Does anyone have research or best practices around what counts as a donor touchpoint and the ratio of touchpoints between asks?
For context, I work in higher ed and am trying to communicate with senior leadership what counts as a donor touchpoint vs what institutional marketing is.
At previous institutions, our goal was 7 donor-focused touchpoints between asks.
Hi, we’ve been looking more closely at this as well, especially with our First Time Donor population.
I have read that an Ask to Thank Ratio of 1:7 is best practice, but we’re running a test group now that will get 4-5 solid targeted touchpoints of pure gratitude (using multiple channels – email, mail, phone calls from students, etc.) between the first gift and the next ask, which we plan to coincide with the beginning of the new fiscal year to see if these folks retain at a higher rate than previous first timers. We’re not considering the receipt, Acknowledgement letter or quarterly newsletters as touchpoints because those are standard. Hope this helps?
We count touchpoints as – social media action, donation, interaction with Help Desk (did the donor email us directly), registration on the career platform/joining the LinkedIn group, event registrant, and volunteer, attended an in-person meeting/Zoom meeting with gift officer, visited the alumni center. Email engagement was counted separately. Basically, if the alum made the decision to connect with us in some way that took effort on their part, it was counted as an interaction.
This webinar has good information and research on the topic. Specifically, on the difference between an email newsletter and human touchpoints.
https://askgenius.com/fundraising-email-strategies/