LeVar Burton, Fundraising Guru? (or Join! Renew! Give! Get!)
Marc Ruben, M+R Strategic Services
In a packed room at the 2009 NTC in San Francisco, LeVar Burton loomed large.
Well, not LeVar in the flesh, but rather his metaphorical presence, in the form of the famous adage from his "Reading Rainbow" TV series: Don't take my word for it.
It's not often that four professional online fundraisers give you a notebook's worth of great ideas from their own programs, then repeatedly instruct you to ignore them. But as we shared our recipes for success at the NTC session Join! Renew! Give! Get!, they shared a common ingredient: a grain of salt.
All those tried-and-true strategies you read about in case studies, blogs and, yes, this venerable online publication? They may not work for your organization. You've gotta test things for yourself.
Case in point: I shared some results from M+R Strategic Services' work with the Human Rights Campaign, where we've repeatedly tested online premiums as a way to get that all-important gift from first-time donors. In multiple years of testing, the result was the same: premiums lifted overall donations from prospects by more than enough to pay for the cost of the premium. Brian Dill from Earthjustice, one of the panelists, saw the same thing at his organization. Heads nodded in the audience.
But Sam Parry from Environmental Defense Fund had the opposite experience. EDF has repeatedly tested online premiums, and the result was the exact opposite of what HRC and Earthjustice saw: premiums FAILED to lift overall donations.
And this at an organization that has an extremely successful, longstanding premium program in their direct mail.
What gives? Could be the audience. Online environmental donors (as opposed to direct-mail respondents) may not be as swayed by swag. Or it could be the premiums themselves. Pictures of polar bear cubs might drive donors to pull out their wallets, but will a plush bear tip the scales if someone's on the fence? Or, EDF's regular online appeals might be so darn good -- so timely, so urgent, so real -- that premiums actually break the spell and make the whole thing seem calculated.
The bottom line is, you've got to test it for yourself.
A few other notable takeaways from the session:
- Resend a winner. The panelists saw healthy response rates when they sent a high-performing email appeal for a second time, adding a "lift note" of a few sentences at the top.
- High design can hurt the bottom line. Earthjustice tested a custom-designedemail header graphic, specific to one of their campaigns, against their standard organizational header. Using the same text, the heavily-designed version actually decreased response rates.
- People care about polar bears more than they care about themselves. An appeal with an intro about polar bears (including a devastatingly cute polar bear picture) raised nearly three times as much for EDF than a nearly-identical appeal with an intro about future generations of humans (including a devastatingly cute baby picture).
- Old-line direct mail programs can work online. Rusty Burwell from the American Lung Association told the story of bringing their century-old(!) Christmas Seals program online. The ALA gave its well-known seals (non-monetary stamps to put on envelopes) an update for the internet age. An online appeal offering "e-seals" as a premium (downloadable images for your email signature) raised more than any other end-of-year email.
Another example of don't-believe-it-til-you-try-it came from Oxfam America's end-of-year campaign. With the U.S. economy in a tailspin, Oxfam and M+R decided to test the conventional wisdom that appeals should acknowledge people's financial woes so as not to seem out-of-touch. On an appeal focused on the global food crisis, we sent half the recipients a version mentioning the impact of the economic collapse on world hunger, while a control group got the straight appeal.
Our hunch was correct: the donors who got the appeal mentioning the economy responded at a lower rate. Turns out, talking about the economy may have reminded them of their shrinking 401(K)s at an inopportune moment. At least, it did in late 2008.
At least, for an international aid group.
Well, one particular international aid group.
You probably shouldn't take my word for it.
