Do you have a plan?

Scott's right - in our field information is critical. Who are our constituents? Where are they? How can we best reach them? What motivates them? What are their passions? To be successful, we need to be informed, and what better way to get informed then to have a plan and execute on it!

Let's look at a specific case of a client – we'll call them MainSpring University – in which planning generated results. In the case of MainSpring U. they contracted with us to create one stand-alone, soft-ask email appeal to "test the waters." As you might expect for the first e-appeal, the bounce rate was a little high (the email data not regularly used at this point), email open rates above average (constituents were curious) and completion rate to the giving buttons in the email hovered right around average rates (constituents not used to giving online). We also noted high completion rates to the “learn more” and "update your information" buttons. Verbal feedback from alumni, friends, faculty and staff was overwhelmingly positive. Altogether, the results indicated potential for growth, and for the subsequent fiscal year we sat down with MainSpring U. and developed a strategy that used e-appeals to reinforce mailers and the call center efforts throughout the year. Our plan included a similar soft-ask email appeal that we sent the previous year. This time the email saw an increased email open rate as constituents were more engaged with the University online, a much lower bounce rate given that we had been able to clean up the data with regular email correspondence, and 1.5x the completion rate to giving buttons that we saw in the previous appeal.

So as you ring in the new fiscal year, step one should be to develop an integrated marketing plan in which direct mail, online appeals, social media, and phone calls all work together to drive giving and participation. Especially now, when the budget is tighter than usual, take the time to plan. And in your plan, be sure to leave time for data analysis of each appeal so that you can continuously test, compare data and revise strategy to maximize results.