Turning insight into action

Is your values-based segmentation gathering dust on the server?

You're not alone. Here are three tips to help make your segmentation more actionable for your everyday fundraising:

Tip #1 Pull out the audience’s values to drive creative

Counter-intuitively, I often find values-based segmentations don’t have their values front and centre.

One shortcut to putting them front-and-centre is to look at the type of causes the audience gives to. For example, if someone supports:

Women’s rights, Human rights and Refugees – They are a left-leaning audience who value social justice and equality.

Health charities, UK Emergency and Armed Forces – They believe charity begins at home, especially if they also read the Daily Mail.

Then you need to echo those values and beliefs in your creative work.

Tip #2 Get back to first person quotes to put the audience the room

The real people behind the values-based segmentations often get buried under stacks of quantitative data.

One really good tip to bring to life the audience is to ask the researcher for the focus group interview transcripts and then carefully choose a first-person quote that shows the insight – whether that’s their attitudes towards your cause or their motivations to support.

I’d then add on a summary slide for each audience with the quotes, values, and also the picture. Which leads me to my next point.

Tip #3 Choose a picture to make people more memorable

Values-based segmentations are often heavy on info-graphics, but light on real-life images. A picture tells a thousand words, so is there a picture of the audience that you can add in?

I’ll stress it is important you do the work on their values and attitudes before choosing an image because the photo needs to echo them.

If you found this useful, you might be interested in finding out more about my new course called Fundraisers against the machine that will help fundraisers apply their audience segments and become audience-led. Click below to find out more.