Charity marketers should build stronger relationships with older donors but must resist using direct mail as a default channel to “sweat” them more, according to a study.
The “Time for UK Fundraising to Look Up” report, published by Xtraordinary Fundraising, Forster Communications and Blackbaud, examines the giving habits of the two older generations of UK donor – baby boomers and those born before 1945 – with their peers in the US and Canada.
While it supports claims made last week that charities should embrace digital to a greater extent to target a younger market, the authors maintain that these techniques will also help bring in older generations.
The study says UK fundraisers need to park any preconceptions about which channels are suitable for engaging older audiences and consider an integrated approach to engagement as they would with younger audiences.
It states: “Charities need to consider how they decide which channels to use for segmenting their fundraising appeals. If they are simply using age as a determining factor, and defaulting to direct mail for older audiences, they are missing a trick in not targeting people based on online and smartphone literacy and usage.
“These people are shopping and consuming online and through their smartphones, and charities that crack these as successful engagement points are likely to reap the benefits.”
Older donors in the UK are lagging behind those in Canada and the US when it comes to giving online yet the number of older people engaging online and through mobile is increasing, which suggests significant potential for ramping up online donations from older donors for UK charities – there has recently been an 80% increase in Facebook sign-ups by people aged 55 and over.
The report is based on nearly 1,500 interviews with UK donors, and while nearly half of older donors in the UK give through direct debit, they lag a long way behind those in the US and Canada when it comes to donating goods or responding to direct mail.
It concludes: “Businesses are only just waking up to older people as a lucrative consumer audience but many charities already have close relationships with them as donors. Those relationships could be a lot deeper and more numerous if charities invest more in integrated approaches to this audience.”
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Older donors don’t just want mail – another demo on how integrated campaigns are key http://t.co/mcxV2QGRGk #marketing #charity
Older donors ‘don’t just want mail’ http://t.co/fXqEppT7aT