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Integrated marketing for annual giving
Journal of Education Advancement & Marketing,
1
(3),
273-286
(2016)
Abstract
Integrated marketing is used to great effect in the for-profit business world, as a means to cut through the noise, reach a target audience and inspire desired action. It is an approach that can also be applied in higher education fundraising, as the annual giving team at Boston University (BU) demonstrates. By employing the four integrated marketing principles of creating a concentrated effort, building consistent messaging, coordinating marketing channels and committing to tracking and analysis, BU is able to create key moments throughout the fiscal year to engage alumni and prospects and convert them into donors. This approach led to 106 per cent year-over-year growth in gifts from BU’s spring participation challenge, and has become the foundation of the team’s planning throughout the year.
Keywords: fundraising; annual giving; marketing; campaign; messaging
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Stephanie Mcbride Quinn is the director of annual giving at Boston University (BU), where her team drives the strategy and execution of direct marketing in support of BU’s US$1.5bn comprehensive campaign. She oversees the use of predictive modelling, segmentation and data analysis to develop and deploy effective fundraising efforts across e-mail-, social-, web-, phone- and print-based channels. Before joining BU Development & Alumni Relations, Stephanie spent five years in high tech marketing at EMC. She holds a BA in psychology and a BS in communication from BU. BU is a private research university based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Currently, BU has more than 32,500 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 130 countries, nearly 10,000 faculty and staff, 17 schools and colleges, 250 fields of study and more than 300,000 alumni worldwide. In 2012, BU launched the public phase of its first ever comprehensive fundraising campaign, with a goal of US$1bn. Based on the success of the campaign by September 2015, the Board of Trustees of BU raised the goal to US$1.5bn and extended the campaign through 2019.
