
Identify Your Ideal Prospect with Donor Lead Scoring
Do you really know who your best prospects are? What characteristics are the most important to your organization – giving, behavior, demographic information – or a combination? Affinity scoring can help you decide what types of interactions are the most important. Then, you can categorize and prioritize your constituents based on their scores to get the best return from your efforts.
No matter the number of constituents, knowing which prospects to focus on and where to spend your time is critical. Instead of analyzing each constituent individually, affinity scoring tools allow you to establish reusable scoring profiles. With the help of a powerful CRM, the scoring profiles can then be applied to a group of constituents or your entire database. Discover the three W’s of lead scoring…
1. What is lead scoring?
When you think of scoring prospects, a lead with a high score is someone that is identified as having capacity and propensity to donate to your organization. This person interacts with your nonprofit in person and/or online. They show all the signs of being a strong supporter of your cause.
Meanwhile, someone with a low score typically neither has the funds nor interest in supporting your cause. Why waste your time and money trying to gain their attention?
Your lead scoring system should be built out to assign point values to different actions that a prospect can take in the sales funnel. When a prospect reaches a predefined point value, they are considered a hot lead. This should flag your team to reach out to those specific prospects. This will help them target the right group of supporters and increase donations.
2. Why score leads?
Organizations can use lead scoring to better understand their prospects and prioritize their time. Stop wasting your outreach efforts and focus on the supporters that keep coming back. A high score shows that the prospect is more willing to donate because they have a genuine interest in your cause.
Automation saves time. Why not utilize your programs to create a systematic approach to donor outreach? Ensure everyone at your organization is trained on how to look for the qualities of a high-scoring prospect.
Donors want to have a more personal relationship with the organizations they support. They are investors, advocates, and advisers. How they interact with your organization, their behaviors over time, and what they tell you matters more. Why not learn the most you can about them?
3. What criteria should be used to lead score?
The most important part of any lead scoring system is the action that determines their shift from interest to intent. This trigger shows that the prospect has participated in the research phase-by attending a webinar, reading a blog post, etc-and is now in the next part of the funnel, where actions could include signing up for a volunteer shift or purchasing tickets to a fundraising event. Some additional important factors to track would include:
- Subscribing to your newsletter
- Viewing pages on your website
- “Liking” your organization on social media
- Sharing your content
- Participating in volunteer shifts
- Donating (how much and how often)
- Registering for an event
Some examples of how to assign points:
- Subscribes to newsletter = 2
- Pageview on your site = 1
- Shares your content on social media = 2
- Registers for an event = 3
- Volunteers at an event = 5
- Makes a one-time donation = 4
- Makes a large donation = 4
- Signs up for repeated donations = 6
- Requests more information = 3
Another form of lead scoring relates to general demographics. By identifying an ideal audience persona, you can help narrow your fundraising efforts. Assigning scores to attributes such as age, location, job role and income, to name a few, can help streamline your fundraising efforts. Don’t forget to include negative scoring options into the mix.
Conclusion
By making lead scoring an integral part of your fundraising process, you can make your efforts more targeted while saving time and minimizing resources. Overall, lead scoring helps you understand your audience and how to best work with them to support your cause.