[0:01] Ramtin (NobleCX Co-founder): Hello everyone. Welcome Ramtin from NobleCX co-founder and solution architect. There are some familiar faces here today, so thank you so much for joining us. I would like to invite Betty and Katherine from Glaucoma Australia and FIA to join us at the front as the first panel.
Segmentation and personalisation
[0:21] Ramtin: The first topic or question is how to define segmentation or personalization in different cohorts that you basically work with. I guess we talk about different type of cohorts, you know, donor management, customer engagement as well as volunteer management. So I'm just gonna pass it on over to you guys.
[0:44] Betty (Glaucoma Australia): So I think for us it's really... So we use Salesforce. So I was quite shocked when I came to Glaucoma Australia that we even had Salesforce because we certainly didn't have it over at Cairns Council. So I was quite excited that we had Salesforce and you know, not having any resources, I don't have a data team or an analyst or anything like that. I kind of do everything myself. So I kind of went, oh God, thank God everything's in one place and I could see everything.
[1:16] So I think for us with the personalization side of things, we set everything up right from the outset. So I determine who I'm going to target my segments and then I set everything up into Salesforce. So as the campaign is in train, I could communicate with everybody at any time, very appropriately. So all our letters are segmented based on whether they're high value donors, lapse donors never given before, prospects, patients, health professionals.
So I will split up all the data and then I will create a heap of variable letters and keep an eagle eye on my reports. And as people are responding, I will pick up the phone and thank them for their first gift, thank them for giving again, thank them for their large gift. So yeah, that's how we kind of...
[2:15] Ramtin: Basically everything is at your fingertip.
[2:16] Betty: I guess it is, it literally is. And I'm literally calling people that they, that they donate.
[2:23] Ramtin: Katherine, what about you?
[2:25] Katherine (FIA): Yes, so as an industry body, our customers are members of the association. And it's funny that Ramtin and Justine, who's worked with FIA for many years, are here because they will know that until now, basically there was very little personalization at FIA.
We have an incredible CRM Salesforce instance, and we've never actually used it effectively. We had a third party provider do all of our communications and it was never integrated with our Salesforce CRM. So basically we took a business case to the board to actually do personalization. So we did it exactly opposite of what you've done, which is put the whole thing in and then later go, how are we going to personalize? So the bulk of our work in the first couple of years that I was at FIA was really batch and blast communications, very little segmentation.
And now I'm really, really pleased to say that for us, personalization means actually thinking about the member and non member segments within our database, thinking about what their needs and desires are, and devising personalized journeys for those different segments. So we're really on the cusp of implementing that and we're really excited because when we do a good job at that, just like with donor communications and relations, that we know that we can get better retention of members and also it leads to higher satisfaction, greater engagement, and also higher net promoter scores. And all of that means that we've got more people joining the FIA community and being part of a fantastic professional community of fundraisers. So that's where we're at today. A little bit on the cusp of what we want to be achieving, but we're definitely on the path.
Recommendations for starting personalisation
[3:56] Ramtin: Thank you, Katherine. I guess the next question that I think many people in this room and the audience that we have online will ask, what are the recommendations that you have for organizations that want to start focusing on personalization and I guess segmentation, in a way?
[4:16] Betty: The data is everything. Keep it squeaky clean and try to keep it all in one place as well. And I think don't over complicate things.
[4:28] Ramtin: That's the key, isn't it?
[4:29] Betty: Yeah, don't over complicate things and try not to get too personal because some data is sensitive.
So we did really infuriate one particular donor and I mean, nobody just, nobody thought about it. We had over printed "your glaucoma news update" on the outside of an envelope and she was absolutely... I didn't even think that was personal information. And it was. We had been doing it from before we got there, but she rang up and gave me an absolute blasting because the envelope ended up in her neighbor's letterbox and her neighbor came across and said, "oh my God, are you going blind? Do you have glaucoma?" So, yeah, she was absolutely furious.
[5:22] Ramtin: So I think that moderation is the key. Right.
[5:25] Betty: You just have to be... Yeah, it just wasn't thought about. So, yeah, she was a patient and she was sensitive and yeah, that just really triggered her. So I think, yeah, just use your data wisely, especially if it's sensitive and yeah, keep your data clean and don't over segment as well.
I think things can get really hairy and out of control. Could create a lot of work for yourself. I've done it, gotten a bit too excited in my segmentation and had, you know, 50 cells and testing everything and then it just got all a bit stressful and unnecessary. I've done it and not seen any incremental benefit and I've just scaled back again.
[6:11] Katherine: And yeah, it's interesting because I sometimes think FIA have done things a little bit backwards. So I remember, like, three years ago, we had somebody to come in and help us do the personas. So, you know, FIA member who's just started in fundraising, a junior person, a senior person, whatever. We had all the personas and then I had those and I'm like, "Now what am I going to do with those?" Because I actually didn't have the system or I didn't even really have the data to inform those personas and then what I could do with them.
And so I do agree that the data is so critical and it's very difficult for FIA because you might know that in the fundraising sector, turnover is very high. Maybe 30% of our database would change over their titles or their organizations from charity to charity. And unfortunately, a professional fundraiser doesn't ring us and go, "Oh, I'm leaving my job, I'm leaving this charity, I'm going to go to this one. So can you update my details on your database?" That would be gold, but that doesn't happen and that's totally fine.
But it does mean that the data is very, very difficult for us to sort of keep clean and up to date. And it does require very, very constant attention, as in somebody looking at it every day, eyeballing it, going, "Does that number? Does that match?" And I saw something on LinkedIn where she moved over there and all that. So I think that is really critical.
But actually, the first thing is, what are you trying to achieve? Because I think that's what we sort of forget. Just start doing all these things, "Oh, let's do the personas. Great, let's do this." And then you go, "Hang on, what were we doing that for again?" And I think you have to be really clear about your objectives and your goals in any personalization strategy or any even data or automation strategy before you embark. And then when you do that, then you don't overcomplicate and do too much, you know, personalization, because you go, "Hang on, that's not what we were trying to achieve. That's sort of a, you know, it's sort of a side thing that's taking us off track."
So I think those are the really two critical things. Start first with the objectives and the goals. You know, what are the very simple things you want to achieve? Let's just say this year we're going to do these two things and we're going to measure that and see if we've got impact there. Do that. And then the data and creating the personas is really important. And then just the final thing is we also did it backwards where we got this great tech. You know, now we have an amazing Salesforce, but actually we didn't think about how we wanted to keep it updated and manage it and who are the people that need to keep working with us. We've relied very heavily on NobleCX for many years and that's been brilliant. But you get to a point you have to start thinking about actually we should have flipped that around and started first with "What are we trying to do? Then let's have we got the data? Is the data right? Is it clean? And then let's get the personas and the segmentation and the things that we need."
[8:49] Betty: And then post event also look at what actually happened because sometimes you set things up a certain way and have certain expectations and then look at it and go, "Oh, surprise. It was actually..." Yeah, you can get some really good insights from your data.
Biggest learnings on limited budget
[9:06] Ramtin: Thank you guys. The next piece is quite actually interesting. What's been your biggest learnings? Betty, I think I'm going to come to you first. What's been your biggest learning when trying to personalize comms or experiences on limited budget apart from the envelopes?
[9:27] Betty: Okay. I think I spoke a little bit about that before, but again it was just... Yeah, keeping it simple. Keep it simple and keep an eagle eye on things. So don't just set and forget. Get your campaign... I literally watch what all my donors are doing at all times through the campaign reporting and just... and act quickly as well. Did that answer the question?
[10:53] Ramtin: I think it did. I guess the key point is, you know, don't over complicate things and make sure you go back to the beginning or the basics to understand whether it works or not and just bring your learnings for the next one to make it.
[10:54] Betty: I guess the point is... if it's not broken, don't fix it. So every year I tweak my appeals a little bit, but generally I've found that the same segments... I know who to invest in and who not to spend money on, who not to send a pack to and who to send an email to and what channels they respond to. So yeah, just... something's working, just keep going with it and do little tests every time. Don't get too excited, I guess.
[10:43] Ramtin: What about you, Katherine?
[10:44] Katherine: A couple of things. One is we recently implemented Salesforce Experience Cloud which has delivered us a public facing website and also automation for members on the back end, which is a pretty terrific product. And I think we didn't appreciate the scale of that digital transformation piece. And so I didn't resource it properly. So I relied on my team who have really busy day jobs and we're a small organization, like many of you, to do it and they didn't have the expertise. And that's okay because you have a good implementation partner who can help you, but what you don't have is the people who are asking the right questions.
And so along the way, first of all, it was difficult for them to manage in addition to their day job and they weren't communication specialists to help the team through the transition. And then the team were like, "Well, hang on, this has impacted me, but I don't know anything about it and I'm afraid of this change and now I'm going to have to do things differently and I don't know what's coming next." And I think in terms of staff retention and making people feel comfortable and happy in their jobs, you do have to really layer the resource required with the communications over the top of it. Otherwise, I think for us, we feel like we really let the team down because we did that. And that's solely on me to not have done the proper resourcing for that.
I guess you think, "Oh, it's going to be fine, it's just a little thing, we'll get through it." But in fact, it was much more difficult than we had imagined.
[12:12] Betty: You don't know what you don't know.
[12:13] Katherine: No, you don't know what you don't know. Exactly. That's right. So I think that's a really critical learning. And then the other thing is, it's very easy to get excited about shiny new tech because you're like, "Oh, we're a small organization now, we'll get this and we'll do this," but without the upfront thinking, which is sort of back to the last point about being clear about what you want to do with it. You know, we just got so excited that the board said, "Yes, you can go and buy that." We're like, "Yay!" You know, by then you go, "Oh, no, now we've actually got to do something. We've got to be really clear about that." So I think that those are the two critical learnings for us.
Role of AI in organisations
[12:44] Ramtin: There are two parts into this next question. I guess I'm going to leave it with you guys to see how you want to split it. What role do you see AI or personalization playing in your organization?
[13:00] Betty: So we're just about to implement Salesforce Cloud as well. So I'm very excited about that because we've got educators who are on the phone all day, every day having conversations with our patients. At the moment, they're literally scrawling notes and then going when they have spare time. And sometimes that spare time might come in a month because they're so busy putting... typing up those notes into the customer record.
So there's an AI listening tool that we're going to be implementing. So I'm pretty happy about that. It's going to transcribe and upload those conversations straight onto the customer's record, which is going to give us lots of history. And the next time we pick up or make a phone call or pick up a phone call, we'll have all that information at our fingertips. And we could also tailor the resources that we send to them. So we have a lot of resources that we send on an automated basis based on where our patients fall. We call them stages. They could be a suspect, they could be just diagnosed, they could be long living with glaucoma. They all get very different communications. So we'll be able to pick up on those triggers and just have more deep and meaningful conversations. So, yeah, really excited about that.
[14:26] Ramtin: Spend the time, you know, where it's needed.
[14:28] Betty: Where it's needed. Yeah, we have to. There's like five of us, so we have to become more efficient. We're still doing lots of note taking and typing and yeah, we're looking forward.
[14:40] Katherine: To those efficiencies as well. And we're just getting started on how we can use it internally for writing copy and doing all those amazing things. But I think for us, the automated journeys for members, when they join FIA, you know, in a period of time, delivering them information about, "Did you know you could do this with FIA? Or we have that, or can I connect you over here or there?" I think those are really important. I really like the agent, the agentive AI idea because we have a website that sometimes people can't find things and they're desperate for. "Where's that policy on donation, gifts and acceptance," and to be able to have an agent who can help you navigate a lot of that content. And the good thing about FIA is you can find that on Google, but it's not from a trusted source and it's not aligned, let's say, to the FIA code, which I think most of our members will be really concerned about. And so I think those are a couple of really promising areas for us that we're going to use AI and that will help with that sort of personalization. So what you need and what you want today, we can deliver you, and then we can use that learning to deliver you more in the future.
[15:42] Ramtin: Excellent.
[15:42] Betty: And also, we claim to be a collaborative care partner for our optometrists and our ophthalmologists, and we encourage them to refer their patients to us for ongoing education and support. But we are not reciprocating and giving back. What have we done with their patient? Have we spoken to their patient? What education have we provided? Did they need mental health support? So when we implement this tool will be... have the time and the ability to close the loop and actually go back and return the favor, if you like.
[16:22] Ramtin: Yeah, thank you. I think that concludes the questions.
Q&A Session
[16:26] Matty: Thank you, guys. Thank you. We'll jump over to the Q and A. That was the fastest 20 minutes of my life. I still have two more things to talk about. For anyone, just a reminder on the Q and A's. For anyone on live stream, you can use the Q and A section. You can just enter in your questions there. For anyone in the audience, you can just put your hand up and I'll run to you. So any questions from the audience?
Yeah, we love a question. There we go.
[17:03] Audience Member: You spoke about being aware of over personalization and I was keen to hear what has been worthwhile personalization wise. And what you found hasn't kind of moved the needle for you?
[17:21] Katherine: That's a good question.
[17:23] Betty: I'm going to say that... So we calculate every... every one of our donors gets asked a specific amount of money and it's based on their giving history, obviously. And so we have inbuilt fields into Salesforce. We get their last... grab their last gift and then multiply it by an amount that significantly has lifted our average donation. So when I first started working at Glaucoma Australia, and I know there are a lot of external factors that impact this - cost of living and everything else, but we've been able to lift our average gift by using calculated asks across... everyone gets their own ask across the board to... I think it was like $68 when I first started to $212 now within four years. And again, I know there are other factors, but yeah, so that's been... Yeah, that's worked for us.
And then we're careful on the forms, you know, like, obviously you don't... I know it sounds obvious, but I have seen other charities do it where they're lasering on or they're asking for security numbers, for example, the three digits and the four digits on donation forms or lasering sensitive information onto donation forms and things like that. So, yeah, just being really aware, always thinking, "What if this landed in the wrong hands, could it do some damage?" type of thing. But yeah, I think the donation ask is probably the example I would use.
[19:08] Matty: Next question. Same thing. Look at that. Great minds, great minds. Any other questions from the audience? I think we had one come through on Q and A. One for you both. Can you walk through a specific campaign or initiative where you achieved high personal engagement without a large team or a limited budget? So any kind of dream campaign, dream use case that you've done.
[19:29] Katherine: I think if I were not quite there yet. So I might have to get Betty to answer that question.
[19:34] Betty: Okay. So I guess 2023 tax appeal. Yeah, 2023 tax appeal. We thought we'd be a bit risky. I mean, I've got Ramtin on speed dial, so I kind of had the audacity to try it because I thought, "I'll just pick up the phone and speak to Ramtin if I get into any trouble."
But we decided to have personalized URLs, so every donor... so they had the specific donation ask, but then they were pushed to their own landing page with that amount of money. So instead of having the dollar handles, which we usually have, "$48 will fund this and $110 will fund that and that and that," which is what we usually do. We thought we'd test out personal URLs and ask them for a specific amount so that when they landed on their page it said, you know, or on their SMS or on their email, "Dear Betty, Will you donate $58 for this purpose?"
So we tested that with some trepidation. I was really nervous to do it because we have a very older demographic. They're still very quite old school. Donation forms, they love filling in forms. They send me coins in the mail and checks still. So I thought, "Oh, God, how's this going to go down?" And also, you know the barcodes on the donation forms with the URL that ended up on the landing page, which just had one number on it specifically for them. So yeah, it was a bit nerve wracking and it was a lot of work, but I felt comfortable.
What I did learn was that... So it didn't affect my income, thank God. We actually exceeded our income by 30%. So I was worried about our income, but it didn't affect our income. But what they did do was they still responded on their traditional channels because they felt safe. So they still went to the GA website, they still picked up the phone, they still filled in their little form or wrote me a letter and sent it back. But when I did the analysis at the end, 98% of the people gave me exactly what I asked for and it did lift the donation rate. So yeah.
[22:04] Katherine: Which is really terrific that you're meeting your donors where they are, which is you're using your communications, you know, priorities and the way that you wanted to personalize that with links, but you're allowing them to do that, you know, their favorite thing, which is giving to you in the way that they want to. Which I think is absolute fantastic donor and supporter care. Right?
[22:25] Betty: But I was worried that I was going to get those phone calls like, "Is this a scam? Why are you asking, you know, why are you asking me for $112? What are you going to do with $112?" Because the numbers looked so odd and I kept repeating that number absolutely everywhere. But yeah, it was surprising that they didn't and they just responded how they responded and it was a good, was a good learning. Very, very good learning.
[22:56] Matty: Any other questions? One more that came in through live stream. Otherwise... Last one, Betty mentioned how one of her patients had felt a lack of care from one, from how they were communicated with the letter wrapping. Then on the flip side, how do you both ensure your members or patients feel cared for in your communications?
[23:15] Betty: I send them love notes. I honestly do. I send them love notes and I call them a lot and yeah, a lot of them are much older and they love a good chat. And then I find after a good chat they'll say, "You've made my day, I'm going to give you $100." And I'm like, "Okay. $112."
So just the human touches, like I think sometimes we're like, "Oh, do you want to do all these comms across these channels?" But people, you know, they love a card, they love a phone call, they love a love note. Yeah, just keep it... sometimes we just go back, just keep it simple.
[23:57] Katherine: And actually I think she's making a good point, which is multi channel communications, because I think if we rely on one channel, it's going to miss a whole cohort of people who don't use that channel or don't like that channel or, you know, like I can send emails to the cows come up even for my personal outlook and people might not read it, but if I ring them up and talk to them on the phone on a Friday afternoon, they go, "Oh, I'm so glad to hear from you" and that kind of thing. So I think thinking about the multichannel approach is so critical and I think that does show that you care, that you're finding different ways to look after them.
And I think in a new AI driven world, this is where human intervention over all the great AI is going to be so important. One of the things I heard a couple of weeks ago when I was at a conference in Canberra on Philanthropy Australia is AI is of course going to be so essential, but should always start with human objectives and ideas and thoughts and putting that in, then you've got the AI and then it should finish with humans, which is having review over it and making sure that it's the way that your organization wants to be represented and perceived and your language and your brand that's evident in there. And I think we're going to make huge errors and we're going to really erode trust with our members and our donors and customers if we don't sort of cast that final sort of human thing over everything that we do. So that's that sort of transparency piece that's going to build trust and I think that's going to be really important.
[25:15] Betty: And everyone appreciates a thank you call like they might be paranoid in the beginning when you say, "Hello, I'm calling from so and so charity." And they're like, you get that pause or "Oh no, she's going to ask me for money," but I've never had anyone hang up on me ever. Yeah, just those... just keep doing the little, the little things. They make a huge difference. And I also notice... So after every, well, not every, but after a lot of the phone calls, they'll give me a second gift the next day. They'll ring up and say, "Oh, I want to donate another $200." And I'll overhear, you know, Michelle picking up the phone. I'm like, "I spoke to her yesterday." So yeah, they love it. They love it.
[26:01] Matty: I like that. Yeah, I think it's keeping the human element, people to people at the end of the day.
[26:03] Betty: Yeah, for sure, sure. Not all active donors are the same, you know, all lapsed. They're not all the same. They're all... I guess I'm a bit lucky because I've been a... you know, I talk to them every day, so I get to know them. And I don't just go, "Oh, they're patients and they're healthcare and they're active and they're lapsed, and they're, you know, personas." They're people that you talk to. They're humans, and they're all... Yeah. So I've got a good sense of what triggers them. And I'll never use the word "blind" ever, like, you know, to stop people... "Please donate so others... so you... you don't go blind," or... There are certain words I know will trigger them. So just... Yeah. Being conscious that they're people who are stressed and worried about their future and going blind.
[26:52] Matty: Very relatable. All right, well, thank you, guys. If you guys give me a round of applause. Much appreciated. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
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