Challenge: Streamline audiences to empower impactful relationships
While I was at United Way of New York City (UWNYC), the organization encountered the challenge of trying to talk to too many people at once. Passionate about our mission, we wanted as many New Yorkers as possible to rally with us behind our work.
But this broad aspiration made it tough to propel business goals. To support a five-year strategic plan, we needed to refine our donor audiences and build meaningful relationships.
In response to this challenge, I teamed up with leadership to discern and deepen the organization’s understanding of our target audiences. Acting as content strategist and researcher, I took on the challenge of streamlining 30+ target audiences into a set of data-driven personas and validating initial thinking.
Solution: Discover, ideate and design personas
Discovery: Research to find patterns that shape personas
To tackle this challenge, first, I carried out research to discover patterns and draw insights for shaping our persona set.
I analyzed our five-year strategic plan, collated and assessed third-party donor studies on-file, and conducted desk research on donor behavior. I also interviewed stakeholders from our fundraising team, as well as a few donors.
From this research, I found patterns that informed a set of four personas. Laurie, the philanthropic female leader, stood out as our most critical persona.
To frame how we should approach engaging Laurie, I distilled a problem definition. Laurie needs a way to feel empowered and validated because she’s struggling to balance her family and career, while reexamining how she wants to define her personal success.
Ideation: Explore three approaches to engage a critical persona
Guided by this problem definition, I hypothesized three approaches for attracting and nurturing a relationship with Laurie:
Offer her personal and professional development opportunities through UWNYC’s Women United group.
Give her an empowering community of like-minded women to join — UWNYC’s Women United group.
Honor her ambition and prowess as a leader, ensuring she feels recognized as an individual.
Design: Run A/B tests to determine the best approach
To test these hypotheses, I partnered with a fundraising teammate focused on philanthropic female leaders to run A/B tests via a mini email campaign.
In the first email, we invited women, who recently attended a UWNYC fundraising event, to join our Women United group. These women were not yet members. For this push, I crafted identical emails with two different subject lines:
Subject line A: “We’re Looking for Leaders Like You” (Focus: Individual recognition)
Subject line B: “Are You Looking to Be Part of Something Bigger Than Yourself?” (Focus: Empowering community)
Though these emails deployed at the same time to similar-sized recipient lists, the unique open rate for subject line A outperformed subject line B by 30%. This suggested that we should continue to test language that speaks to Laurie’s ambition and interest in success and recognition.
In our next email, we aimed to activate existing Women United group members. Again, I designed identical emails with two different subject lines:
Subject line A: “Let's Help You Make the Most of Your Membership!” (Focus: Individual recognition)
Subject line B: “Leadership and Volunteer Opportunities Just for You!” (Focus: Personal/professional development)
Once more, subject line A outperformed subject line B. This fortified our hunch — use language that honors Laurie’s ambition and makes her feel significant.
Path to the solution: Teams, activities and tools
Teammates engaged:
Sr. Manager, Donor Engagement and Women’s Philanthropy
Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility
Tools used:
Google Docs
Microsoft Excel
BSD Tools
Adobe Photoshop
HTML
Activities executed:
Desk research
Stakeholder interviews
Persona development
Problem definition
Email copy and design
A/B Testing
Performance analysis
Result: Scale guiding language and shifting mindset
By testing hypotheses, I built a strong hunch for guiding the type of language UWNYC should use to cultivate an effective relationship with a critical donor type at scale. I also established one methodology for validating the balance of our persona set.
These efforts also deepened the data-driven story about this specific donor type. As a result, I equipped myself with stronger rationale for navigating conversations about audience understanding with UWNYC’s C-level team. This small content test equaled a huge step in beginning to shift our organization-wide mindset from initiative-first to audience-first.