1. Multi-Channel Acquisition: Building Your Membership through Mail, Phone, Web & Person-to-Person Fundraising Wednesday, August 17th from 2:45 to 3:45. 0
3. NPCA Overview Our Mission: To protect and enhance America's national parks for present and future generations. What We Do: Advocate for the national parks and the National Park Service. Educate decision makers & the public about the importance of preserving the parks. Help convince members of Congress to uphold the laws that protect the parks and to support new legislation to address threats to the parksand fight attempts to weaken these laws in the courts. Assess the health of the parks and park management to better inform our advocacy work. Our Constituents: 340,000 members, give $15+ to receive magazine 44% age 65+ 60,000 with email addresses 39,000 online donors 330,000 online subscribers/activists 38% age 65+ 114,000 have taken at least 1 action All support NPCA because they love national parks!
4. Key Analysis Findings Although new donor numbers continue to drop, NPCA is holding up very well against the uncertainties of the economy, not only in new member acquisition, but in member retention. Average gifts have been increasing year over year since FY07. Online cultivation and fundraising is being coordinated with all DM and TM efforts to maximize revenue and to reach donors through multiple channels.
5. Income by Join Year and Fiscal Year All Income Included Members continue to give over a long period of time. As some drop off the file, the remaining members usually give more. Major gifts are included in this chart. Increased acquisition starting in FY03 has paid off.
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8. NPCA’s Acquisition Program NPCA mails acquisition on a monthly basis, totaling approximately 8.5 million pieces each year. In the most recent fiscal year, NPCA made 32% more acquisition contacts (across all channels) than the previous year. This year’s revenue is 4% higher than two years prior. By maintaining our investment, we’ve been able to steadily grow our file. Even with the additional names mailed, net investment is only 4% higher than two years prior. NPCA’s two DM acquisition controls are a member card package and a survey package.
9. DM Acquisition Testing NEW PACKAGES Map package: Included a foldout wall map and personalized teaser with a national park in the prospect’s state. Patriotic package: Used a stirring, patriotic tone to highlight the bond Americans feel with their national parks, and included a lift note with a quote from Ken Burns. TESTS TO SAVE COSTS Premium tests: Calendar and bucket hat against calendar only, core premiums against each other to determine best front- and back-end results. Remove insert: Removed glossy 4-color insert. TESTS TO BOOST RESPONSE Combining elements of co-controls: Includedmember card in survey package. Ask string: Introduced $25 ask to receive premium and raise average gift. Combine tone of Survey and Member Card: Combined the urgency of the member card with the emotion of the survey letter. Phrase-based formatting: Used ReadSmart to make subtle changes in the arrangement of the text on the page. Expand list markets: Explored new audiences and selects, included more modeled lists, and mined in-house activists for additional names.
10. Test Channels to Convert Online Activists Wave one of the Online Activist Conversion test was conducted to gauge the response of activists to email acquisition, telemarketing acquisition and direct mail acquisition contacts. We wanted to see which channels and which mix of channels was most effective in converting online activists. The online activist file was modeled and the 45,000 names most likely to respond to an acquisition ask were split into three groups of 15,000 each.
12. Automate an Online Welcome Series Don’t overlook website traffic as a key source of new donors. Capture additional gifts with an Online Welcome Series including the following: Week 1: Welcome Week 2: Quiz Week 3: Take Action Week 4: Acquisition (non-donors), Sustainer ask (donors) Week 8: Sustainer ask (non-donors who didn’t respond to the acquisition) Open rates average 17.56% and the series has an avg. 6.21% click through rate. New members are joining with an avg. gift of $21.41 and a response rate of 0.17%. By comparison, other acquisition efforts avg. a 0.04% response and $28.92 avg. gift.
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14. If your board chair is promising that you’re growing your file – are you?
15. Where does your file break in terms of long-term donor value? $15, $25, $50?
22. Have you put an online conversion program in place?
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25. Membership Overview Membership Program $50-$1199$1200+ gifts are stewarded through other programs ~28,000 members KC, NSO, & WNO designations Metro DC area only Member Profile 62% female Mean age of 62 Avg hh income of $152K 59% have graduate degrees 57% members for 6+ years 53% also subscribers Highly benefits motivated
42. FY10 Acquisition Performance by Source Cost per Dollar Raised Average Gift *Indirect/Overhead costs only; incurred regardless of fundraising efforts (i.e. staff salaries.) Not part of fundraising budget.
44. Main Acquisition and Reinstate Programs Prospect Direct Mail Email Acquisition & Reinstate Canvassing Reinstate (Lapsed Member Program) – Mail & Phone Wilderness Guardian Monthly Sustainer Fund Appeals 20
45. Prospect Direct Mail Mailed every 7 weeks to approximately 1.7 million prospective members. Mailings are comprised of house files, modeled names from groups like Target Analytics and Donor Base, exchanges and rentals. Two weeks after the mailing we send a 2nd ask to multi buyers. Have found that house files and like-minded organizations have the best LTV. 21
46. Prospect Direct Mail Each mailing contains approximately 10 package tests – both issue and tweak tests. $15 Membership offer. Split premiums offer between men and women. Have found that different premiums work better with different genders. Approximately 15% do not take the premium. Have found that these are better donors. 22
47. Prospect Direct Mail Unfortunately “health” related issues like clean air and climate change tend not to work. Animal and lands issues work better. Brings in approximately 95,000 members a year. Largest acquisition program. Response rates range from .80% to .95% Average gift is around $23. 23
51. Email Acquisition & Reinstate Both programs are conducted 6 times per year. Each campaign contains a minimum of 2 efforts and sometimes more during prime periods – Earth Day, Year-End or breaking news such as the Gulf Oil Spill in 2010. A theme for the email helps – but extensive testing shows that focusing on benefits lifts response. 27
52. Email Acquisition & Reinstates On average over 675,000 emails are sent out in each Acquisition and Reinstate email appeal. In 2010 the email acquisition program brought 5,300 new members. The reinstate program reinstated 7,500 members. 17,000 additional members came to the Sierra Club website and joined the Club. 28
55. Canvass Acquisition Historically the canvass program just asked people to join the Sierra Club. If they declined, we would ask them for a one-time gift. In late 2010 we began accepting monthly sustainers in our canvass program and we began on-the-street canvassing. Over the first four months of this year we acquired 1,340 new monthly donors and 3,002 regular members.
56. Canvass Acquisition However we have found that in the first year canvass-acquired monthly donors fall off the file at a much quicker rate than other acquisition programs: 5.58% Online Acquisition 9.65% Telemarketing Acquisition 25.44% Canvass Door-to-Door 32.16% Canvass Street
58. Reinstates (Lapsed Member) Conduct 7 different direct mail campaigns each year. Average mailing is 1.15 million pieces. There are two different packages. One package is produced by our caging company Palm Coat and one package is produced by CCAH and looks very similar to our Prospect Direct mail package. We use our in-house data system, ARES, to determine who gets which package.
59. Reinstates (Lapsed Member) ARES enables us to fine-tune our data selections by looking at things like age, gender, tenor, giving history, geographic location and interests. By using ARES we have been able to increase our reinstate program significantly. This is very ideal since acquiring new members has become increasingly expensive. We are now able to mail back as far as 10 years in some segments while maintaining an overall investment that is significantly less expensive than PDM.
60. Reinstates (Lapsed Member) Reinstates Direct mail reacquires approximately 60,000 members each year. We are expanding this program in 2011 based on the results we are seeing by using ARES. These members tend to renew better than PDM acquired members.
63. Reinstates (Lapsed Member) We also conduct 4 quarterly telemarketing programs each year. In telemarketing we generally contact our very best lapsed members – such as people that have given an additional gift, multi tenor members and members that we know are phone responsive. The average pledge rate for these campaigns is around 23% with a 68% fulfillment rate.
64. Reinstates (Lapsed Member) The Sierra Club has contracted with one of our telemarketing companies so that they will conduct a “Super Lapsed” reinstatement program for us. This program is done at “break-even” – meaning that the firm only gets paid what they bring in. We give the firm our entire super lapsed file and they decide who to call. Calling is done during slow calling periods so it keeps good callers employed. We reinstate approximately 3,000 members each year in this program.
66. At a Glance: 40 year-old national environmental organization Mission: Turning Environmental Values into National Priorities $29 million budget in 2010 75 full time staff 33 State LCVs 42
67. Grassroots fundraising overview: $4 million annual revenue 100,000 $5-999.99 donors Sources: Direct mail/acquisition Telemarketing prospecting Online marketing and fundraising Canvassing 43
69. What is an email cross-promotion? Generally speaking, it’s a no-cost option for generating new email addresses It does not actually involve swapping email lists! There is absolutely no spamming involved Also called co-promotions, list chaperones, message chaperones 45
70. How does it work? It doesn’t work like a direct mail rental/exchange agreement Instead of trading lists, two NGOs each send an email to the OWN list promoting the other organization’s action Each organization acquires only the email addresses of people who affirmatively opt-in by taking action 46
71. Agreements: Small test to gauge actions Both orgs attempt to generate new names with 500 records Suppress donors over $250 Suppress new joins in last 30 days Agree to list match to remove cross over names 47
73. Sample cross-promotion 49 Results: Each action generated ~10,500 new email addresses for the two organizations
74. List Results (18 months): Total new emails: 10,500 Unsubscribes: 760 Hard bounces: 125 Remaining: 9,615 Donors: 388 Revenue: $11,150 (online only) Donation/subscriber: $1.06 Actions-takers: 8,603 Cost: $0 50
75. List Results (other channels): Telemarketing: 75 new donors $3,900 revenue Direct mail renewals/appeals: 68 new donors $3,060 revenue Monthly donors: 16 new month donors $2,160 revenue annually 51
76. Challenges: New recruits unsubscribe at a higher rate than organic email Finding organizations without the exact same missions Cross-promotions great but tricky to execute Agreeing on two actions can be a challenge 52
77. Final Thoughts: Cross-promotions are excellent way to develop warm prospect list for all fundraising channels Approximately 25% of LCV online revenue over past 18 months generated by cross-promotion emails 53
78. Thank you! Sara Strother Enos Dir. of Development Systems and Services John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts SEnos@kennedy-center.org (202) 416-8064 Vicky Barrett-Putnam Director, Donor Development & Membership Acquisition Sierra Club Vicky.Barrett-Putnam@sierraclub.org Vinnie Wishrad League of Conservation Voters vinnie_wishrad@lcv.org Laura Connors Director of Online Fundraising National Parks Conservation Association lconnors@npca.org 202-454-3322 54
Editor's Notes
EM and TM includes stats for both the Sept/Dec and April/May/June campaigns, but DM only has returns for October, not May/June. Total rev/donor based on full EM and TM and just October DM stats.
44 new members, 4 of whom are sustainers. Open rates continue to be strong with an average of 17.56% and an avg. 6.21% click through rate. New members are joining with an average gift of $21.41 and a response rate of 0.17%. By comparison, other acquisition efforts (with the exclusion of year-end), average a 0.04% response and $28.92 avg. gift.
