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

At NPOInfo, we believe that having the correct data will help you communicate using your organization’s unique voice and truly connect with your audience. We help nonprofits accomplish this through data appending, so we’re equipped and excited to teach nonprofit marketers like yourself how to leverage the opportunity.

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.

To chat about pricing for our demographic append services, contact our team for a free quote! We’ll ask you to provide some information like the types of data appends you’re interested in and how many constituent records you’d like us to append. From there, you can decide whether your custom quote makes sense for your nonprofit’s budget!

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 you append?

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:

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

If you turn to a full-service data appends provider like NPOInfo, they may also offer other services like phone numbers, postal addresses, and employer appends. That way, you can verify all existing details and fill in any missing gaps all at once, rather than turning to different providers for different services.

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

The experts here at NPOInfo strive to make demographic appends (along with other data appends) as seamless as possible for organizations!

Plus, we work exclusively with nonprofit organizations, so we understand the specific data types you need to push your mission forward. That way, the appended data won’t clutter your CRM with unnecessary details.

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

1. Select the data append services you need. To help you make the most of your marketing efforts, we offer a range of data appends beyond demographic appends. Let us know which data you’d like appended: phone number, emails, employer information, or postal addresses.
2. Receive a custom quote. We’ll tell you how much our data append services will cost based on the number of records you’d like appended and the types of data you’d like us to append.
3. Send us your constituent records. We’ll let you know what information we need, like constituents’ names, contact information, and so on. Ideally, the more details you can provide us, the better. That way, we can verify that we’re pulling information on the right individual.
4. Wait while we conduct the data append. Our experts will conduct a thorough verification process to ensure we provide you with the correct demographic information.
5. Receive your appended demographic data. We’ll return your information to you in an easily understandable format. We’ll let you know if we found any additional demographic information, what those details are, and how confident we are that we found the correct information. If you have any questions, our experts will be happy to answer them. We can even help you import the information into your CRM.

That’s all there is to it! We’ll set you up with all the correct demographic information. That way, you can drive deeper connections with supporters and boost your marketing ROI in no time.

Ready to get to know your supporters better so you can launch your mission forward? Reach out for a free custom quote! All you need to do is share a few details, such as how many profiles you’d like to append and whether you’d like us to append any other data for you!

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 is here to help fulfill your demographic appending needs! 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.
• Social Media Appends: Locating Your Supporters’ Profiles. Your demographic data may indicate that you have a younger audience, which means you’ll likely want to engage with them online. Learn how to find their social media profiles with this guide.