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Data has always been about the people that the numbers or categories represent. Many marketers just never saw it that way. Social networks and the unprecedented amount of information now available are further humanizing data.
Prospect number 4321 was always a white female, age 55, who lived in the suburbs, gave to her church and subscribed to knitting magazines, along with grandparenting publications. She also made the occasional purchase from the Home Shopping Network and gave to health charities. Now, it's very likely she's online using a Facebook page.
Data is coming from every direction. It can be captured, but how it is used is still up for debate. Do you really need some of the prospect information? What is private and what is not? Can information from social networks be harnessed for something more than a special event?
Data and its implications was the topic of an NPT Executive Session roundtable, held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Gathered for the discussion were: Rachael Ahrens, senior interactive specialist, Convio, Austin, Texas; Rita Allen, manager, Nonprofit Group, Fresh Address, Newton, Mass.; Sally Boucher, client service manager, WealthEnginc.com, Bethesda, Md.; Charlie Cadigan, managing director, Frontline Data Group, Vienna, Va.; and, Gretchen Littlefield, president, Triplex, Washington, D.C. The conversation was led by Paul Clolery, vice president/editorial director NPT Publishing Group, and Rick Christ, vice president, Online Fundraising, Amergent, Peabody, Mass.
Paul Clolery: The discussion we're going to have today is data, what is being collected, what's being used, and what we should be looking at and perhaps preparing for in the next five years, if we can even look that far down the road.
First, let's get a definition. What do you consider data? Give me a definition.
Rick Christ: I would define it as useful information in terms of developing or cultivating a relationship between a nonprofit organization and its supporters.
Clolery: But what specifically do you consider data? Is anything off limits?
Christ: What's off limits is what's irrelevant, or what the person wants as private. We were just in a meeting where one of the speakers is from the Human Rights Campaign who represents and who lobbies for the interests of gay, lesbian, transgender individuals. Would it be relevant in that database to know whether someone is gay, lesbian, transsexual? Perhaps.
Is it relevant in my database of senior citizens? Absolutely not. Is it relevant for Social Security? Absolutely not. It would be outrageous to keep it.
Charlie Cadigan: It's the difference between data and information and it has to be actionable. We, as direct marketers, collect lots of data. We're challenged by making sure the data we collect is "relevant." That's probably the better word because it's relevant to the marketing decisions and actions we take.
Many organizations move in a direction to collect data that has little longterm value. I would argue that there are a lot of organizations that need to have "data police," someone who challenges the capture and retention long-term to say what's the relevance of this three to five years from now?
Rachael Ahrens: It's also not so much keeping track of who these people are, but what they want. It's asking them not just, "Is this the condition you have?," or "Is this what group you're in?," but also "What do you want to hear about?"
It's almost more relevant if you ask them: "What do you want to hear about?" as opposed to "What are you?"
Gretchen Littlefield: That's the social networking edge of it--the new way to collect data and the new way people are communicating. We all understand the basics of how to use traditional data. Now we need to use the new tools available to take it further.
Clolery: You said something that peaked my interest, that the social networks are now ripe for compiling lists.
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Littlefield: Facebook is becoming the biggest database in the world. And the great thing about it is it's being updated ...
Christ: By the users.
Littlefield: By the users, and in most cases, every day.
Clolery: Is that information being marketed?
Littlefield: Some of it. Facebook and others like it at some point must become profitable and they are likely to move further in that direction.
Clolery: And, the people using Facebook know that they're being modeled?
Littlefield: Yes, they do. On my Facebook page, I'm now getting advertisements for Dell computers. It's telling me which one of my friends is using which Dell computer model. It's very targeted.
What's sort of interesting about it, too, is that as traditional direct marketers we tend to think of geographic information, and how we connect people together and things that they might have in common and interest level.
But now, in the electronic age, we're thinking about with whom people are connected, not so much geography. So the people that I'm connected with on Facebook have a lot more in common with me, and probably are going to buy the same types of products and give to the same causes than my neighbors would on my street.
Cadigan: It's also a higher level of trust. They're going to trust your recommendation as opposed to if you get a recommendation, to use your example, from a neighbor.
Rita Allen: That's where my take is when I think of data. I think of integrity of data and I think of intention of data and the will of the recipient from our perspective of providing additional data for someone's donor constituent list, applicable to their needs.
People protect their email address like their Social Security number. They're very concerned, very able, to knock out a legitimate email by hitting spam. They have that vehicle at home. They can take direct mail and put it in the trash, or with a telephone call they can just avoid it and let it go to voice mail. So data, from my perspective, is all about the intent and the volunteeredness and the opt-in and the integrity.
Clolery: One of the largest revenue streams of a nonprofit is the list swap, and list rental income. You know so much about an individual now from either a Facebook page, or from somewhere else. What is actually fair game to swap?
Littlefield: Even these questions are starting to change. I have a lot of people who are asking me questions that 10 years ago they would have never considered like: Why can't we model inside of a merge?; Why can't we take that information and start to hone in and draw people out?
Of course you have to get everybody's permission. You can't do things without the list owner's permission, but why don't people do that right now? Some of these rules that were put in place 20 to 30 years ago need to evolve as the world changes.
Christ: I'm reminded of something I learned from Paul Goldner, who ran a list processing company before ZIP codes. One of the things he said about merge/purge is that it isn't the objective of merge/purge to remove the duplicates. It's the objective of merge/purge to remove every name that won't respond.
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Sally Boucher: I think it's up to the individual who's putting that information out there to realize that it's information in the public domain and that it is going to be used. The onus is really in the social networking scheme of things. The onus is on the individual to protect the information that they want to keep protected. Of course, nonprofits have to be very careful and respectful in their collection and dissemination of that type of data.
Clolery: What types of information are people asking you for at this point?
Boucher: We are primarily an organization that is collecting asset information that's all in the public domain. That information, interest areas, donations that they're making to other organizations, is very helpful in forming a picture of the prospect's interests.
People are very interested now in getting a little bit beyond just the asset information and looking into modeling their database. They want to make better use of the data that they have already collected. They want to make it very specific to that organization. It's not a generic model that they're after anymore but a very specific one: "What do my major donors look like?" and "How do these other people look, similar or different?"
Clolery: Given what has happened in the markets lately, what does a major donor look like these days?
Boucher: They look different for every organization. If you're looking at a major university, they're looking at people who can give $100,000 or more. If you're looking at your local humane society, they're looking at someone who can give $5,000.
So, the major donor looks very different, but it's typically somebody who owns real estate, and a significant amount of real estate. It's somebody who's an insider at a public company, somebody who has a private company ownership position, somebody who has a foundation, a family foundation or is an officer in the public foundation.
Clolery: Is it easier to collect data on people these days?
Allen: There isn't anything you can't collect.
Boucher: It's easy to collect too much data. We see organizations that still feel like because they can get that data that they need to collect a 14-page profile on every prospect.
What they need to do is collect enough information to say," Is this a good viable major gift prospect?" And then run with that, assign it out for an assessment visit, before you invest a lot of resources in research.
Clolery: Is the capability of the software driving what people collect? For example, in a flat file, you go one, two, three, four, five, straight across. But with the relational databases you can go ping, ping, ping and bring data from a lot of different areas.
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