Modeling — Taking It Straight From the Experts (Part 2)

Welcome to Part 2 of yesterday's post. (Click here to jump to Part 1.)

Modeling: The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know what the experts were thinking — so I decided to just ask! For the most part, what is in this article are direct comments/quotes from the folks that I believe are the brightest and the best in our industry around this topic. These are the folks who participated

• Richard Becker, president, Target Analytics
• Jeff Birkner, director of marketing intelligence and strategy, Eleventy Marketing Group
• Caity Craver, CEO, DonorTrends
• Jim Emlet, principal and co-owner, Integral
• John Ernst, chief strategy officer, nonprofit, Paradysz
• Brent Eskew, executive vice president, Wiland Direct
• Yannis Kotziagkiaouridis, vice president, market analytics, Merkle
• Gretchen Littlefield, president, Infogroup Nonprofit
• Chuck Longfield, chief scientist, Blackbaud
• Curt Swindoll, executive vice president, strategy, Pursuant
• Andy Wilder, vice president, analytics consulting group, Epsilon

(You can read the first part of this post here.)

3. How is modeling able to inform the movement to true integrated, multichannel marketing?

Brent Eskew: Modeling is channel agnostic. The right prospect (chosen from a sea of wrong ones) is the right prospect. The solution is to find that right prospect in the sea of eyeballs viewing other channels and integrated across those channels (integrated mail, online display, e-mail and telephone, for example). The records contained in a cooperative database are all multibuyers and have dozens of data points on each one — including the channels through which each individual is most responsive. Proper targeting derived through modeling and based on actual giving behavior across channels helps to realize the efficiencies.

Curt Swindoll: Modeling is used to look for leading indicators and patterns of success, and we've successfully used it to bridge channels. We score and prioritize donors based on multiple factors of engagement and capacity, which then informs our approach to helping our clients leverage the strengths of different channels to engage donors on an even deeper level. Data helps us know which donors are interested, what they are interested in, when they were interested and even how interested they are in what an organization is doing. All those data points are valuable to crafting a multichannel strategy that works.

Richard Becker/Chuck Longfield: Yes, it informs multichannel marketing — by using the more complex data set of integrated, multichannel data! And there's also likely a reorganization/change management piece where silos get broken down as models decide that the next best solicitation or communication comes from another department. The key for nonprofits is to understand the impact of various marketing channels on one another, rather than looking at them uniquely. For example, too often "digital" is evaluated separately from "mail," with decision-making and programs budgets residing in nonprofit organization silos. The ability for data and analytic providers to inform nonprofits with attribution, or the impact of multiple donor touches across channels prior to the final point of engagement/donation, is an area of opportunity that has yet to be fully exploited. For many nonprofits, the value of display advertising, mobile advertising, e-mail, social and SEO have yet to be fully understood or rationalized.