Your customers are a hot commodity. Everybody wants them. So how do you keep them loyal to you? Make your relationship so great that they don’t want to go anywhere else.

1. Market in the age of “me.”

Know your customers well enough to give them a personalized experience. This goes beyond targeting with basic demographics like gender, age, and household income. Look at the channels your customers respond to, when they make purchases, and what they buy. Acting on this data helps your customers see that you know and care about them. It helps with cross-sells and upsells, too!

2. Coupons galore!

Consumers have a love affair with coupons, including mobile. According to Juniper Research, mobile coupons are 10x more likely to be used than printed coupons.

3. Don’t be channel agnostic.

Know which channels your customers are most likely to respond to, then use them. If a customer requires two emails to respond but responds the first time to direct mail, get them on the “mail first” list. If someone else is more likely to respond to an email than a printed newsletter, get them on the “email first” list. Keep your branding, message, and imaging consistent regardless of channel.

4. Ask their opinion.

Use response cards, personalized URLs, and other survey mechanisms to get your customers’ opinion on products, services, and potential business changes. When one specialty retailer wanted to give its location a facelift, it used a targeted direct mail piece with personalized URLs to ask its customers about products and services they wanted but the company didn’t offer. It got an earful! The retailer incorporated the most popular suggestions, and its sales soared.

5. Remember to say “thank you.”

Everyone likes to be appreciated. Send a personalized “thank you” letter, postcard, or other mailer once in a while. Attach a no-strings coupon or discount just to engender their goodwill . . . and you will.

Gaining customer loyalty doesn’t have to be rocket science. You just have to put in the effort.

Pop quiz: What is the factor most likely to impact a person’s willingness to donate to a nonprofit organization? According to a survey by YouGov, it’s relationship. Key to this relationship is helping donors feel great about their donations and see how their giving is making a difference.

How do you deepen your donors’ relationships with you? Get to know them. Use surveys, third-party data sources, pop-up web forms, and other methods to gather information about your donors that you may not already have. This information can be used to tailor your communications in ways that are most effective.

Say you are providing services to underprivileged children around the world. If your survey reveals that potential donors are in the medical field, for example, you might emphasize the value of their donations to fight disease or provide clean water. If, on the other hand, donors are teachers, you might highlight the ability to give the children good educations. Or you could provide the same messaging to both groups, but use different imagery.

Not everyone wants to take the time out of their day to fill out a survey, so if you are going to ask people to do so, give them something of value in return. “Value” doesn’t have to mean a monetary incentive, such as a gift card or entrance into a drawing. It can be something as simple as exclusive insight into a project you are funding (“Respond to our survey and receive a link to an exclusive behind-the-scenes video of our volunteers at work”).

Donors give because it makes them feel good. The response incentive needs to reflect that motivation, and it will be different for every organization.

Need help creating a donor survey to further the mission of your organization? Give us a call!