Breaking Down the Silos: Organize Around Audiences, Not Departments

Start your measurement assumptions in much the same way. Think big. If your teams agree every department is accountable for driving qualified leads or donors, you can talk about your campaign terms in phases — cultivate, educate and motivate people.

If I am the mass marketing team, the focus is primarily education about the badly treated aliens and how our partnerships with corporate America will help change that. The media team may dive in with petitions and protests on state or national capital steps with the clear goal to motivate people to do something because they presumably come armed with education about the issue prior to taking action.

The member team will probably always be a blend of all three: constantly cultivate current and potential donors; keep them educated on changes, accomplishments and needs; and motivate them to give and give in order to fund your program.

Certainly people need to take this 30,000 foot view and translate it to conversion rates, actions taken, donations made and all the things we’re used to doing every day in our jobs, but step back to see the possibility of making a series of actions more impactful and having partnerships work even harder for your charity.

I promise you, there is no better feeling than a cause marketing director being able to say the campaign yielded $200,000 up front, and that membership has determined that 22,000 e-mail addresses will create an additional $150,000 in income within 12 months. Those are the kinds of stories the smartest charities are telling, and those charities will continue to pave the way in an ever-crowded, ever-changing marketplace.

When organizations begin to think in those terms, the medium becomes less driven by guesswork and more by what works. There is no true right or wrong on spending advertising dollars on billboard ads or print or bus shelters. The question becomes a moot point if you have the right infrastructure. But it quickly becomes wrong if you don’t have the correct infrastructure in place to measure success.