Recency, Frequency and Monetary (RFM) Ranking

Anthony Plamondon

I ran a query of all of our donors over the past 10 years and conducted a RFM ranking. I would like to have the RFM rank 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 as a field in individual records in RE. Has anyone import RFM ranking scores (1-5) into individual records into RE?

Alex Wong

@Anthony Plamondon
This is very similiar in concept as donor category, giving society, etc, which basically is taking a donor's giving information and make determination what you would “call” the donor.

There is a recent discussion on this, and I detailed 3 paths that can be taken and the pros and cons on them.

Christine Robertson

@Anthony Plamondon Yes - I've imported RFM Ratings many times (usually from iWave, but also from other wealth engine sources). I've set up a Rating in the Prospect Module, created a table with the values and then done an import to add them to the records. If you don't have the Prospect module, you can also add this to a custom field.

Faith Murray

@Anthony Plamondon
I've done that before, but it's been a long time. Importing them is no big deal, you just have to be smart about how you categorize your Ratings so that you can extract them effectively later. Ratings exports can only filter based on Source, so you have to narrow down your Source and I found it best to put the rating itself in the Description. Back before we got into webview, I actually found it much easier to repurpose and rename the Ethnicity field on Bio2 to hold the RFM rating, because it was so much easier to query.

The RFM scoring process is much more complex, and must be done in Excel. I used the formulas provided by Josh Beckerman, a BBCon presenter from 2014-2019, but I haven't seen him on the Community for awhile! There are multiple models for RFM scoring, giving a score anywhere from 1-15 or 1-100. I used the 1-100 model, although the 1-15 model is simpler for the beginner. I also uploaded the R, F, and M scores as separate ratings because sometimes you want to pull people with a high F value (monthly donor prospects) who might not otherwise have a high overall rating because of gift size, or vice-versa.