Flickr Photo: Luc LegayFabulous NTEN board member Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention released some very interesting research today.
Apparently, 8 of 10 nonprofits think their messaging fails to hit home. Of particular interest to us is that 70% of respondents indicated they aren't targeting content to their audiences appropriately.
This isn't news. For the last several years, we have participated in the E-benchmarks Report with M + R Strategic Services. 2009 was the first year we were able to include data about how list segmentation affects open rates, click-throughs, and completions. Unsurprisingly, messages sent to distinct segments performed much better than the average for messages sent to entire lists.
There are also a myriad of articles on the importance of segmenting in the nonprofit technology community:
Why the reluctance to segment our lists and message appropriately? Certainly, a large part of the equation has been the unavailability of the technology. Segmenting has been hard and expensive.
Fortunately, segmenting tools have moved down market. Our low cost CRM solutions report with Idealware.org shows that even the smaller tools are now beginning to include segmenting features.
But I would love to hear from you. Is the just the technology, or are there other reasons you haven't used segmenting to better communicate with your audiences?