Best Use of Direct Marketing

Transcription

1 Best Use of Direct Marketing 2015 Nomination Form Nominations should be in respect of activity completed during the organisation s 2014 financial year. This award will recognise the campaign that demonstrates the best use of direct marketing in fundraising for campaigns created in-house or in partnership with an agency. A direct marketing campaign is defined as the use of multi-channel tools to communicate and raise funds from potential donors including Direct Mail, SMS, Inserts, DRTV, Telemarketing. Criteria: The judges will award marks for: Innovation and creativity. Effectiveness in terms of financial and non-financial results. Overall execution and outcome of the campaign/project.

2 Nominator s Details (every line in this section is compulsory): Lisa-Nicole Dunne Name:(must be a member of Fundraising Ireland) Job Title: Director of Fundraising and Marketing Organisation: Focus Ireland Address: 9-12 High St ldunne@focusireland.ie Telephone: Nominee s Details (only if different from the above): Main Contact in Rachel Murphy the nominated organisation: Job Title: Public Fundraising Manager Organisation: Focus Ireland Address: As above murphyr@focusireland.ie Telephone: CHY: CHY7228 Please complete the following sections in full: Name of Campaign Nominated: Christmas- It s the children who feel it the worst Objectives: List the key objectives of the campaign and how it was carried out including the name of any agency that may have been used? (Max 250 words) Christmas fundraising and the use of direct marketing is crucial to Focus Ireland s overall income generation. Focus Ireland usually raise 40% of all fundraising income in November/December period. The key objectives of this Christmas campaign were to: Create an integrated direct marketing programme that could leverage in excess 1 million in funds across individual donors and corporate donors, spending less than previous year and achieving an ROI of 4:1 whilst recruiting new donors. Raise awareness of the issue of homelessness to put it firmly in the public s consciousness for when they were deciding where to support with their Christmas philanthropy. Campaign details Direct marketing was the focus for our existing donors, using mail and for solicitation, and TV, PR, radio channels to remind, reassure and retain donors. We believe firmly that this surround sound campaign helps improve affinity with our brand, attracting new donors, as well as really reminding existing donors to support us at critical times. Our warm donor mailing sought to build on the extensive direct marketing work that had

3 been carried out across the year, including improved thanking and banking processes, a new thank you strategy, engagement mailings and a donor survey and newsletter. In addition our campaign built on earlier database, CRM and donor insights work, enabling a bigger audience and more segmented approach. We worked with Zenith Optimedia and Radical on our TV, radio and digital media buying. Working with Javelin, The Printed Image, and the Insert House, we switched our traditional door-drop approach, which had seen diminishing returns, to a press insert strategy. We analysed response and acquisition rates for four years and identified press inserts with higher propensity to deliver income and new donors for far lower cost. Forecasting: How did you intend to measure success? Please list the key performance indicators for this campaign. (Max 250 words) Christmas is a critical fundraising period for our direct mailing programme. Not only is this a time when donors are most sympathetic and have the highest propensity to give to homelessness as a cause, many of our donors give habitually once a year at Christmas almost as part of a Christmas tradition and it is driven by a sense of duty. This is borne out by patterns of behaviour within our database there is a segment of donors who give once a year only at Christmas. Our average gift from individual donors increases by more than 50% on average at Christmas versus rest of year and our response rate to Christmas mailings is also at its highest. Historically we have used this time to invest in door drop cold donor acquisition. In 2014 having decided to reduce expenditure on door drop cold acquisition and expand wherever possible our high value, high response warm mailer. The targets were as follows 1. Overall income target 1,080,000 - Public fundraising 800,000, Corporate 280,000 via sponsor a star. (We hoped that this might reach a stretch target of 1.2 million). 2. Response rate to our existing donor mailing of 15%+ 3. Average gift from warm donors of Insert ROI of 2:1 with new donor acquisition target of 250+ across all test inserts 5. Increase awareness and improve our positioning around the issue of family homelessness (to be tested in nfp synergy research in February). Rationale: Why was the direct marketing approach deemed to be the best approach? (Max 250 words) Direct marketing is a proven channel for fundraising especially at Christmas for Focus Ireland. The demographic of our donors is a factor in determining why this approach works best. Moreover, we have raised almost 17% of our total income via cash solicitation using Direct marketing for the past number of years. The core objectives (to raise money, and raise awareness) of this campaign, meant that an integrated direct marketing approach would work best, especially if coupled with increased

4 focus through our PR and communications outreach at that time. We knew we need to connect with potential donors with a meaningful story, gripping headline, and to emotionally bring them on the journey of aligning and being empathetic to those in this situation. Direct marketing offers a real opportunity to bring this to life effectively at different points in the campaign (e.g. stark message in outdoor, driving outrage through PR, but then using direct marketing mailings, inserts, and radio particularly to tell the story, and show the impact of this situation. Segmentation: To what extent, if any, did you segment the mailing into different groups and if so, why? If segmentation was used was it successful and why? (Max 250 words) Our donor mailings were segmented in a number of ways: By value (we had a cash donor, mid-level donor, and major donor mailing component) for individual By type (we had individual cash donors, regular donors, corporate donors, and corporate campaign donors targeted with alternative versions of the campaign) This helped us to enhance the engagement with different audiences in a way that is meaningful to them, and enhance the value of the respondents by using value as an indicator of their propensity to give at higher points. This was successful as our overall cash mailing to cash donors and mid-level donors alone generated a 77% increase on 2013 mailing, with a total of 390,000 raised from this mailing alone. We also increased the response from our regular donors by interacting better with them throughout the year, and sending them a Christmas mailing and despite not asking for money this generated a 50.4% increase in cash and donations as well as product sales. Reach: How many people did this campaign reach? The campaign reach was as follows: 1. A warm appeal mailing reached 14,000 donors. 2. Further mailing and Christmas card catalogue reached a further 6,000. This had a version of the Christmas campaign but didn t include an ask. 3. We also mailed approx. 4,000 companies with two targeted mailings, one for a simple appeal and one for our Christmas sponsor a star campaign which integrated with this campaign. 4. Mailngs to major donors and corporates c Our insert strategy reached approximately 300, TV campaign reached 76% of our target audience four times over 4 weeks RTE viewers 7. National radio reached 51% of our target audience 9.6 times over 5 weeks.

5 8. The Today FM partnership reached 212, times daily for 3 weeks in December 9. The PR campaign particularly the Kitty Holland campaign reached the readership of 314,000 for Irish Times and a further 200,000 in social media. 10. Our online banners had 1.63m impressions 11. Social media campaign reached more than 200,000. Creativity: How did you ensure that your creative stood out? Please attach a soft copy of any printed materials. (Max 250 words) Following donor focus groups we decided to focus on families again at Christmas but we knew we had to really connect on an emotional level with donors. We had already had a series of campaigns across 2014 focusing on the number of families who had become homeless, and as recently as September had featured another stark message about The New Face of Homelessness (i.e. children) due to the large number of families becoming homeless demonstrating that the traditional view of homelessness was no longer reflective of the situation. For Christmas, we built on this concept but built on the emotional impact on families and particularly children who are homeless and living in emergency accommodation, working with Javelin we created a simple TV piece to camera and a simple radio script for the campaign which would be fronted by Sr. Stan. The strapline It s the children who feel it the worst was used to put the feeling of homelessness at the centre. Sr. Stan s message further substantiated the crisis by emphasising that she had never seen anything like it in 30 years. We used the same image of a child that had been used in September to build on the success and awareness of this campaign. Innovation: To what extent was the campaign innovative? (Max 250 words) The campaign delivered the highest level of integration across multiple touch-points that Focus Ireland has ever achieved with a campaign. The level of integration not just across the full direct marketing campaign in itself but with the above the line awareness campaign and the public relations outreach to call on public and government to create outrage and response was at a different level than previous campaigns. This helped keep this as a top 3 issue during the month of December. Knowing that Christmas represented the best opportunity to connect with donors and drive response we worked to ensure that every element of the campaign was designed to deliver a donation by connecting with new audiences and reminding existing donors who regularly support us at Christmas to donate. The urgency of the message in the direct mail and the family homelessness message was the culmination of a year of reaching out to donors warning of the escalating crisis. The campaign innovated in key areas: - Used donor insight and data insight to increase mailer response rates - Prioritised the regular donor conversion ask in the response mechanic delivered a sevenfold increase in direct debits acquired - TV, Radio and Online drove home the core message of the mailing

6 - Outdoor targeted commuters geographically to reach our donor base - Digital advertising used new intelligent targeting methods to display our appeal adverts wherever homelessness was mentioned on key titles such as Journal.ie and Independent.ie - Took the brave decision to abandon traditional doordrop acquisition and target via press inserts with significant growth in results - Leveraged key media and PR contacts to deliver editorial content and campaign stories to synchronise with them mailing landing and advertising campaign launch - Ran a Text to donate appeal around family homelessness with Today FM a first for Focus Ireland Integration: Please explain how you integrated the various channels (e.g direct mail, DRTV, DR Radio, direct recruitment, telemarketing, and other channels) (Max 200 words) We integrated strapline, use of Sr. Stan, images, stories across all elements where possible: Direct mail to cash donors (strapline, images, stories, use of Sr. Stan, emphasis on urgency) Direct mail to regular donors (strapline, images, stories, use of Sr. Stan) Direct mail to major donors (strapline, stories) Direct mail to corporates (strapline, images, stories) Direct mail, telemarketing to corporates for sponsor a star (strapline, images, stories) Press inserts (strapline, stories, images) Press adverts (Image, strapline) Outdoor posters (Image, strapline) Online (strapline, images) All relevant thank you calls, thank you letters TV Sr Stan and Strapline, emphasis on urgency Radio - Sr Stan, Strapline, emphasis on urgency and stories (promotion) Text to donate Radio & Facebook (stories, strapline, images) All direct face to face donor recruitment (Telemarketing, Street, Door) Longevity: Would you run a similar campaign again? Please explain why. (Max 100 words) This was the best campaign that Focus Ireland has ever run in terms of the success and results so we will be looking to transfer all shared learnings from this to future campaigns. We will take on board the successes which we believe came from the data cleaning and prep work, the segmentation, the personalisation, the emotive tone of voice, compelling strapline, the level of integration particularly across PR and above the line, and direct marketing working in tandem. Results: What were the actual financial results and how did these compare to your original forecasts? (Please include net and gross income and ROI % figures) (Max 250 words)

7 The results have been completely amazing and we are so delighted with its success. These included: Overall income generated in December alone of 2.1 million (income in 2013 in December was 1.2 million and income December 2012 was less than 1 million). This campaign majorly contributed to our overall growth of 17% in Christmas warm donor mailing alone received 390K income (14,000 donors). This was an increase of 77% up 190K on 2013, all from existing supporters. Overall directly attributable to Christmas Campaign 1.45M (including Sponsor a Star and 1.2 million public fundraising) this overachieved expectations by 32%, with public fundraising campaign ahead by 45% vs target. Overall return on investment exceeded 5:1 with donor direct marketing elements achieving more than 20:1 return. Recruited more than 1,900 new donors across multiple channels. The change in direct acquisition strategy and leveraging the campaign story and concept delivered a growth of 143% YOY in new donors acquired and an increase in income of 80% YOY, at a 50% reduction in direct acquisition cost. Delivered a 580% increase in direct debit sign ups YOY by changing the response form based on test results from September mailing Other Outcomes: Please provide any other relevant information such as: the number of people directly helped by your initiative and the changes or outcomes they experienced. Did it help to create a stronger link between the donor and your organisation? E.g. did many offer to volunteer for your organisation etc?(max 300 words) This campaign enabled a great connection between the public and the issue of homelessness and particularly family homelessness. It is too early to see the impact of this in terms of volunteer engagement and other supporter value but we do know that the data work that increased the donor database significantly has a significant bearing on the potential of the rest of our donor campaigns. Authenticity Guarantee: I confirm that to the best of my knowledge, the nomination is legal, decent, honest and truthful.* * Entries must be submitted by a charity and not an agency, consultant or other commercial supplier. Date :