, charitable contributions and other financial related data as well as business and personal contact information. Having this information allows you to prioritize who you focus on to maximize revenue.

A screening also lets you determine what marketing messages should be sent to each customer and prospect segment. In regards to gearing up your campaigns for the holiday shopping season, certain segments of your consumer database will have the ability to spend more than others. These individuals should receive offerings for higher cost items, while those who don’t have the capacity to spend as much should be shown lower cost items or a promo code to use to be able to purchase a more expensive item.  

The insights you can gain from a wealth screening are undeniable. By better understanding your customers and prospects the analytics and data you use to inform your decision-making will be more valuable and more impactful.

Contact us to learn more about how you can use these insights to not only identify your wealthiest customers, but to uncover those with the capacity to spend more.

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Marketing to the affluent millennial consumer, everything you need to know

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Marketing to the affluent millennial consumer is going to be a key skill for luxury companies. There is constant chatter about millennials and whether they work hard or are hardly working. It is time to put this debate aside and pay attention.

Why are affluent millennials important to luxury companies?

Millennials are going to have a big impact on our economy.  This means that you cannot discount them and their growing wealth. The number of wealthy millennials in the United States is increasing. Millennials make up nearly a quarter of affluent U.S. households. Where does their wealth come from?

Their wealth, in fact, can be attributed to inheritance and early professional success in the technology industry.

Affluent millennials are a key consumer segment. Moreover, you might find yourself competing against other luxury brands for their attention. Marketing to affluent millennials will need a new outlook. If you haven’t already, it’s time to start shifting your thinking and strategy. Luxury consumers are more valuable when they are younger as they spend 1.5 to 2 times more than older affluents. Their expenditure applies to both luxury goods and services.

How can you successfully market to the affluent millennial consumer?

To truly engage the affluent millennial, you need to learn everything you can about them. This will help you personalize not only your messaging but also the whole customer experience. Here are some ways you can better understand and market to affluent millennials:

WealthEngine’s Step by Step guide: Marketing to the Affluent Millennial Consumer

Step 1

Start by understanding the impact of millennials on your business. Affluent millennials show greater brand loyalty than other generations. Therefore, luxury retailers should strive to understand this group and their spending habits. You should have a good idea of the economic benefit this group can bring to your specific brand.

WealthEngine’s client, an iconic US-based Luxury brand, realized an ROI of 340% in just 60 days of running a direct mail campaign. The campaign helped them gain nearly 3x more revenue per customer. They were able to accomplish this by targeting a list of 22,000 households with $5M or above in net worth, and specific demographic and lifestyle attributes. Thus, their understanding of their customer led to a marked increase in revenue.

Step 2

Next, you should build on the information you already have by appending wealth, income, lifestyle and affinity information. What interests or attributes do they have in common? Do a majority of them live in one area? This information is key because it’s specific to your brand and your millennial buyers.

WE Screen can add these key attributes to your existing data. Through screening, you can develop a holistic picture of your millennial customers. Marketing to the affluent millennial customer begins with understanding their capacity to spend and their interests.

Step 3

Once you know the characteristics of your top millennial buyers it’s time to find more just like them. WE Analyze creates a look-alike model. This means you can take your screening data and run it through analyze. The solution then finds common traits and patterns among your top customers in this segment. These patterns can help you find more prospects just like them.

For example, you can find out that your customers are all between the ages of 28 and 32. Further, you can find that they are all concentrated in the Bay Area. This helps you find more prospects like them. Your marketing can already be directed to the older, affluent millennial in the Bay Area. Doing this would help you find prospects you might have previously overlooked. Secondly, it prevents you from spending on younger millennials who may not relate as strongly to your brand.

Step 4

Marketing to affluent millennials cannot be a one size fits all solution. Therefore, you shouldn’t market to all affluent millennials with a single message. This will not resonate with some of them. Be smart and focus on the ones that most resemble your customers. Then, you should personalize your message to this group.

Step 5

Finally, don’t disregard the power of taking immediate action.  Consumers are 22% more likely to consider a brand as a result of real-time marketing. Your customers and prospects engage with your website and other channels on a daily basis. Identify affluent millennials are as they interact with your channels. This will help you personalize their experience on the fly.

For instance, let’s say your website sells luxury shoes ranging from $200- $2000. Knowing your customer’s spending capacity and interests will allow you to customize their experience. If you know that affluent millennial user 1 prefers high-heels in the $600 range, the website can start showing products in that range. If user 2 prefers sneakers in the $300 range, then the experience can reflect those preferences right when they open your website.

What Else You Need to Know

There is an added benefit to marketing to the affluent millennial consumer. Engaging with and cultivating them now can help you build long-term brand loyalty and lifetime customers.

Increase your understanding of the affluent millennial consumer, contact us to learn more.

Additional Articles:

Know Your Millionaire: Single Millennials

Redefining “Luxury Brand” for Your Luxury Marketing Strategy

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Five Tips for Maintaining Your Data

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Data is only your most important asset (after people, of course!) if it’s clean, consistent, accurate and complete.  If data is not maintained to these standards, any reporting or analytics done on top of it will be less than reliable.  We offer five tips below for keeping your data in top-notch condition so it forms a stable and reliable foundation for your fundraising and decision-making success.

  1. Know what data you intend to collect and enter into your DMS or CRM  This is particularly relevant as you recognize new data points that you want to collect, such as cell phone numbers, marital status, or date of birth.  These new data points should be tied to organizational goals.  For instance, if you have a goal to start a planned giving program, and have little DOB or age data, your strategy should include the collection of DOB’s.  You may need to edit all response mechanisms used in direct response and all web forms used in online engagement to include DOB as an optional or required field.  You may also want to budget for a DOB overlay to get more of this data populated as quickly as possible.  Whatever your tactics, specify in a data policies, procedures and style manual how the data should be entered, e.g., 3-14-72 or March 14, 1972.
     
  2. Limit access to your database to a need-only basis
    Your database should only be accessed by people who need to access it in order to do their job, both for security purposes and to preserve database integrity. Limit the ability to edit data to the few who will be held accountable for its accuracy.  All those with editing capability should be periodically trained in data entry procedures, and should have access to data policies, procedures and style manuals.
     
  3. Back up your DMS on a regular basis
    Your DMS should be backed up on a regular basis (preferably nightly) and the backup routines must be rigorous and tested periodically.  Every organization should test the restoration of their data from their backup to be absolutely sure the system is operating successfully and will serve them when needed.
     
  4. Audit your data periodically to test for:
    1. Completeness: Do all records contain the primary and essential information?  How many are un-solicitable for bad addresses? Is this number growing or shrinking?
    2. Consistency: Are data points entered in the same format?  Are they entered in the same fields in each record?  Are there spelling errors?
    3. Accuracy: Is the information included in each record correct? Are there spelling errors?
      Periodic audits will reveal where training needs to be implemented or improved, where resources need to be deployed to combat inconsistent or missing data and will provide key measures against which to measure progress.
       
  5. Codify data appropriately to ensure that it is useful
    Having thoughtful codes that can be used to segment and sub-segment the constituent population is essential to make the information you are collecting both reportable and queryable.  Having too few codes will prevent you from gleaning all the insight the data has to share; having too many codes will make the results of any analysis too granular and therefore unactionable.

Data is the essential ingredient all nonprofit fundraising programs are built on.  Be sure you are building on a firm foundation by taking the steps necessary to ensure your data is accurate, complete and consistent.  For more tips on data-driven fundraising, plus worksheets and more, check out our Growing Individual Gifts: An Analytical Approach to Data-Driven Success workbook.

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Five Ways to Use Data and Analytics to Increase Your Relevancy and Add Value to Your Fundraising

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With the explosion of using data and analytics in nonprofit environments, it’s no surprise that more effective methods of identifying and segmenting donors and prospects are emerging.  With the use of analytics and the appropriate sourcing of relevant and accurate data, nonprofits can know more than ever before about their donors and other constituents, and can more accurately target passionate supporters for acquisition.

Here are five ways your organization can benefit from the explosion of big data and analytics:

  1. Statistical Profiling
    Cluster analysis or statistical profiling, combined with data appends or screening services, allow nonprofits to develop accurate profiles of their best donors, and determine what characteristics they share. Understand detailed information, such as affluence, real estate profiles, age ranges, and more. Knowing these essential characteristics of your best donors allows you to message them in a more personal and targeted way, developing deeper and more meaningful relationships, and enhancing donor loyalty among this important group.
     
  2. Finding Look-Alikes
    Knowing the profile of your best donors does not end with enhancing your relationship with them. It can also help you to identify additional supporters, who look very much like your best supporters, but haven’t yet donated to your cause. These may be mined directly out of the depths of your database. Identify the specific profiles of these individuals and find who else in your database that matches that profile. By identifying this group of under-givers and/or never-givers, you can share specific messages that have resonated solidly with your best donors, and have the confidence that they will respond likewise.
     
  3. Attribute Appends
    Lifestyle attributes can further enhance your understanding of your constituency. If you haven’t yet discovered the power of appending interests in such categories as politics, the environment, pets, the arts or healthcare, you may be missing an excellent opportunity. Data providers are now able to append donor and prospect files with literally thousands of lifestyle attributes to enable you to segment your prospects by their interests, and message them in unique ways to stir their emotions.
     
  4. Prospect List Development
    If your nonprofit, like so many, needs to find new prospects, your data profile and lifestyle attributes can help. It is now possible to develop very targeted and specific prospect lists that match the characteristics of your current donors. Do you need to find prospects in the Los Angeles area who are environmentally aware, have pets and are avid cyclists? Perhaps you need to find those who are politically conservative, live in the Midwest and own multiple properties? Whatever your needs, consider the many and varied sources of data that can help you build a unique prospecting list that will match your needs exactly.
     
  5. Gift Analysis
    Now that you have the data you need to understand the passions and interests of your donors, make sure you are targeting them for an appropriate “ask.” The days of asking each prospect for the same “average” gift amount are over. Analytics allows you to quickly analyze the average gift size for those in each net worth or giving capacity strata, and target your new prospects to give at the rate at which their peers or look-a-likes are contributing. You will see your average gift amount soar.

With the prevalence and availability of data of all kinds, and the accessibility of analytics, whether done in-house or outsourced, there are no more excuses for a one-size fits all solicitation strategy.  Data can help you become more relevant, more authentic, more personal, and more successful.

Are you using data and analytics in your fundraising? Share your experiences in the comments below.

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How Customer Modeling Helps Buccellati

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There comes a point in time when every business decides to expand outside of its current geographic boundaries. Local banks becoming regional banks. A retailer opening new boutiques. A real estate agent targeting buyers and sellers in new neighborhoods.

Expansion comes after initial success

It comes from knowing that what you supply – product or service – is in demand. So instead of starting from scratch and employing the tactics you used when you first launched your business, invest in analytics and data modeling so you can laser focus on finding those prospective customers within the boundaries of your expansion who look like your current customers.

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10 Best Practices for Effective Email Campaigns

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Email marketing is an essential component of a successful fundraising strategy – it is relatively inexpensive, has immediacy, can be personalized and allows for testing and experimentation of messaging.  In short, it is a great way to engage and build relationships with constituents.   But to create, execute and optimize email campaigns you must pay attention to the details. 

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