If you can’t trust your data, then you can’t trust anything you do.
At this year’s Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference. There was a session on using data to discover the most effective marketing. A panel, consisting of John Perell from Friends of the Smithsonian, Sarah Stallings from National Geographic Society, Laura Connors from National Parks Conservation Association and Kerri Kerr from Avalon Consulting, offered this advice:
- Use data to make a benchmark analysis to see how your organization stacks up against other organizations.
- Many industry reports are readily available to investigate topics such as age trends. Reports such as these can help determine if the upfront cost of donors will match up with future revenue. Target Analytics, Blackbaud, M+R, and Giving USA provide industry updates and benchmarking information.
- Creating focus groups and distributing member surveys can answer questions such as “Why do my members give to my organization?” and “What messages and topics do our members respond best to?” Rather than using guesswork or anecdotal feedback, this can provide quantitative and qualitative information to remove assumptions.
- Use testing to guide your program. Since each organization is different, testing can be used to determine what works for you and helps you find ways to improve performance and save money.
- However, it is important to accurately read the results of your test beyond just “eye-balling” it. A difference in results might be insignificant and within the margin of error.
- No matter how good your analytics are, you’re not getting anywhere if you can’t trust your data.
Trust Your Data and Data Quality
I also believe that the expression Trust Your Data also deals with the data quality.
Here are five ways you can maximize your chances of getting data that you can have confidence in.
- Plan how, when, and what to measure. And, who will do it
- Test Your Measurement System.
- Double check your variables.
- Get Buy-In from Your Team.
- Do a Preliminary Data Check.
Remember, your goal is to get data you can Trust
After all, garbage in = garbage out!