A Powerful Engine for Strategy

(That You Can Actually Use)

Our Analytics Go Deeper and Save You Time

We know you are incredibly busy. So we design all our reports, phone calls, and meetings to distill the information you need. And we identify your actionable items.

We do the hard stuff for you. We will pore through hundreds of pages of numbers, for example. Our systems will factor out the test results that are not statistically significant. That way we won’t waste your time speculating on things that look great but could be wildly misleading, due to small sample sizes and mere chance.

We will also save you the time and hassle of creating your own internal reports. Our customized reports give you the key metrics and other details you want to track. And they’re available 24/7 so you can go in and copy and paste what you need.

But the real magic is in Avalon’s strategic guidance. We will help you identify your most pressing questions, tackle them for you, and help you put the answers to work. From campaign reporting, to dashboards, to donor intelligence, to strategic segmentation, to forecasting, Avalon Analytics® is a powerful engine for your strategy.

Our Strategies Are For You

It’s shocking how much other agencies waste client time on lots of inconclusive tests. Risky mailings and digital strategies abound. Test rollouts based on a flawed test design or misleading test results. But Avalon takes both our responsibility to your budget and the rules for statistics very seriously.

One of the most important things we will do for you is to create a more reliable and cost-effective set of strategies that will produce sustainable, long-term growth for your organization.

Direct marketing can be a humbling business with all its specific, predetermined objectives and precise tools to measure the effectiveness of any tactic and strategy you want to try. So, it’s wise to test everything – even a “consensus favorite” – before gambling on an unproven idea.

For example, focus group participants will vigorously urge you to just send them brief, one-page letters. Yet, longer letters almost always do better in head-to-head tests. Focus groups will also tell you they prefer thicker paragraphs, fewer contractions, and fewer gimmicks like circling a suggested giving amount. But those are the exact strategies that help skimmers see the most important points in a letter. And more often than not they earn higher response rates and net income in head-to-head tests.

Our Goal = Your Mission Accomplished

It is not unusual for the initial numbers in a donor recruitment program to look fantastic. But, after tracking what those new donors do after they join, those numbers may come up short. And all these challenges require the patient, methodical, and comprehensive analysis. That is one of Avalon’s strong suits.

That’s why Avalon pays close attention to where someone makes their first gift. Plus, we track how quickly they make their second gift to an organization. We do this with tracking tools and re-solicitation strategies found nowhere else. It is one of the most important things we can do to increase retention and the long-term value of your donors.

We also use our Analytics tools to study exactly how, why, when, and where your audience will make their first donations. And we apply everything we can do to make that experience more engaging and enjoyable for them.

Many things people think are adding long-term value to their files (like door-to-door canvassing) are actually far less so. Meanwhile, other things that seem risky on the surface (like Facebook ads or paying for Google search) are actually more valuable than expected. It is critical to know the difference.

Our goal is to ensure that you recruit, retain, and upgrade the donors you need to support your organization to the finish line – until your mission is accomplished.

We Back You Up With Our Strategies

We also welcome the opportunity to stand with you and co-present any important findings or investment options that your board or internal leadership wants to explore. And we are happy to create the charts and spreadsheets to back up your strategy.

We have the right tools. We have seen the inside of many board rooms. And we know how to present a compelling case to nonprofit leaders. And, in this age of Zoom, we can connect and wow you virtually, too!

In short, you will have a true partner in any of these venues – because we want to meet and exceed your goals just as much as you do.

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Next Level Strategy