Demographic Appends: Stewarding Relationships Through Data

When it comes to marketing, you need to know who your prospects are and what inspires them to support your cause, so you can send tailored outreach that encourages them to get and stay involved. Demographic appends can help you do exactly that!

Demographic information is a powerful way to learn about your supporters’ backgrounds, especially when paired with other details.

From filling out donation forms to registering to volunteer, supporters share information at every corner. While you’ll naturally gather supporter data throughout their relationship with your organization, there’s much more you can do to ensure you have the complete picture just by appending demographic data.

With the right provider, a demographic append is the most reliable way to fill in any gaps in supporters’ profiles. That way, you can send targeted asks and promote the right opportunities at the right time to maximize their support. This guide will cover everything you need to know to append demographic data for your nonprofit, including:

Demographic Appends FAQ
Why You Should Append Demographic Data
The Demographic Append Process
How to Get Started with Demographic Append Services

If you’re ready to go beyond generic appeals, let’s dive in and explore the wonderful world of demographic appends!

Demographic Appends FAQ

Before you consider using demographic append services, you should understand the basics of the process. If data appends are a new subject for you, let’s answer some common questions you might have before finding the right data enrichment service.

What is a demographic append?

Demographic appending is a service that pulls essential background information on your supporters, so you can build successful and highly-targeted marketing campaigns. You provide basic information like each supporter’s name, address, phone number, and other defining elements. Then, your service provider will use this information to identify the individual in their database and fill in any missing details in your CRM.

Standard demographic data you can append includes:

Age and Date of Birth
Gender
Income
Ethnicity
Marital Status
Familial Information
Education Information

Combined with other data, a demographic append helps you create a highly-detailed profile for each constituent, allowing you to customize their experience in ways that other nonprofits won’t be able to replicate.

How much does it cost to append demographic data?

The price of demographic append services depends on the provider you use and the number of constituents for whom you’re appending data. Prices vary considerably between providers, but you’ll likely have to spend slightly more for better-quality data.

While it can be tempting to go with the cheapest option available, it’s worth spending a little extra for access to a more comprehensive and reliable database of demographic information.

How long does a demographic append take?

Similar to pricing, the time it takes to append demographic data depends on your service provider and the number of records you’re appending. You’ll usually receive results pretty quickly, but your turnaround time will also depend on how thorough the provider’s checking process is.

How can I increase the accuracy of my demographic append results?

Provide as much identifying information about your supporters as possible. This data might include full names, postal addresses, contact information, and education level. The more details you provide, the easier it’ll be to verify that you’ve found the correct individual’s information.

Moreover, you’ll also want to consider the quality of the demographic append services provider you choose. Those with a more reliable and complete database will increase the accuracy of your results.

What types of demographic data can be appended?

You can pull a wide range of demographic information for each of your constituents. We gave a brief overview earlier, but there are plenty of other background details you can pull for your supporters.

To give you a sense of how they might play into your strategies, here are just some demographics that you can pull:

Net worth
Age
Gender
Ethnicity and race
Income
Marital Status
Presence of Children
Religion
Lifestyle attributes such as hobbies, interests, and occupations
Buying behaviors such as online product purchases and online gift registries

Remember that the data points your team will find most useful depend on your organization’s needs and strategies.

For instance, advocacy organizations may want to verify that people are of voting age or have particular political views to ensure they’re sending the right advocacy opportunities. On the other hand, an organization that wants to expand its fundraising may want to group donors based on their income levels to send more targeted asks.

Why You Should Append Demographic Data

Demographic appends can help enhance your constituent data, tailor your marketing capabilities, and take your relationships with supporters and prospects to the next level.

If you’re considering appending demographic data but aren’t sure whether it will truly benefit your organization, here’s how the process can impact your organization beyond simply filling in missing fields in your CRM:

Create detailed buyer personas: Create a holistic picture of each supporter and identify common trends between groups. That way, you can create buyer personas based on different types of supporters to understand what drives people with specific attributes to get involved in your cause.
Shape content strategy: Knowing specific characteristics allows you to deliver relevant content and appeals to supporters, rather than sending generic outreach to your entire constituent database. For instance, donors who have lower incomes likely wouldn’t be good candidates for major giving. Or, if you have a volunteer opportunity that benefits a particular area in your community, you might target former residents.
Increase marketing ROI: When you have the necessary information to create targeted marketing opportunities, your marketing team will spend fewer resources creating generic appeals that don’t yield results. Instead, they’ll be able to create highly targeted outreach based on specific characteristics of different constituent segments.
Identify intent opportunities: Based on the buyer personas you create using appended demographic data, you can see if anyone in your database might be an excellent fit to upgrade their support. For instance, maybe family-oriented individuals commonly participate in 5Ks and other events that welcome younger audiences. Predicting this behavior will allow your team to nudge the right opportunities to the right supporters.

A demographic append can be incredibly impactful for your cause. Best of all, the right service provider can ensure you receive the most accurate, complete data in a timely manner, so you can start experiencing these benefits as soon as possible.

The Demographic Append Process

Like any data append, appending demographic data is incredibly straightforward. You just need a knowledgeable provider who leverages a comprehensive database and has a reasonable turnaround time.

After finding a reliable demographic append services provider, here’s what you can expect from the process:

You share a list of constituents’ names, postal addresses, emails, and other identifying characteristics with your service provider.
The service provider searches their database for any missing demographic details for supporters.
They’ll add missing demographic information and replace any inaccurate data.
After a thorough verification process, they’ll return your constituents’ data with the appended demographic information.

To run an append without a demographic append services provider, you’ll need to pay for access to your own database of demographics. You’ll need to find software that will extract the information for you. However, this isn’t as reliable as having an experienced provider who can manually verify each constituent’s demographic information and deliver the details you need.

How to Get Started with Demographic Append Services

When you rely on a service provider for your demographic append needs, here’s what you can expect:

Shop for a provider. Find a provider that fits your specific needs and ask for a quote.
Send in your constituent records. Your provider will let you know what information they need, like constituents’ names, contact information, and so on. Ideally, the more details, the better for accuracy.
Wait. Appends can take some time to be completed as your provider verifies the information for accuracy.
Receive your appended demographic data. You’ll receive your information to you in an easily understandable format. Then, you’ll likely want to import those results into your CRM.

Additional Data Enrichment Resources

Your constituents are unique, and to cultivate genuine relationships with them, you need to treat them as individuals. That means going beyond speaking to them using the same generic voice. A demographic append is a reliable way to understand what messages they actually want to receive from your team.

Knowing everything from constituents’ ages to their income levels allows you to send relevant appeals and keep everyone connected to your work. Remember, NPOInfo focuses exclusively as employer appends which can be a great way for you to get valuable information that would grow your corporate and workplace giving revenue. Reach out for a free quote to start gathering meaningful information that will take your cause to the next level.

If you’re striving to continue improving your data management strategies, there are plenty of helpful resources out there. To help, check out this list of helpful resources we’ve put together:

The Fundraiser’s Guide to Improving Nonprofit Data Hygiene. Appending data for your CRM will help clean up your database and ensure everything’s accurate. Explore other data hygiene best practices with this guide.
The Data Append Guide for Nonprofits Working on Data Hygiene. Learn everything you need to know about data appending beyond demographics in this ultimate guide from NXUnite.