Prospecting

Need a warm introduction to a prospective contact? Here’s how to leverage your Inner Circle, your closest contacts, to find out who they can connect you to.

As a nonprofit, you already know the importance of prospect research.  Our Inner Circle solution enables your connections to help you find your next best prospects. Anna Sheehan, Client Engagement Manager at WealthEngine, shares how you can leverage the people in your network to connect with those you want to reach.

What is the Inner Circle Solution?

Inner Circle is a feature within the WealthEngine platform that gives you ways to discover connections or relationships within your existing contacts.

With Inner Circle, you can identify connections who are closest to your organization and then expand out to who they know. Your inner circle could consist of board members, foundation and committee members. These Inner Circle members can help connect you to their colleagues, relatives, others they serve on boards with and acquaintances who might make great prospects.

Anna says, “These vital connections are key because they help you expand your network and grow your book of business.”

How does Inner Circle work?

The functionality is fairly simple. You would upload a list of your Inner Circle members into WealthEngine. The solution then generates a list of their connections. These connections could already be in your donor base.

You now have an effective way to reach out to them. This would be the perfect opportunity to ask your Inner Circle member for an introduction to this prospect.

In fact, your Inner Circle members are a great source for you to find top prospects. They already have a connection to your organization. This also means that they are invested in it. They could be open to helping you make a major gift ask depending on how close they are to the prospect.

Who should you put into Inner Circle?

The best candidates are obviously those who are closely connected to your nonprofit. This could be board members, foundation members, top donors,  development committee members, advancement committee members, etc.

Further, you can think more broadly about your own organization. Who would be able to help you? Who would be willing to introduce you to their connections? It is important to choose Inner Circle members who have the right connections. This means that they have to have connections with influential people who are willing to give.

Board members and former donors are obvious candidates. But, committee members can be appropriate as well. These could be development or advancement committee members.

What data should you enter into Inner Circle?

Data requirements for Inner Circle as similar to doing a wealth screening with WealthEngine. Fields such as first name, last name, street address, city, state and zip code can all be entered. Inner Circle also allows you to enter the name of a business. Anna strongly recommends uploading a company name. This can be useful even it is a past business. It helps to track down valuable connections among current and past colleagues.

Business information is also useful in instances where people have very common names. The more information you provide, the higher the match rate will be. For instance, if you have a John Smith in your database with the top P2G (propensity to give) score of 1, adding company information can help refine your search to the particular John Smith that has a connection to your board member.

Is there a limit on your Inner Circle list size?

There are no specific limits on how many connections you can upload to Inner Circle. However,  Anna recommends you limit your input in order to be more selective.

In other words, it is best to add people who not only have the right connections but are also willing to introduce them to you.

Additionally, when you receive results from Inner Circle, there is a bit of a manual process involved. You will have to look up connections and establish matches. Therefore, it can become tedious if your list has thousands of entries.

How big should a file typically be?

On average, your file should be about 5% of the size of your screening file. For instance, if you typically screen 10,000 records your Inner Circle list should consist of about 500 people.

How does Inner Circle make matches?

Inner Circle makes matches in one of three ways:

1. Business Contacts: current or past coworkers
2. Board Affiliations: foundations, nonprofit and corporate boards
3. Familial Connections: anyone that your Inner Circle member has shared a household with (in the present and in the past).

This proves to be an effective method to find close connections who could share the Inner Circle member’s affinity for your organization.

We had the case of a nonprofit client at WealthEngine running a capital campaign. The board really got involved and became incentivized to help out. They might have made their own financial contributions, but they wanted to know how else they could help.

This nonprofit then loaded these board members into Inner Circle. They also did a screening of their donors, some non-donors, and other constituents. They were able to find multiple connections. These connections were all highly rated prospects who had been previously overlooked. They all had high P2G scores and high gift-capacities. As a result, the organization was able to provide a list of 5 highly targeted prospects to each board member.

The nonprofit was able to benefit by finding high-quality prospects, especially ones they had overlooked. Connecting to them through a board member who they have a relationship with makes the touch that much more personal as well.

What potential issues should you look out for?

Using Inner Circle is fairly straightforward, especially if you have screened with WealthEngine before. However, there have been a few instances where the solution has found matches who are too close to the Inner Circle member. For instance, it could suggest a spouse or parent.

It is also important to load as much information as possible into Inner Circle as it can match with great precision. This is especially true for people with names that are common.

Best Practice Recommendations

• Use Inner Circle for many types of campaigns- capital campaigns, annual funds, major gifts, etc.
• Be selective with who you include in your Inner Circle list. It is definitely about quality over quantity of connections.
• Try to upload as much information as possible in order to increase match precision.
• Listen to our podcast to learn more:

Find new contacts

Set up your Inner Circle today to find high-quality prospects whom you may have overlooked. Take a minute to fill the form on the right and a WealthEngine rep will contact you very soon.

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At WealthEngine, we’ve been in the business for 20-plus years. We understand wealth at a granular level. We’ve been curating 250 million profiles, spanning 170 million households, and have made the data easily accessible for all to use.

3 Key Trends in Prospecting

Whether you are looking for your next best customer or your next best donor, we will continue empowering you, and help you meet your goals, by working in ways that are compatible with the dynamic nature of the data landscape. In this endeavor, I have seen that our industry is being shaped by the convergence of three unique trends:

1.   First, market segments comprised of millennials and Gen Zers are fundamentally different from those we have communicated with before. They come in with a very clear point of view and awareness. These qualities enable them to engage with products, people, technologies, and processes differently.

In the next decade, millennials and Gen Zers are going to form ⅔ of our population. They may not have the money yet since baby-boomers control 46% of their assets, but Gen Zers and millennials fundamentally control household spends. In fact, they control 70% of all discretionary spending. This indicates that they have a tremendous impact on what we do every single day.

2.   Second is the unbundling of services. This trend has a huge impact on almost every field. There’s been the unbundling of the hotel industry with AirBnB’s emergence, among other businesses that have followed a similar model. The success of companies such as Uber and Postmates are also prime examples of this trend. The sharing economy and emphasis on access to assets as opposed to ownership are all part of this unbundling.

3.   The third and most important trend is personalization. This trend affects practically every industry. Let’s consider a bank. People have been able to have unique experiences with their banking provider resulting in reduced churn by 10% to 30%, increase revenue by 30% to 40%, and increased engagement by two to three times.

While these figures are great, banks and financial institutions have to learn to engage with new generations as they operate and engage differently.

 

Changes in Prospecting and the Emergence of Prospect Automation

With these trends not only emerging but converging, I believe that the old ways of prospecting are fundamentally broken. The error-prone, manual creation process, engaging with clients in broad ways, and the “spray-and-pray” approach of reaching customers online, are just not very effective. These methods produce poor conversion rates and people stop caring. For example, almost everyone utilizes some form of marketing automation, whether it’s through online messaging or direct print mail marketing. The problem is that, when you spend that dollar, you just don’t know how effective it is. In fact, marketers know that when they spend billions of dollars a year, half of it is going to be wasted. So, the problem lies in not knowing which half!

I fundamentally believe that there is a gap between how sales works and how marketing works. There are gaps in automation, engagement, and personalization because the number of attributes that really uniquely define an individual has fundamentally changed.

These gaps can be uniquely filled by WealthEngine in a way that that is hitherto unexplored. We call this gap the prospect automation gap. We believe that prospect automation has unique ways of nurturing our existing customers and identifying high- value prospects.

So, the next question is: how does this all come together in the context of prospect automation? How can you find your next best prospect? And, when you find them, what is the next best thing to do with them?

 

Advantages of Prospect Automation

The idea of creating the next best action, when you find the next best prospect has to be automated. Not only can machine learning and AI  be leveraged to curate new sets of information, but they are also able to connect the dots, score the data, model it, and find unique insights. This helps you identify & connect with high-position targets you wouldn’t have found if you hadn’t acquired data using prospect automation.

Upon acquiring data on prospects, you then need to understand three unique aspects: their capacity, propensity, and intent to live, give, save, spend, and travel. The ability to do that, all in a structured way from within the same application platform, is unique to WealthEngine.

To explain further, we have been able to combine all this functionality into a compelling new platform that we’ve enabled through an API that you can access, automate and operationalize within your own environments. The option to personalize those wealth profiles with a unique wealth score can not only give you hindsight but also insight and foresight on a prospect, all on the same platform. This new solution addresses the prospect automation gap and propagates a new and effective way of nurturing prospects.

You can leverage prospect automation regardless of how you want to reach the user. It could be through an owner-management system, a sales automation system, a digital automation system, or another system. We can seamlessly integrate across all of these dimensions in a unique way. All of the rich attributes for a given wealth profile are now readily available across your systems.

Our AI and machine learning technology connect the dots between prospecting and personalization, between segmenting and scoring, between prospects and past donations, utilizing something we call learning science. We’ve baked learning science into the core of our platform, which we’re really excited about launching in our big 9.0 release.

 

WealthEngine 9.0

This new prospect engagement platform is unique in the industry. It minds the gaps when it comes to data, engagement, personalization, and predictive analysis. With the 9.0 release comes a new personalization paradigm, meaning that the future of wealth screening is available to you now.

This new system truly elevates the game through four key factors:

1. We help you reduce your cost of prospect acquisition dramatically. 10, to 20, to 30% in some cases will help you increase lifetime value by 2x to 5x.
2. We help you dramatically increase your circle of connections through our circle of friends feature.
3. You can directly measure lift from your campaigns contributions and tie it back to your marketing ROI.
4. Personalized wealth direct campaigns will change the prospecting game, especially in the way you interact with the next generation of prospects.

When packaged well together, this is going to be a new way forward for both commercial and nonprofit organizations. This new and secure platform is unlike any other. WealthEngine 9.0 provides you with new data that are refreshed almost daily; the ability to connect you to nationwide benchmarks; and run predictive modeling and scoring.

I believe that this new approach to prospect management can create a whole new world of engagement for the $30 trillion that will be passed on between generations. I hope you share in our vision that could help shape the future together.

The world of marketing is evolving. Instead of just wanting a high-quality product with high-quality service, consumers want more. But, what exactly do they want? How do we find out? Learn how different organizations use predictive prospecting to connect with donors and consumers.  

What is predictive prospecting?

 

Predictive prospecting creates a profile from your existing clients’ interests and other information. This information is the basis of a model to identify your next best prospects. It’s the first step in the sales process where you’re identifying potential consumers or “prospects”. The goal of prospecting is to create a database of potential consumers who have a greater propensity & capacity to give. By recognizing and communicating with these individuals, you’re more likely to form a loyal customer base.

But, predictive prospecting and predictive marketing aren’t new developments. They’ve been used in the past, but only now have companies funded their development. Currently, large sums of money are being poured into sales and automation technologies. These systems allow you to compile information on all your customers. They also provide you with tools that drive leads to become more aware of the market you’re breaking into. In other words, predictive prospecting helps you harvest and nurture your client base.

What do you need to do predictive prospecting well?

 

In order to do predictive prospecting well, it’s important to use the new data you have to create a positive impact on consumers. For instance, by using wealth intelligence and publicly available data, you can find unique ways to appeal to different people. So, after evaluating their propensity and capacity to give, you can talk to them in ways that highlight their interests. By doing this, you’re forging a deeper connection with consumers in such a way that makes them want to keep giving. Predictive prospecting, in that sense, is all about creating measured and personalized campaigns. 

By using wealth data to engage in predictive prospecting, you have the tools to:

• Measure the cost of acquiring a given prospect
• Determine the lifetime value of individual prospects
• Create a deep, lasting connection with prospects
• Check your campaign lift for individual prospect engagement

Not only is it important to appeal to each prospect individually, but it’s crucial to get the entire social network to participate in what you’re doing. That is to say, by going through and making sense of this information, you’re able to engage all clients. But, you’re not simply engaging them on a superficial level. You’re finding ways to connect in ways that highlight their values in relation to yours.

Examples of Predictive Prospecting

 

The National Aquarium wanted to build a new wing, and focus their fundraising efforts on conservation and development. But, who was going to support the creation of this new wing? Who would want to help? After creating a capital campaign, the National Aquarium was able to personalize their outreach. By using WealthEngine’s data to help them look for donors, the National Aquarium was able to find and segment potential and existing donors into several audiences and create targeted messaging.  

They were able to identify individuals with investment and interest in marine life who felt compelled enough to donate. By creating personalized messaging, they developed a successful campaign. Not only did they connect with their new and existing donors, but they ended up acquiring one in the process. This donor, who was one of their largest contributors, is now their CEO. In that sense, successful prospecting and personalization don’t just allow you to find donors. They also help you forge deep connections with individuals, who want to invest their time, energy, and intention into your projects.

Learn More

Learn more about how you can leverage predictive prospecting. Fill the form on the right and a WealthEngine rep will contact you very soon.