Blood Donor Recruitment: Connecting With Your Younger Donor Base

As the need for blood continues to grow, it is very important for blood centers to stay connected with their younger donor base. Your younger donors are the future of your program.

How does a blood center connect with younger donors, though? How do you continually educate and show appreciation to generation after generation of new blood donors? Let’s take a second to research our targeted demographic.

Generation Y is commonly defined as people who were born as early as 1982 through the year 2000. We’ll focus on them. Being part of Generation Y myself, there are a few specific traits of which blood centers should be aware when trying to reach out.

Understanding Generation Y Blood Donors

  • We understand and use technology very fluently. Naturally, if you are part of the Baby Boomer generation then something like receiving an SMS reminder on your cell phone might sound like a foreign concept. To a Generation Y Donor, an SMS reminder about an appointment to donate blood is easily understood and appreciated. At Incept, we’ve actually incorporated donor texting into almost every work flow we call and have seen an increase in appointment shows since. Don’t be afraid to rely on a Generation Y donor’s ability to understand things such as your online schedules, text message opt-ins, and more technological advantages you might be able to offer to help them stay in contact and ultimately keep donating blood.
  • Generation Y loves to achieve. What we do as Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) is not only schedule appointments but also show appreciation on the front lines of blood donor recruitment for what these donors do! Generation Y is a generation that enjoys healthy competition and being successful in their endeavors. A way that we can connect with a younger donor is to verbally commend them on their achievement of donating blood. Showing younger donors appreciation for their donations is a way to really keep them in tune with what you are saying. People love to be thanked for their good deeds. It isn’t so much that Generation Y is narcissistic and needs to be constantly praised; think of it instead as gentle, positive reinforcement. Make your younger donors truly feel like they are doing something worthwhile, and it will pay off as they grow with age and keep that mentality.
  • Younger donors will likely relate better to younger recruiters. It is much easier for me to get on the phone and talk with someone who is a 17-year-old blood donor than someone who is not near my age range. When a younger person who is a blood donor is talking with another younger person who happens to be a recruiter, they listen more closely to what is being said. There is an undeniable relation simply due to age – and that is great – because it makes it just as easy for our younger Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) to talk and relate with them. Many recruitment firms or centers might be apprehensive to having younger people in their contact center workforce, but some of our highest producing Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) have been under the age of 22 years old. Just food for thought.

Without the donors of tomorrow, we wouldn’t be able to plan for the blood centers of today. With the increasing need for blood throughout the United States, this is a topic that should be taken seriously. As older generations succumb to illness and other deferments that keep folks from donating blood, ultimately, it will be our younger donors who take the place of them. Just remember to embrace technology and use it to your advantage to relate with them on their level. Your blood center will thank you for the efforts.