Marketing support for capital campaigns: get your story across with solid marketing strategy and tactics, but never forget the people - Marketing

University Business, May, 2003 by Robert A. Sevier

David Hoover, the director of Marketing Communications at Ohio State University, suggests caution here: "Though it is necessary and appropriate to develop a communication program specifically in support of a capital campaign, it is just as important to integrate campaign communication into the larger main stream of the institution's current communication initiatives. A campaign," he says, "wile have greater impact if it segues off current brand awareness rather than trying to create something new."

Hoover is right: Smart campaigners know that the good will created by a long history of brand building is a powerful catalyst for a successful campaign.

Generate response. The key to generating campaign response? Segmentation and customization. In other words, you must be willing to craft different kinds of appeals, using different media, for different kinds of donors. The basic rule of thumb is this: the more potential, the more you must be willing to customize.

Major donors, for instance, need to be approached carefully. They will not respond to a direct mail solicitation. Nor will they likely react favorably to telemarketers. They will respond, however, to carefully crafted pitches that align the needs of the campaign with their own personal or professional needs. Of course, research is used to tease out those interests.

Greg Carroll, VP of Marketing and Public Relations for Furman University (SC), recently told me that while Furman's last campaign used high-quality campaign publications, their development VP loves to tell people that, for him, it was his HP inkjet that made the difference in the campaign. "He could print out those rainbow charts showing and tracking giving," says Carroll, "and whip up proposals with amazing consistency."

Segmentation, then, involves breaking a large heterogeneous pool into homogeneous subgroups. Rather than a single pool of donors, you actually have donors who:

* have a particular relationship to the institution (alumni, long-time donors, faculty).

* will respond to particular need (the fine arts complex or scholarships, for instance).

* are able to give specific-sized gifts (major donors, not-so-major donors, etc.).

* are able to give in specific ways (unrestricted gifts, planned giving).

* will respond to different kinds of pitches (direct mail, telephone, class appeals, personal solicitation).

Of course, even within these large segments, there are powerful subgroups just waiting to emerge. Again, research is your key. Once you have the segments in mind, and have identified the individuals who are capable of doing the heavy lifting in each of the segments, it's time to develop some messages. This involves customization.

Customizing your messages, If you've identified your major segments, you've come a long way. Now it is time to match messages, media, and audiences. For this, we need a basic communication grid that identifies major donors and major donor segments. (Note the sample grid above.)

Clearly, if you can identify an audience and discover a relationship to your institution, you have a powerful hook. The communication grid will then allow you to determine the best way to set it.