DIRECT MARKETING: Budget for Better Net Webinar
Whether your platform is radio, television or both, we know that pledge-acquired donors tend to be transactional. They aren’t retained as well as mail-acquired donors. CDP ROAR benchmarking shows that mail-acquired donors have a higher lifetime value than donors acquired by any other channel. When one has a choice between acquiring donors who will stay on the file or those who require more work and money to reacquire, most find the latter to make the most sense for budgets—and for budgeting staff time.
CDP Partner Services Director Brooks Heckner was joined by Stephanie Horton (KCME/Colorado Springs) and John Bell (WSKG/Binghamton) recently for a roundtable to discuss how they use CDP Direct to augment their local fundraising efforts.
JOHN BELL – ACQUISITION MAIL
John noted the collapse of DVD sales has hit TV pledge acquisition efforts. Small stations in markets with few concert venues don’t get the ticket offers that buoy large and medium market Pledge. John appreciates CDP Direct’s a la carte model, which allows stations to control budgets without having to ‘lock in’ for years at a time.
“It’s so easy. Brooks sends me [an email] saying, ‘Do you want to be in?’...and I say ‘yes,’ and he says, ‘Give me a source code,’ and next thing I know the checks start showing up.” John also points out that system-wide, we’re raising more money from the same number of people, which is not sustainable. Hence the need for varied acquisition channels and efforts.
“Don’t go all-out, crazy in the first couple of years [of mail acquisition],” John said. “Just do enough mail that you can pay for it. Then, once you demonstrate the power of the program, then you can start increasing the numbers.”
STEPHANIE HORTON – RENEWAL MAIL
When Stephanie joined KCME in July 2021, she learned that KCME had never sent renewal mail. The mail they did send was Member Challenge, directly tied to pledge drives. Due to timing, some of those gifts renewed members, and others did not. KCME’s retention rate was not where it should have been, and the station became heavily dependent on pledge drives.
Having previously worked with a station that had a strong connection to CDP, Stephanie immediately reached out to CDP to manage her renewal program.
“The thought of me trying to write all of those renewal letters and get all the files—
I’m a one-person team. I do all of the development and marketing. There’s just not enough time.” The time Stephanie saves having CDP manage the mailings helps her focus elsewhere. Meanwhile the cost savings from CDP’s scaled pricing has increased net revenue, and regular monthly income has reduced dependence on on-air fundraising.
CDP DIRECT “SMART MODELING”
The data models for CDP acquisition mail use demographic, psychographic and current philanthropic giving that aligns with public media.
With each campaign, the modeling becomes “smarter” using responses from previous campaigns to identify attributes and lists that achieve higher results within a given market. That’s an argument for doing multiple and successive ACQ mail campaigns, to help “weed out” unresponsive prospects and low-performing lists, resulting in strategic solicitation of prospects and lists that have higher scores.
The testing ground we use for mail (aka the CDP Lab) is the Member Services Bureau, now serving forty stations and deploying over 10 million mail pieces annually. The lab tests letter text, envelope messaging, ask strings, and email copy. Those test results inform the mailings sent through CDP Direct.
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES
Challenges with “getting the mail out” include business disruption due to staff turnover, rising costs, prioritization at university or local print shops, and time spent pulling files and managing the production/mailing that could be spent on other projects.
Stephanie stressed that CDP Direct solves the need for continuity, time and cost savings, while John focused on the ease of knowing that someone else is managing otherwise time-consuming aspects of the program. Both result in higher retention rates for WSKG and KCME.
With FY23 budgeting starting for many stations, now is the time to reach out to CDP to see how we can help with your mail program.
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