Shaun Roberts & Katie Bannister, Which?

1. 3 steps to getting
(and keeping)
supporters active
Katie Bannister – katie.bannister@which.co.uk
Shaun Roberts – shaun.roberts@which.co.uk

2. Wouldn’t it
be nice if
supporters
were like
Pluto?
• Ready to play
• Wanting to please
• Unconditional love
• Dependent on you
• World revolves around
you

3. And the key
to engaging
Pluto…

4. But most
supporters
are more
like this…
• Busy lives – families,
friends, work, etc
• Many different
priorities
• On lists for multiple
organisations
• Lots of distractions

5. And a tennis
ball won’t do
the job…

6. What getting engagement right can mean…
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
1000000
April - June July - September October - December January - March
Total supporters
Supporter actions

7. Step 1
Understand and segment
your audience

8. What can your data tell you?
• Somewhere on everyone’s
database(s) will be -
– When a supporter joined
– What actions they’ve
taken (petition
signs/donations/etc)
– Email open rate
– Email click rate
• There may well be a lot
more -
– Surveys completed
– Types of campaigns
supported
– Events attended
– Postcodes (can then use
to append other info)
– Demographic information

9. At Which we’ve created these basic segments
Hot active
4+ actions in a quarter or >8 in year
Warm active
An action in previous 12 months
Cold active
No actions in previous 12 months, have opened email
Supporters with no email opens in 12 months are no longer inactive and will
be moved to a ‘Dormant’ segment (where reactivation efforts will take place)

10. Research your audience
• At Which? we conduct our own in-house (free!) surveys, polls and focus
groups
– Using our emails
– Using our landing pages
– Using Survey Monkey
– Using our Community website

11. Behavioural segmentation - Populus
Value honesty above all else
Are motivated to tackle injustice
Get frustrated when people are treated unfairly
Think consumers need to stand up to big business
Familyfirst(Jeremy)
• Strong
opinions
• Low level of
trust in the
system to
deliver
• Better deal
for my and
my family
• Optimistic
about future
Selfsufficient(Ron)
• Look after
themselves
• Financial
security top
goal
• Not into
campaigns
• Pick and
choose
where they
get involved
Communityglue(Emily)
• Caring and
concerned
• Hands on
making
things better
• Practical
solutions,
dislike
bureaucracy
• Worried
about their
and others’
future
Progressivewarriors(Lisa)
• Passionate
with strong
opinions
• Progressive,
liberal, see
the big
picture
• Happy with
own lives,
want to help
others
• Worried
about our
future
Problemsolvers(Charlie)
• Take
leadership
roles
• Professional,
logical –
want to fix
things for
others
• Trusting of
institutions
• Optimistic
about future

12. What kind of characters have you got?
• What do your supporters
look like?
• Do they all have the same
motivations?
• What would you like to
know more about?
• What can we find out to
improve the supporter
expeerience?

13. Step 2
Test and implement creative ideas
using what we’ve learned

14. Starting with welcome journeys

15. Does your
Welcome Journey
have a purpose?
A specific objective?

16. Our main purpose is
to avoid the hardest part of my job…

17. Dormant supporters

18. 0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
Dormant
1 action only
Welcome Journey, Welcome Journey, Welcome Journey
Just take a moment to look at the
8% of list that are Dormant (no opens in 12 months)

19. Supporters must take their 2nd
action on our welcome journey
…then we got to keep the momentum going!
Objective became clear…

20. Prepare for the stats!

21. WJ Group
People on the Welcome
Journey (email every 4 days)
2 test groups
Control Group
People getting the regular
sends
(email about every 5 days)

22. The results
120% increase over the Control Group
22%
10%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
WJ
Control
Control group had 4 chances to take an action
WJ Group had 6 chances to take an action
Once the Welcome journey was over we looked at the % that had taken a 2nd action
% of group who took a 2nd action

23. Petitions, polls, survey, quiz- find what works
Now… refining what works
Click to open 47.5%
63% complete survey
Old email 5 New email 5
Click to open 21.4%

24. Now you have their attention…
Keep it going… a new type of ask

25. “Hi there
Here is the issue. We want to know what you think.
Please take the survey.
Types of asks and daisy chaining
Traditional Ask
Email Survey Completion

26. Types of asks and daisy chaining
New Ask
“Hi there
Here is the issue – what do you think?
Email Poll Survey Completion

27. The new ask – Step 1
Poll Email

28. The new ask – Step 2
Survey Page

29. The new ask – Step 3
Thank you Page

30. Types of asks and daisy chaining
The proof is in the numbers.
Two different emails to similar groups of people
Traditional ask
Email click
through
45%
Completed
survey
80%
Openers then
completing
36%
New ask
Email click
through
75%
Completed
survey
74%
Openers then
completing
56%

31. Improving the new ask! The Train email
Personalising actions
Good news for Virgin Trains users.
But we needed to find a way to tell the non VT users
Click to open at 70%
(remember this is train talk, not easy to get actions)

32. Be our guest – create your welcome journey
• Create a welcome
journey for one of your
organisations
• What will the key
elements be?
• How will you get a new
supporter to engage?

33. Step 3
Learn and improve

34. No one gets it all right first time
• At Which? we got a
company to analyse all
our old data for
patterns of supporter
behaviour – result there
were no patterns!
– But this information helped close
off an approach to supporters that
wouldn’t have worked
• Take the Change.org
approach – A Festival of
Failure

35. Review and evaluate regularly - WJ survey
• WJ Ver1: Step 3 (take
our survey ask)
• 29% open rate
• 28% click to open rate
• 50% completion rate
• For every 1000 supporters,
receiving email, an average of
just 42 completed the survey • Ver2: Step 1 (poll ask with
survey landing page)
• 35% open rate
• 59% click to open rate
• 64% completion rate
• For every 1000 supporters,
receiving email, an average of
128 complete the survey
An increase of over 300% of
the number of people
completing our WJ survey

36. Test, test, test – dramatic differences!
24.9%
click
through
62.7%
click
through
For every 10,000 people that open
your email, that’s an extra 3,780
people taking the action

37. And finally…

38. Here’s why you should love this…
Engagement is an adventure – you don’t quite know at the
start where it will take you. It requires a curious and open
mind, creativity, a willingness to try things out and a strong
focus on results.
If you get it right, the rewards are huge.

39. How will your boss feel if…
…you could double the
number of people
arriving at a donate or
volunteer page?
An engagement approach can deliver
this with a relatively low cost/risk.
All it takes is a willingness to try!

40. Questions?
Katie Bannister - katie.bannister@which.co.uk
Shaun Roberts - shaun.roberts@which.co.uk
We’re all ears