I recently joined Lesley Pinder, supporter experience extraordinaire, for a webinar hosted by WoodsValldata. We talked about what happens after the letter drops, and my bit was on how data can shape the supporter experience, not just the selection.
I started with ‘Janet’.
Janet has given £25 to the Christmas appeal for years. She sorts out her giving the same evening she writes her Christmas cards. The CRM only sees a recent gift, two years active and a top 10% model score, so Janet gets every ask going. A raffle in January, a cash ask in February, and on it goes all year until she gives her £25 again in December.
The selections haven’t done anything wrong. A model will always score a recent, regular giver highly, and a long active window treats a once-a-year Christmas giver exactly like someone who gives every month. But a predictive model is a tool, not a strategy. And Janet had already told us everything we needed to know. She gives once a year, in December, to Christmas, and it’s £25 every time.
That goes for the ask too. I love prompting, but is asking Janet for £35 in June based on her Christmas gift misses the right approach? Why do fundraising always seem to chase a higher average gift? For Janet, anchor on what she usually gives. And when she doesn’t usually give, what should that prompt be?
We also have a habit of only looking at who responds to our appeals. The people who don’t respond are just as interesting. How many letters did they get? What were they prompted? Was it a way of giving they’d done before? And silence on giving isn’t always silence. Email opens, events, a call to supporter care, or a note on a reply form saying “please only write at Christmas” all tell you something. And if you’re still not sure then test it. Leave a random group out of the extra mailings. If they give as much as everyone else, those letters weren’t doing the work, they were just taking the credit.
If you don’t have a data team or insight agency to call on then just print the giving history of 20 recent responders. You’ll spot the things in minutes. Or lay out every letter one donor got last year on a table, in order, and read them as she would.
Go and find your Janets. Thanks to Lesley for a great conversation, to WoodsValldata for hosting, and to everyone who joined.
You can watch the webinar recording here.
Or contact us to see if we can help use your data to optimise your supporters’ experience.
Author: Andrew Sargent, 2026 © Sequoia-Insights.com
