So we thought it fitting to give the last word of the year to an Agitator Commentator.

We picked this recent comment from Steve MacLaughlin at Blackbaud, who talks about the imperative for nonprofit fundraisers to embrace multi-channel fundraising. Use of multiple communication channels reflects the real world of donors … if not yet the real world of some nonprofits!

The bottom line: Different strokes for different folks (donors) is not just some ideal … it’s vital to fundraising success. And the chief obstacles to capturing its fundraising benefits are operational and data silos within organizations.

Here’s what Steve has to say:

“Is it channel conflict or cognitive dissonance? It is sometimes very hard to tell.

There is way too much philosophical debate on which channel should get the credit for the gift. This is mostly fueled by organizational silos or incentives that nonprofits have put in place.

Here’s the reality: Donors are multichannel. They receive messages across multiple channels and they give across multiple channels. They don’t care about your org chart or who gets credit for the donation.

The problem is that many nonprofits are still organized around single channels each doing their own thing, with their own strategies, their own data, their own donors, and their own systems. That’s broken and really costly.

Ultimately, you want to use the right number of channels to drive the right people to take the right action using the most effective and satisfying giving mechanism as possible.

If that means a direct mail piece and a check, then great! If that means a phone call and an online donation, then fantastic. If that if a tweet, an email, a QR code, a website, and a donation for, then so be it.

And if you’re looking at donor behavior across channels, then you will begin to see some trends in what channel mix works best for different types of donors. Oh yeah, did I mention that donors don’t all respond the same way to the same channels? One size fits all approaches are as doomed as single channel tactics.

Statistically speaking, online donors are much more likely to switch to become offline donors. About 32% of online donors will become offline donors compared to only about 3% of offline donors switching channels. Your results may very. Always be testing.

No one channel should get all the credit or all the blame. You succeed or fail based on how well you do these things together.”

Amen.

Happy New Year!

Roger and Tom

P.S. And here’s our New Year’s Resolution … Resolved: No Silos!

Seriously though, I’m not the Luddite I appear to be … hey, I sent two text messages today.

However, that does mean I’m dragging down the curve, according to the latest figures released by Pew Research.

According to Pew, for the American adult texting population as a whole (83% of US adults own cell phones and 73% of those text), the average user sends or receives an average of 41.5 messages on a typical day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily. This level of usage is the same as reported in 2010.

But hold on to your shorts, the median cell owner age 18-24 sends or receives 50 messages a day … and the average for this tap, tapping cohort is 109.5 messages per day.

Keep in mind that where smartphones are involved, texting is on top of all other uses , including checking email, taking photos, web/social net browsing, using various apps … and even talking. As for talking, 53% of cell owners still prefer to be reached that way if someone needs to reach them.

Most interesting to me is the education factor — against a mean for all users of 41.5 texts per day, the numbers are: for less than high school, 69.4 (I get that … kids); for HS diploma, 45.4; some college, rises to 53.0; College+, drops to 23.8. Most of the professionals I see seem to be texting more than that.

All in all … as a fundraiser, I’d still rather have your email address than your cell number. Any disagreement on that?

Tom

Using online survey data from 123 nonprofits, backed by 15 in-depth interviews, the Survey explores key success factors for organizations of all types and sizes that are already engaged in integrated, multi-channel marketing. The Study employs an interesting and helpful filter that focuses on the practices of Novice, Junior, Intermediate and Advanced practitioners.

Even better the Survey’s respondents had to meet the following criteria:

• The nonprofit for which the respondent works had to have raised more than $1 million per year via direct response channels;
• The respondent had to be a manager/supervisor or above;
• The respondent had to be the primary decision maker or involved in the decision making process.

The result: as highly disciplined and thorough a look at this important subject as I’ve ever seen. I urge you to download and study this report carefully.

From the issue of organizational silos, to inter-departmental communications and planning, to metrics and best practices, I guarantee you’ll find something in the Convio study that’ll surprise you, reinforce what you’re doing, and certainly challenge you to do more.

Here are some of the study’s findings I personally found of interest:

• There is a reasonable amount of integrated marketing already happening. Frankly, I was pleasantly surprised.

• Integrated, multi-channel marketing isn’t just something nice to do. Folks are increasingly aware that increased competition in the nonprofit sector mandates competence in this area because donors will flee from those who don’t get their act together.

• The degree of sophistication and the size of the nonprofit don’t correlate. More than 50% of the organizations raising more than $20 million a year online and offline fall into the Junior category and another 21% are Novices. Yet 56% of organizations raising $10 million a year or less are Advanced.

• Online marketing’s contribution to the fundraising mix may be a leading indicator of the organization’s effectiveness when it comes to integrated marketing sophistication. 48% of the Novices raise less than 5% of their direct response funds online, while 63% of the Advanced respondents are raising more than 15%.

• The real barriers to integration are: 1) lack of commitment on the part of an organization’s leaders to integration, and 2) low investment in the mechanics – business processes, measurement and software — needed to make it happen. No surprises here, but by all means send this report upstairs to the front office!

• Fewer than half the organizations surveyed measure lifetime value by channel and fewer than half track the migration of donors from one channel to another.

• As in virtually all fundraising, integrated or not, so much more needs to be done when it comes to understanding retention. Advanced organizations are doing pretty well (with the exception of tracking the effects of social media on retention). And while Novice, Junior and Intermediate sophisticates are tracking direct mail retention, they need to start focusing on the other channels as well.

The study’s author Vinay Bhagat, the Founder and Chief Strategy Office of Convio, and his team deserve a raise for this great piece of work!

What  do you think?

Roger

Nine chapters plus eight case studies on how to pull together direct mail, online, social media, mobile, telemarketing and more for high impact fundraising campaigns.

Roger’s written one of the chapters. And just to show that his bark is worse than his bite, what do you think it’s about?

Donor retention — Creating the Multi-Channel Donor Renewal Campaign.

We’ve given fundraisers a hard time this week about the importance of donor retention and what we believe is a lack of due attention to it.

But in this chapter, Roger ‘atones’. He provides a detailed guide to getting your donor/member renewal program right. There’s a heap of value in that chapter.

And more value from other experts throughout the guide. You can buy it ($79) from Direct Marketing IQ here.

Tom

Operation Smile has provided free, reconstructive surgery and related healthcare to more than 150,000 children worldwide suffering from facial deformities.

The Campaign Goal: Raise $450,000 from a multi-part campaign in order to meet their annual income budget.

Step 1: Training – Professional telefundraisers at Strategic Fundraising were educated extensively on Operation Smile’s mission and the type of donor experience they wanted to provide. During training, the telefundraisers viewed heartfelt videos from recent Op Smile mission so they would be well informed and passionate when calling donors.

Step 2: Phone Blast Message – The campaign launched with an inspiring phone blast message from Operation Smile’s founder, Dr. William Magee, to alert donors about upcoming direct mail pieces.

Step 3: Direct Mail and E-Mail – Donors then received the appeal and chaser mailings, along with two emails.

Step 4: Personalized Phone Call – Strategic’s telefundraisers called to offer more information and solicit donations, with ask levels based on eachdonor’s gift history. This final phone push was critical to the campaign’s historic success.

Step 5: Acknowledgement Message – To further steward donors and boost fulfillment, those who pledged received another recorded phone message from Dr. Magee, expressing gratitude for their continuing support.

The Results: Operation Smile far exceeded projections, raising twice the gross revenue forecast and three times the net revenue compared with prior campaigns. The phone alone generated 30 percent of total revenue, with pledges fulfilling at an astounding 85 percent rate. The organization raised $9 for every $1 invested in telefundraising at a cost of $.11 per dollar raised.

Clearly this is much more than a successful telemarketing campaign. “The key to this hugely successful campaign was expansion of channels to include the phone with tight integration of messaging and the timing across all touch points,” says Jann Schultz, Operation Smile’s Director of Donor Relations. It’s a great example of an organization actually ‘walking the talk’ when it comes to integrated fundraising — orchestrated use of direct mail, email, and telephone was the winning ticket.

Operation Smile and Strategic Fundraising, you deserve a raise!

Tom

“Yes, some board members don’t like the phones (so don’t call them!) but they should like basic math.”

“TM helps our clients raise more money, renew/reinstate more donors, increase retention/enhance stewardship, engage donors in advocacy and the list goes on.”

“Too few organisations realise the main power of the phone, which is in promoting long-term regular giving. Far too often financial success metrics for the phone are set over too short a time period, and so the necessary investment in good-quality, decent length fundraising calls isn’t made … And of course you can’t package your calls up neatly and win nice shiny awards for them as easily as you can for direct mail or email.”

“We’ve been using outbound telemarketing since 2007, however not until 2010 was someone solely responsible for this channel to give the time and energy to enhance it. So 2010 was a VERY successful year for us with reactivating over 25,000 lapsed donors and generated well over $1M in net revenue.”

“Advance Voice Messaging … delivers a lift in response ranging from 25%-400%! AVM is a 30-40 second pre-recorded message that is placed within 3-4 days of our mail appeal landing in homes.”

“I’m work for a telephone fundraising agency – I’m not embarrassed but fiercely proud! But I completely agree that we’re pretty rubbish at championing our channel.”

Read the complete comments here. And ask yourself again … shouldn’t we at least be testing the telephone?

Well done, telemarketers … you deserve a raise!

Can anybody help me with this? How much money was raised in 2010 online versus telemarketing?

Tom

One post referred to regaining lapsed donors. The other talked about walkathon and similar event -based fundraising.

Paul de Gregorio, writing from the UK, notes that he finds it effective to cultivate event participants via the telephone … and indeed convert them to monthly donors. He says:

“You need to know as much about the event experience as possible (location, number of participants, date, money raised by the event and individual etc etc). Scripting needs to take the participant back to how they felt on the day of the event and then explain how they can extend their support by giving in a different way.”

Kristen Smith from the US talks about successfully using the telephone to reinstate lapsed donors (and she means really lapsed):

“We also do both reinstatement (2-5 years) and deep lapsed (6-10 years) telemarketing campaigns; the names we bring back on via these campaigns also have much higher value than other names acquired via telemarketing.”

The telephone. Telemarketing.

Wow … there’s a concept! A global success story.

Hence the question in my headline … addressed to two audiences.

To nonprofit organizations … are you using telemarketing? If not, why not? Too squeamish to raise money?

To telemarketing vendors … Hellooo! Why are you not all over the pages of The Agitator boasting about the applications in which your channel makes a killing?! Consultants and agencies write The Agitator all the time talking about stuff they’ve found really effective. I don’t think we’ve heard from a telemarketer in years. Are you embarrassed by what you do?

Tom

P.S. Almost a year ago, The Agitator asked if anybody still telemarketed. Here’s what we heard. And check out the detailed views of Ken Whitaker and Matthew Guerin. They both thought telemarketing rocks … but that was way back in ancient history … July 2007.

I’m glad she’s not afraid to recommend telemarketing to these folks. And she’s right, predictive tools can help your ROI, especially with large files.

A couple of further points …

Re-soliciting lapsed donors can be viewed as last-stage donor retention. But when they start to get ‘out there’ on the dormant scale — 18 months and more — you might consider putting these names into your prospecting stream, instead of continuing with house appeals. Presumably your prospecting mail has more ‘sell’ of your cause or mission and the special role of your organization … longer lapsed donors respond to a bit more re-education.

With highest value lapsed donors, you might consider a strategically placed cultivation mailing or contact as part of your re-engagement stream. Make your ask secondary to the message of “given your past level of concern about … we wanted you to know that …” (include a reply envelope!).

Organizations that discard their lapsed donors without the effort that Pamela recommends are certainly leaving money on the table.

How much to invest in ‘re-activating’ lapsed donors? Start by looking at your present cost of acquiring a brand new donor!

Tom

Naturally, the numbers vary hugely from nonprofit to nonprofit, and across types of nonprofits.

Do you treat these calls as a cost (i.e., a nuisance) to be managed and minimized?

Or as an opportunity to build relationships? Increasing loyalty amongst existing supporters and winning new ones.

An old friend of ours pointed us to this relationship management case study about American Express in the Financial Times (free registration required).

Looking for a point of differentiation against other credit card companies, AMEX decided to treat customer calls as an opportunity, instead of a cost. Effectively they unleashed their ‘Customer Care Professionals’ (CCPs), allowing them to spend as much time as necessary to deal with callers/cardholders, de-scripting the conversations, personalizing the conversations by making more customer information available at the computer screen of the CCPs, and training them to better educate customers on card benefits.

Here’s how the Financial Times described the results …

“Customers increased their spending on Amex products by approximately 8-10 per cent as CCPs reinforced product benefits through Relationship Care. Customer satisfaction improved substantially too. Amex also saw its CCPs become more efficient: they were able to reduce the average time of a call because they resolved issues more effectively. Service margins widened as a result.”

What does this have to do with nonprofits? Plenty, if yours happens to be one that receives a significant number of calls, or where a high percentage of your supporters have reason to call.

These calls can build loyalty and generate new donors/members.

Remember our friend?

His nonprofit published heaps of patient-empowering health information. So his organization got plenty of calls from members and non-members alike. Here’s what he said in his email …

“We had two people who would always take as much time as a person needed to explain their options, what questions to ask, etc. It always paid off. 80% of non-member callers joined! And of members calling, about 40% raised their contributions in the next appeal after they would call.”

Not a bad return on caller care.

Tom

Here’s a definition offered by Convio’s Chief Technology Officer, Dave Hart:

“In the nonprofit world, true integrated marketing is centered around the concept of having a comprehensive view of the constituent. Ideally, the organization has full access to online engagement data for mining and can use that data to engage constituents both offline and online. There is also a need to have robust reporting capabilities that enable a nonprofit to plan and execute integrated campaigns, and create engagement pathways. This meeting of the offline and online channels – and ensuring consistent, coordinated communications across both of them — represents true integrated marketing.”

Of course, individual donor/member transaction and interaction data, combined in one donor record, and readily accessible to drive subsequent contacts (and respond to donor-initiated contacts) is the linchpin.

A baby step toward a holistic approach for most nonprofits is simply driving future individual asks on the basis of the donor’s past response profile. Even direct mailers do this much — e.g., customizing the dollar stream on a donor’s reply card according to previous giving history. Or more broadly, segmenting appeals by topic based upon previous demonstrated interest.

But then online interaction (including social nets) comes along, enabling more frequent interaction with donor/members, including non-fundraising engagement, as well as more engagement initiated by the donor. And generating piles of individual donor data.

Marrying the offline (mail and telephone) engagement data to the online data (which, as noted, can include robust information on donor interests and preferences), and now mobile, becomes the holy grail. Accomplishing that enables fully personalized interaction with the individual donor, through the optimum combination of channels. Some simple examples …

• A direct mail appeal can be targeted at a member who signed up online for a program-specific e-newsletter or blog feed.
• Responses to online action alerts can drive segmented fundraising appeals … in any channel.
• A initial direct mail donor, who proves responsive to online contact, can be engaged through both channels, with the likely result of increasing his/her total giving (see below).
• A renewal time, a donor/member can be reminded and thanked for all their interactions over the previous year, both giving and other engagement.
• A strong record of interaction, both giving and other engagement, might identify excellent prospects for major gift solicitation (i.e., human contact!).

These days, the trick is no longer the mechanics of data integration. Sure, that’s a challenge, but the fundraising software is out there, and plenty of experience with it.

The real trick is finding fundraisers who know what to do with the sea of data now available to them — what to try, what to test, where’s the low-hanging fruit, what have others already found to work with some consistency.

Is integrated marketing worth the effort?

Here’s the conclusive finding of a white paper prepared by Convio and StrategicOne waaay back in 2007:

“Offline Only w/ eCRM donors gave more than twice as much (means of $694 vs. $314) as did those who did not receive electronic communication. The Dual-Channel donors had higher lifetime values still ($877). Dual-Channel donors gave as much through offline sources as offline only donors, indicating that the online channel does not cannibalize revenue from direct mail.”

That’s what I call an open and shut case!

Tom