#14 Six wedding guests wore the same dress

If you’ve been tuned into 24-hour news cycle for the last 72 hours you would surely have seen a momentary dip in quality journalism. A slow news day is not necessarily a bad thing, but whilst there are famines and civil wars tearing apart swathes of our planet, it seems odd to see the report of six wedding guests attending a shin-dig in the same dress.

I don’t know what the chances of this occurrence are, and I don’t quite understand how it is newsworthy, but it managed to grab my attention and get me thinking.

Now, this may not have been the most expensive or stylish outfit but it was right for that wedding. When attempting to calculate the likelihood of one garment being perfect for that wedding and all other weddings the numbers get even trickier. So, what are the odds that this dress would be suitable for that wedding, all other weddings, and a funeral? I would guess 0.00 as every incidence, although similar in some key areas, will have some individual characteristics.

Donor journeys are the same – let me explain before casting doubt. A donor journey might be right for Charity X. We all know that this journey, that works so well for Charity X, might not work for Charity Y, but I’m going to take this logic a little further. We all know that the journey for Regular Giving donors at X and Y may need to differ, but Regular Giving donors will need different journeys within Charity X based on a few key indicators. Acquisition Channel, Reactivation Channel, Age, Donor Interest Points, and Communications Preferences.

These may be obvious to our Retention Managers, and on the list of ‘must haves’ for many of them, but they will attest that these can make the journeys too complex to make viable due to cost, lack of data and CRM complexity. We can get started on a few of them without much extra effort from you by asking your data-team to add fields to your import files and create space on your donors’ pledge profile that include all the above, because if you don’t have the data you cannot report on it.

Don’t just buy a journey off the rack. A bespoke and informed journey will allow you to speak to your donors in the voice they want to hear.