In her continuing series, we welcome special guest, Stelter Editorial Director, Katie Parker.
You need a variety of at-your-fingertip offers. A holding spot for value-add content pieces, interactive tools, consultation services, exclusive events and other enrichment opportunities that can fulfill any need that your donors (or you) have.
Making the early effort to create this collection leads to efficiency, ensuring that you spend your time nurturing donors at the point of contact rather than scrambling for material when you have their ear.
This is your offer stable.
Here are two ways to craft it:
1. Build your stable for the stages of the buyer’s journey.
This is donor-centric way to think about your offers. As we discussed in our 2019 trend report, the buyer’s journey begins at Awareness, advances to Consideration and arrives at Decision. The goal of offers in this stable is to advance the prospect to the next stage of the buying funnel.
If medicine brand Claritin was creating an offer stable for the buyer’s journey, it would look something like:
Awareness: My nose is running and I’m sneezing, I wonder what’s wrong with me?
Correlating offer: Claritin runs their logo across a web experience with searchable conditions, dynamically driving to a diagnosis that matched.
Consideration: I clearly have pollen allergies. What can I do to battle these symptoms?
Correlating offer: Claritin’s website allows you to print a coupon for Target pharmacy. A Claritin logo appears on the coupon.
Decision: I’m going to buy Claritin.
Correlating offer: Claritin prepackages two boxes together at a discount.
For a charitable gift in a will, this offer stable might look like:
- Awareness offer: An educational mailing that includes the basic benefits of giving a gift in your will.
- Consideration offer: A brochure with bequest language and the specific steps to take to give a gift in your will.
- Decision offer: Donor-driven access to the planned giving officer for support and tools, including the ability to reach out in the medium of the donor’s choosing—email versus phone, for example—at no obligation and at no cost.
2. Build your stable to meet your marketing objectives.
This is a you-centric way to think about your offers. If you have a specific goal around closing CGA gifts, for instance, an offer stable focused on the donor needs that are answered by a CGA gift (“receive dependable income for life”) can help. Digital and print guides, interactive illustration tools, personalized consultations—they are all offers that can help you meet your annuity goal.
With this type of stable, you identify your outcomes first (“I need to close 50 CGA gifts this year”) and back into it with offers that support them. Testing the success of the different offers in this group can help you be agile and increase your ROI throughout your fiscal year.
Take the Next Step
These two stable umbrellas ensure that you covered your donor or your organization’s specific needs. Let’s go one layer deeper and continue to build up your offers. Subsections of your stable should include:
- Emotional offers: Engage the heart with authenticity, transparency, personality and a reflection of community. (Emotion always trumps intellect in decision-making.) One of Stelter’s top offers of all time is a guide about the first 48 hours following the loss of a loved one. A tough topic, but a reality, and one that converts.
- Intellectual offers: Deploy facts and key information; lean on education and social proof to inspire hand-raisers.
With focused offer-creation (and a concentrated effort around why you’re creating each piece), you will be prepared to turn your prospects into donors.
How invested are you in building your offer stable?