One of the most difficult questions for a non-profit fundraising professional to answer is, "What is the right donation amount to ask for from this particular donor?" The answer requires an understanding of each donor's ability to give, propensity to give, connection to the cause, giving history, and various other factors.
What is Predictive Analytics?
Predictive analytics is an approach to predicting future outcomes by employing a variety of statistical techniques, including data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning. It uses big data sets and historical information to identify patterns that can predict probable future events.
As an example, a company may use predictive analytics to "predict" what any one consumer will purchase based on the buying patterns of all of their previous customers. Have you ever been amazed that your music app can recommend songs that you like? That's predictive analytics!
How does Salsa use Predictive Analytics?
Salsa applies machine learning to Predictive Analytics techniques in the nonprofit space by using vast pools of historical supporter activity data and demographic attributes to predict future behaviors. We call this SmartEngagement and it's put into practice in our platform as Smart Groups, Smart Ask Amounts, and Smart Giving Levels.
Salsa uses SmartEngagement technology to create models that represent how a supporter is most likely to interact with your organization.
SmartEngagement technology is now infused throughout Salsa's platform, and our machine learning models help make informed predictions about the donation amounts individual supporters would be willing to give your organization.
How can Predictive Analytics make your life easier?
As a fundraising professional, one of the more difficult questions to answer about online fundraising pages is, “Which dollar amounts should I display on the donation buttons on my pages?” This is an important question. Displaying amounts that are too high may discourage some donors, and showing amounts that are too low may cause other donors to donate less than they would otherwise be willing to give.
Currently, Salsa's Smart features use predictive analytics to make life easier for our nonprofit users by:
- Identifying supporters who are potential mid-level or major donors.
- Dynamically displaying Smart Ask Amounts, which power the ask array on donation forms, thereby individually optimizing the ask amounts for each donor.
Salsa helps you to best use your time and resources by bringing attention to those supporters whose attributes and interactions suggest they could be willing and able to donate larger amounts to your organization. These supporters are added to “Smart Giving Level” dynamic groups and flagged as “Potential Major Donors” and “Potential Mid-Level Donors,” so that you and your staff can send personalized messages and cultivate as you choose. These “Smart Giving Level” groups are available for querying and reporting in both Salsa Engage and Salsa CRM.
With the introduction of Smart Ask amounts, donation appeals in Salsa Engage become a “set it and forget it” solution. When a campaign manager chooses to display “Smart Amounts” on their fundraising page, Salsa Engage will use all of the data that it knows about a supporter, as well as models that represent similar supporters, to display a series of donation buttons that optimize the ask amounts for each individual donor. This leads to higher conversion rates and greater donation amount averages, without any of the guesswork or compromises that fundraisers usually contend with.
Smart Groups
Utilizing Salsa's SmartEngagement technology, employ pre-defined groups for mid-level and major gift prospects.
This allows your organization to see those segments that you may not have otherwise noticed:
- Potential Major Donor—good chance they have the capacity and propensity to make a gift of $1,000 or greater.
- Potential Mid-Level Donor—good chance they have the capacity and propensity to make a gift over $400.
Smart Donation Amounts
On fundraising form pages, when you set donation ask amount string buttons, use SmartEngagement Technology to customize the button ask amounts for known donors. See who was presented with Smart Amounts in their transaction details.