Viguerie’s BLOG: Lifetime Value
Post #7
May 2, 2023
If you don’t know the Lifetime Value (LTV) of your donors, you have no idea how much money you should invest to acquire a new donor.
Yes, I know it’s difficult to determine the LTV—there are so many variables, including you’re a new organization and you have no experience with receiving wills and bequests; you don’t know how long the average donor will contribute; you don’t know how effective your development team will be, etc. But you must make an effort to come away with an average/range, e.g., “somewhere between $100 and $200,” or “at least $1,000,” and “probably not more than $2,000,” etc.
What should you include in your LTV? The answer is—everything.
· Net from regular (usually monthly) postal mailings to your donors
· Net from emails to your donors
· Any net from newsletters
· Monthly giving programs
· Major gifts
· Wills/bequests
· Income from rental or exchange of your donor file
· Income from fundraising dinners, receptions, etc.
· Etc., etc.
Lifetime Value means Lifetime Value, not the value of new donors after 1-3-5-or even 10 years. The LTV of donors often includes their largest gift—the one you receive after their death.
If you don’t make an attempt to determine the LTV, you will have no idea how much to invest on acquiring new donors, which means most of the time you’ll be super cautious and not spend near enough to acquire new donors, which means you’ll leave lots of money on the table for others.
Of course, only part of the LTV of your donors/supporters consists of the donations they give you.
When considering your LTV, keep in mind the purpose of your organization and the value of all the benefits from your mailings, including education, building your BRAND, BRANDING your opponents, passing or defeating legislation, etc. Remember the 3rd largest form of advertising is postal mail.
This free post is brought to you by American Target Advertising™ (ATA) and American Mailing Lists Corporation™—“Conservative Donors R Us.” ATA was the world’s first conservative direct marketing agency and still is the largest with over 80 team members (increasing to 135 by 2024) that will mail over 300,000,000 postal letters in the 2023-2024 election cycle for 40+ clients who will receive over 7,000,000 donations from over 2,500,000 unique donors. |
Much of the information in GoRightGoBig.com is from Richard A. Viguerie’s new book, GO BIG – The Marketing “Secrets” of Richard A. Viguerie. Copies for yourself or as a gift can be ordered at GoBigConservatives.com or GoRightGoBig.com, or at your favorite online bookstore. If you wish to buy copies to be given free to high school or college students to encourage them to seek a career in conservative politics/marketing, go to GoBigConservatives.com. To subscribe FREE to GO RIGHT - GO BIG blog, click here. |
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