This article on integrating phone and mail efforts from Strategic Fundraising originally appeared in Mal Warwick’s April 2009 e-Newsletter. Strategic is one of Gillette’s fundraising partners, and has done some amazing work for us as well.
By Corey Gordon
What influence, if any, does telephone fundraising have on the results of concurrent direct mail appeals?
Do direct mail results vary depending on the outcome of the telephone call (i.e. pledge vs. refusal)?
Are results relatively consistent across the entire file, or are there segments that defy the overall trends?
Does the interval of time between the telefundraising call and the estimated in-home arrival date of the mail appeal have a material impact on either channel?
These were the questions we set out to answer in a test of integrated fundraising, adding telephone contact to ongoing direct mail programs.
Our client was a large, national organization. Its donorfile had been built almost entirely by direct mail using labels and other modest upfront premiums. Donors on the file had been exposed to little-to-no prior telefundraising, and they were largely an older audience averaging 72 years of age. The segment carved out for the test consisted of 13-36 month lapsed donors, with highest previous gifts in the range of $15.00 to $49.99.
All in all, as you may be well aware, this was not an optimal file for telefundraising.
The test was undertaken during the first half of 2008, during which six mailings were sent out and over 200,000 contacts made by phone.
Donors in the control group received the same mailings, but were not contacted by phone. There were no premiums associated with the phone appeals, while the direct mail appeals had the normal offerings.
The gross revenue per piece mailed (GPPM) was the standard by which results were measured.
In the following chart you can see the overall picture:
As you can see, the telefundraising program appears to have had no negative impact on any of the direct mail results. Gross Revenue Per Piece Mailed was actually higher among the households contacted by telephone than those where no contact was made. These findings were consistent across nearly all key sub-groups as defined by Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Level (RFM).
For another perspective on this test, take a look at the following chart:
Interestingly, donors who made pledges when contacted by telephone generally responded significantly higher to the direct mail appeals than those who refused. And even the donors who refused when contacted by phone demonstrated a higher level of response to the mail than those where no telephone conversation took place.
Once again, the positive lift created by the addition of the phone channel was consistent across nearly all RFM segments of the file.
The direct mail results were highest when a phone call was completed plus or minus one week of the maildate, as you can see here:
Summary
- The direct mail results were positively influenced by the concurrent telefundraising effort, erasing the fears of cannibalization or overlap.
- The phone and mail channels were clearly complementary, strongly supporting a multi-channel approach to fundraising.
- The client actually resulted in a better overall positive net revenue position, even with the addition of a second channel of fundraising expenses.
- A substantial number of lapsed donors were reactivated, helping to offset the overall decline in direct mail response in 2008.
Corey Gordon is Chief Marketing Officer, Strategic Fundraising, 7591 9th Street North, St. Paul MN 55128, phone (651) 233-5009, Web www.strategicfundraising.com, email cgordon@strategicfundraising.com.
