Good Marketing Brief

Clean data before year-end (or pay for it later 🫢)

Rachel Burris Rodriguez on Sep 2, 2026, 9:30:00 AM

Year-end campaigns tend to expose data problems that were easy to ignore during slower months. Duplicate records, outdated contacts, metrics that reward urgency over relationships, signals sitting in your database that nobody has looked at closely enough to act on.

This week is about getting ahead of all of that before Q4 arrives: how to clean what's there, how to read what it's telling you, and what a well-built preference center can do for list health that a single unsubscribe link never will.

 

The take-home template

A database full of duplicates, outdated addresses, and inconsistent records is working against every campaign you run from it. This practical guide from our friends at Humanitru covers 14 ways to get your database in shape, from building a data entry standard your whole team follows to scheduling regular audits, setting up validation rules, and making sure someone on the team is actually accountable for keeping it clean. Worth bookmarking as a checklist before your next major campaign.

Snackable snippets

Are you curious enough about your data? 📖

Most nonprofits are sitting on more useful information than they realize — session attendance, email click patterns, renewal timing, volunteer history. What usually gets in the way is not a data problem but a curiosity problem. Someone who shows up for every webinar on a particular topic has been signaling their interests for months. Someone who lapses but keeps opening your newsletter is telling you the relationship still matters. Before the next campaign goes out, look for the pattern you didn't already know was there.

 

Are your metrics working against donor retention? 📖

Gross revenue, donor file size, and response rate are the metrics most development dashboards are built around, and they tend to reward the wrong behaviors. Gross revenue ignores what it cost to produce. File size prioritizes acquisition over retention. Response rate pushes teams toward urgency and volume rather than building relationships that last. Derric Bakker argues in NonProfit PRO that a better scorecard tracks net revenue, donor loyalty, and whether lifetime giving is growing or shrinking.

 

The 7 AI agents worth building before year-end 📖

Most teams default to pointing AI at creative work first. The more useful starting point is the repetitive, data-heavy work that either doesn't get done or takes too long. A morning brief that monitors competitor newsletters and sector news every day. A campaign analyst that flags anomalies instead of producing another report. A prospect dossier tool that can pull together 50 major donor profiles in a day, leaving your gift officer free to apply judgment rather than spend hours on research.

ChatGPT just got a lot easier to run ads on the platform 📖

OpenAI is rolling out a redesigned campaign onboarding experience that can build a full ad campaign in under 60 seconds. Input your URL, click preview, and the model analyzes your objective, product lineup, and target audience, then generates creative and copy you can edit before launch. With ChatGPT now at a billion monthly active users, it's a channel worth watching for audience expansion and donor acquisition, especially with $500 in matching ad credits available for new advertisers. 

For your inspiration folder

The ACLU's communication preference center doesn't just offer an unsubscribe button. Supporters can choose to receive fewer mailings, scale down to one piece of mail a year, opt out of marketing phone calls, or control whether their data is shared with outside organizations. The form routes people by state, which matters for an organization managing 50+ affiliate chapters, each with their own communications.

It's a useful model for any nonprofit managing a large, engaged list: giving people granular control over what they receive tends to produce healthier, more engaged segments than a single opt-out that removes them entirely.

 
Topics: Nonprofits

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