Making the right asks of the right donors is a crucial but complicated part of fundraising. With Dataro’s Ask Amounts, it’s easy.
What are Ask Amounts?
Typically, a solicitation for a single donation will prompt the recipient with multiple options for a donation amount. These options are sometimes known as an 'Ask Ladder, ‘Gift Matrix', ‘Ask String’, or similar. A three-step ask ladder will consist of an 'anchor' or ‘base’ amount and two other amounts. A typical approach to the ladder is: Anchor, Anchor * 1.5, Anchor * 2.
For example:
- $20 (anchor)
- $30 (anchor * 1.5)
- $40 (anchor * 2)
The anchor is the critical value in setting up the Ask Ladder, and it makes sense to set a higher anchor for certain donors and a lower value for others.
Dataro's Ask Amount Recommendation provides an automated and data-driven way to set a unique anchor ask value for every contact in your CRM. It is specifically designed for this purpose and is not intended to determine the correct ask amount for mid-level or major donors.
How does the Ask Amount recommendation model work?
Dataro’s Ask Amount recommendations are based on a large-scale analysis of fundraising ask ladders and outcomes. We analysed several dozen different ask strategies and the giving behaviour of millions of donors to develop a highly effective method to estimate the best the Ask Amount for each donor.
The model takes into account a donor's recent single giving behaviour and finds a balance between their average and maximum donation amount. The model will generally ask for a reasonable increase in donation value, but is more conservative in cases where the donor has decreased their giving amounts, given less frequently, or has not donated a single gift recently.
If a donor has only made recurring donations in the past, then the value is based on their average recurring gift value. If the donor has never donated before, then the Ask Amount is based on the organisation's median value of recent, successful, first-time single gifts.
Can I customize the way Ask Amounts are calculated?
Setting minimum and maximum Ask Amount thresholds
You can set the minimum and maximum amounts within your Dataro account. Simply navigate to the Model Performance page (accessed through the Predictions menu), find the Ask Amounts section, and update the thresholds accordingly.
Please note that the changes will not flow through to your CRM until your next batch of predictions which is typically every 7 days and over the weekend. You can find the exact date and time that your predictions were updated by navigating to Settings > Scheduled Processes.
Choosing the types of campaigns that Ask Amounts takes into account
Dataro's default calculations for Ask Amounts only take into account donations made to Appeals, Newsletter, Emergency and Acquisition campaigns via Mail. However, you can customize the campaign categories and channels that you’d like to use. Simply navigate to the Model Performance page (accessed through the Predictions menu), find the Ask Amounts section, and update the campaign categories and channels accordingly.
Please note that the changes will not flow through to your CRM until your next batch of predictions which is typically every 7 days and over the weekend. You can find the exact date and time that your predictions were updated by navigating to Settings > Scheduled Processes.
How do I use Ask Amounts in my campaigns?
Using Ask Amounts in a direct mail campaign
Using Ask Amounts in your campaign is easy! To use Dataro Ask Amount recommendations when creating a direct mail file, simply export your list from Dataro or your CRM, making sure to include Ask Amounts as one of the columns in your file. You can then apply your multipliers for the second and third ask amounts using the spreadsheet, before sending it to your mail agency.
Using Ask Amounts in emails
The process for using Ask Amounts in your emails will depend on the email marketing platform that your organization uses. In general, in order to use Ask Amounts in your emails, Ask Amount data will need to be accessible as a custom field on the contact profiles in your email platform. This can be accomplished in several ways:
- Manually exporting a file from Dataro and uploading it to your email marketing platform
- Setting up the integration between your CRM and email marketing platform integration to allow Dataro’s custom fields in your CRM to populate your email marketing platform as well
Once Ask Amount data is available in your email platform, follow your email platform’s instructions for creating dynamic or conditional content, using the Ask Amount field for each donor.
Using Ask Amounts in donation forms
When you send an email appeal using personalised Dataro Ask Amounts and your donors click on the CTA to donate through your website, they will see a different ask amount on the donation form, unless you are using URL parameters to personalize the donation form experience.
URL parameters are additional pieces of information appended to a URL, which allow for additional personalization and tracking. A static URL parameter may be applied directly to the CTA link in your email, and include tracking information that will apply to every donor who clicks the link (such as campaign name, campaign medium, etc.). Dynamic or personalized URL parameters create a unique URL for every donor, using dynamic fields to append donor-specific information to the links in the email that they receive. This often includes their name, contact information, and ask amount, which can all be used to pre-fill the donation form that they see when they click the link.
To set up personalized URLs using Dataro’s Ask Amounts, reference the instructions provided by your email and donation form providers and use Dataro’s Ask Amount as the amount field.
If your email platform does not offer the ability to generate dynamic, personalized URLs, you may also consider a manual solution for creating URLs and uploading them to your email platform, as seen here.
How should historic ask ladder data be stored in my CRM?
Ask ladder data should be recorded against each constituent's solicitation record for each campaign. This will facilitate more advanced analysis of ask recommendations in future.
This will look different depending on your CRM.
In Salesforce, you should create custom fields on the CampaignMember object and store the values there when a Contact is assigned to a campaign. Please the below API names and types:
Ask_Amount_1__c Currency
Ask_Amount_2__c Currency
Ask_Amount_3__c Currency
In Blackbaud, you can use the comments field on the Assigned Appeal record with the following structure:
Ask1:50.00,Ask2:75.00,Ask3:100.00