November 8 Webinar : Unlocking Legacies - Targeting Supporters Ready to Update their Estate Plan

November 8, 2023 at 1:00pm Eastern.

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/legacyinsight

One of the most useful takeaways from the legacy benchmarking project I’ve been developing this year is the idea of “in the market” legacy prospects.

I’ve talked a lot about the “Intention to Action” gap. One of the primary confounding factors is, simply, time.

We can’t make donors update their plans if they are not ready to. But we can’t secure a gift in their estate plan if they don’t have one (or don’t update an existing plan).

We’re pretty good now at encouraging people to share that they would consider a legacy gift - I know organizations with thousands of “considerers.” But that doesn’t mean they’re going to make a gift anytime soon.

Of course, handraisers of any stripe are exceedingly valuable -- they’ve taken the time to flag their interest and we want to ensure that we keep them close.

But we spend a lot of marketing money to cast a wide net. Gift officers are frustrated when handraisers don’t respond to follow-up or don’t seem to move forward.

What if we organized our marketing into three tiers:

1) “Surround sound”, drip messages that build awareness of the impact of legacy gifts, and that offer many touches over time. Things like checkboxes on remits; information on post-gift landing pages; stories about legacy donors in our annual reports; evergreen ads; information in email footers; easy-to-find information on websites; inserts in acknowledgments…..etc. In other words, passive marketing.

2) Longer-term cultivation strategies for “considerers” who aren’t yet “in the market” - maintaining their interest, learning more about their timing, and preparing to step in when they are ready.

3) Targeted, active marketing to those most likely to be making or updating a plan in the coming year.

As an example, this is one organization we ran the benchmarking reports for:

38% of their supporters have included a gift to that organization, intend to include a gift to that organization, or are considering a gift to that organization.

Another 41% haven’t aren’t sure what they plan to do, or haven’t considered it before now.

Of this group, about 36% have an estate plan but it’s outdated; are currently writing a plan; or are going to update their plans soon.

Finding ways to target those with both propensity to make a legacy gift to the organization AND who are “in the market” will likely bear more fruit at a lower cost (and with happier gift officers!)

We can go further: according to their benchmarking reports, they have the highest level of legacy consideration and the most supporters “in the market” in the 50-59 age band, followed by those in the 60-69 age band. We can also then pinpoint the primary motivations and barriers of this group and be sure to tailor our messaging accordingly…..

Want to learn more? Join us on the 8th. Register at https://tinyurl.com/legacyinsight. We’ll have Jade Bristol from Giving Docs join us as well to discuss how this data can help get the right planning offers in front of the right donors at the right time.