Everyone in the Network is advising their clients to increase relationship-building activity. Relationships are what we crave most in times of uncertainty.
Donor experience journey
What do your donors experience when they interact with your organization? Are you thinking beyond individual transactions and touchpoints? What does the overall experience feel like for your donors? What do you want it to feel like?
Mid and major donor activity is taking off
Donor experiences are particularly important, because we are hearing from the Network that mid-level and major donors are stepping up their engagement with organizations. Are you ready for that? Are you able to deliver the kinds of experiences they are looking for? Does the experience of interacting with you reflect your mission? Or do donors have to overlook a bad experience because they care about your mission?
Connect process to relationship building
What do you do to improve your donors’ (or customers’) experiences with you? This is what we are seeing in the Network. Organizations are making sure their processes support good relationship building practices, like segmenting their databases so they can communicate with donors and customers in the ways they want to be communicated with. More organizations are discovering that creating meaningful customer personas can help them communicate more effectively. Others are creating relationship maps, or “spider graphs” that give them insight on their networks.
Frictionless sales
Why does building good relationships matter? Because great relationships yield frictionless sales and frictionless donations. Great relationships with your donors or customers mean that it is easy for them to do business with you. And when it’s easy for them to do business with you, they keep coming back for life.