How ‘done is better than perfect’ upskills your teams and levels up your supporter journeys
I’ve spent years saying, “Your people stack is as important as your tech stack” to highlight the often-overlooked impact of technological change on people (skills, mindset and behaviours) and processes (how things are done). But this time I DO want to focus on technology.
When chasing technological change, some organisations are making it much harder than it needs to be. The right intention is there: organisations see technology as a tool to deliver strategy, believing that strategy shouldn’t be limited by technology. It’s the right idea, but expectations are often misguided.
We all know that the switch from disparate old systems to shiny new tech isn’t quick. Bringing together people, process, technology and data so they all work as one isn’t straightforward. It’s messy and complex. It takes time to get to that perfection. So, while we wait, let’s get some things done, improve some processes and build some new skills.
Planning the destination but not the journey
In the past few years, I’ve seen organisations, especially in the supporter engagement space, develop ambitious strategies that far exceed the capabilities of their current tech stack.
What is it about their tech stack that’s holding them back? With various digital teams operating simultaneously and no engagement technology strategy or cohesive plan, there’s often a mishmash of disconnected platforms and systems. For example, the fundraising team has a platform for donations and raffles, the digital team runs the website and email platforms, and the campaigns team has a contract for a petitions platform. Meanwhile retail is working away on their own online shop system. Fundraising teams have data people analysing supporter behaviour, building strategies and segments around this, but they’re reliant on the IT-managed CRM. The CRM only holds a small selection of online supporter data which is fed in through (most often) a mix of automated and manual processes. Everyone wants the 360° real time supporter view, but they are still some way off achieving that.
To set themselves up to achieve those big strategic goals, most organisations kick off CRM tech programmes. A few larger non-profits contract enterprise systems with the 360° supporter data and marketing automation capabilities. All how it should be.
But! Shooting for the biggest, shiniest solution also means that charities are creating a time warp where no data-driven work can take place until the enterprise system is up and running. This is usually a period of two to three years where engagement teams (fundraising, comms, marketing, campaigning) need to get by with sub-optimal systems and data processing, undermining their ability to develop and learn from engagement journeys.
The strategic waste of operating in siloes
What often happens is that with no plan in place, that time warp gets filled by individual teams commissioning agencies to solve their problems with specific solutions and platforms. The result is a tech stack that doesn’t work as a whole or deliver an improved supporter view and therefore doesn’t deliver good supporter journeys.
A strong alternative is to use an off the shelf solution with multiple functionalities to plug the gap. This will enable what I call a 180° supporter view, composed of, primarily, online data. Teams can do great work with this while the enterprise system development is in progress. It’s an opportunity for people to level up their skills and processes ready for a gentle transition to the new enterprise approach. Yes, this online-only tech will likely be decommissioned once the enterprise system is in place, but it’s done valuable work training your teams and preparing them for change.
Doing something is better than waiting for perfect
It seems that when it comes to tech and data, organisations would rather wait for the perfect circumstances than take small imperfect actions today. Often, this means they’re missing out on delivering real-time automation and better supporter experience (or any supporter experience at all). Not to mention losing opportunities to build essential skills for the future of the organisation.
In the sector, we often say, “Just because we’re a charity, doesn’t mean we should use cheap tech.” It’s true, but expensive is not necessarily good if our processes and skills can’t match the complexity of these systems. Simpler, cheaper systems allow teams to experience personalisation, automation and optimisation in real-time. Instead of starting with a brand-new enterprise system with trepidation, what if your teams had already cut their teeth on simpler, cheaper platforms, building the skills and processes necessary to really use those expensive systems to their full capacity?
And there’s evidence that building engagement based on a 180° supporter view works. Smaller non-profits are creating much more real-time and mature online supporter journeys (just look at all the Forward Action case studies) than bigger organisations. And they’re doing it using simpler or cheaper engagement platforms that do emails, fundraising, campaigning and landing pages. Because funds are limited, they never had massive data and IT teams and welcome the fact that one system can do it all.
How to make tech change the smart way
So how can you make technological change gradual, straightforward, strategic and cohesive? Here are my tips.
Make your online engagement as seamless as you can
Accept that while you wait for an enterprise automation system, it’s okay to use online data, possibly enriched with a selection of most relevant offline data and the other way around. By making your online journeys work based on your online behaviour data you will make them better and you will learn how to personalise, automate and optimise. All are essential skills for when your enterprise CRM systems come online.
The ideal of a 360° supporter view is the north star, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use your online database to run real-time online automation based on real-time online data. You can personalise donation page prompts based on the value of the last donation. You can send a nudge email a few hours after someone’s opened an email but didn't click. You can provide two different journeys to those who completed a petition compared to those who gave a donation.
This is already a much better supporter experience than doing nothing at all or doing something that needs a lot of manual work in the background, with three weeks delay because that’s how long it took to get a data segment from the data team.
2) Make one team responsible
Look at the digital engagement tech stack as a whole and build it strategically. Building it should be the responsibility of one team with its eye on the future enterprise programme and organisation’s ambitions. In some organisations, IT teams do this, but more often it’s digital teams who are better positioned to take on this role.
3) Stop individual teams operating their own digital platforms
This means that all other teams that do engagement (fundraising, campaigning, retail) need to stop commissioning their own platforms, microsites or innovation projects. It’s just contributing to a mess of digital waste that will have to be connected and patched up with manual processes and coding. This takes away from the time everyone could be spending on designing and improving online journeys and related data flows.
4) Tie expertise to decision making
Tech stack decisions shouldn’t be made by people who don't understand how all the engagement tech works together. It’s not about knowing every single detail, but decision makers should be asking the right questions and trying to understand why a team is proposing something and how one decision leads to another. Just going with the logic that expensive is better will not create a better online engagement tech stack. It will be another anchor dragging the whole process down.
In summary:
Work on real-time personalised automations based on online data. It’s better than doing nothing.
Consolidate your online tech stack and give it to one team to manage.
Stop commissioning online platforms without considering how they fit into the overall online stack.
Be strategic when commissioning online tech for the transition period. Before throwing in new platforms, ask questions and listen to your experts to understand their recommendations.
