One-to-One Marketing for Nonprofits

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One-to-One Marketing for Nonprofits
By Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
Partners
Peppers and Rogers Group

Until the Industrial Revolution, merchants and craftsmen practiced one-to-one marketing -- by treating different customers differently based upon their needs.

But Industrial Age technology shifted the economy's focus - from individual customers to the mass market. Businesses no longer cultivated customer relationships, but began to deliver the same product the same way to everyone.

Today, minute-by-minute technological advances are once again changing the underlying premise of competition and strategy - including for nonprofits. Successful Interactive Age businesses and their nonprofit cousins no longer rely just on their great products - or good causes. They must have great relationships with their customers and donors. Today's one-to-one enterprise develops a "customer," and then finds "products" for that "customer."

What One-to-One Marketing Is
It's a strategy that can help your nonprofit organization build and strengthen relationships with its donors, volunteers and shoppers. Rather than marketing to a population at large, your organization can strike up relationships with individuals who already have an interest in your cause. Why build relationships? To cement loyalty to your Web site.

One-to-one marketing works because the microchip now makes it possible to integrate three important business functions: market information, communication with customers, and production. All this applies to nonprofits as well.

How It Works
The one-to-one marketing dynamic for nonprofit organizations works as follows:

Information: I know you. You're my donor/volunteer, and with my database I can see how you differ from my other donors/volunteers. I remember everything about our relationship.

Communication: Using new interactive communications vehicles, you tell me what you'd like from me and how I'm doing.

Production: Using mass-customization technology, I offer you something according to your individual specifications. Afterwards, I ask for more feedback: "How was that? What can I do to improve?"

These expanded capabilities help nonprofits develop Learning Relationships with their donors, shoppers, volunteers and other constituencies. From the point of view of nonprofits' constituencies, a Learning Relationship works like this:

I tell you what I want.
You tailor your product, service or relevant information so I can now get from you something I cannot get from anyone else at any price.
I have now invested time and effort in a relationship with you. To get an equivalent relationship somewhere else, I must first reinvent the relationship.

The rapidly increasing power of computers is bringing competition in nearly every industry to the level of the single customer. Computers make it possible to create an individual "customer feedback loop," that integrates various processes. An increasing number of enterprises are using interactive technologies like email and the web to establish Learning Relationships -- yet building relationships remains an idea with deep roots in history.

How It Can Work for Nonprofits
Visitors to a nonprofit Web site really want the information offered there and might even feel obligated to donate after they get it. Thanks to interactive and tracking software, a nonprofit can encourage an instant donation, add valuable names to its database, remember them when they return, and link visitors with any counseling they need -- pretty much all the earmarks of a vital one-to-one Web site.

For years, nonprofits have tried to keep their established donors while constantly pursuing new ones, but the costs of that pursuit keep rising. With the advent of new technology, the Internet and the principles of one-to-one marketing, nonprofits have the chance to establish and protect donor loyalty on a scale never before imagined, while still reducing their costs.

Peppers and Rogers Group is a Customer Relationship Management strategy and consulting firm. To receive INSIDE 1to1, their free, weekly, email newsletter, visit their website at www.1to1.com or send a message to subscribe@1to1.com.

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