| Make
them an offer they can't refuse...
By Tim Oleary, Vice President
| The unofficial Black
Friday retail numbers keep pouring in and it sounds
like slightly more people bought with a lower average
purchase. Hmm…More donors, lower average gift
- sound like your fundraising program?
Anyone who was out at the stores at 5:30 a.m. like
me can tell you that shoppers were out in droves and
they were looking for good deals. Is this more fallout
from the economy or just a sign of the times?
We’ll let the suits on the Street and in Washington
keep working on that one, but one thing is certain:
those shoppers, a.k.a. your donors, are searching
for good offers and responding to them in full Pavlovian
fashion.
So as the New Year approaches, we think it is time
to re-visit the offer strategy and recommend providing
a good mix of opportunities for your donors to respond
on their terms to the offer that best suits their
current situation and frame of mind.
Does your fundraising strategy drive offers and ask
strings or has it become the other way around? It’s
easy to put things like offers and ask ladders on
auto-pilot.
There is an old direct marketing axiom that prognosticates
that success or failure of a campaign is 40% offer,
40% audience and 20% creative. So even if you have
a good target group of constituents and send them
an award-winning letter, you may fall well short of
goal if the offer isn’t right.
How would Jack Welch approach the offer slice of
the DM pie if 40% of success or failure hinged on
how well it was crafted? I’ve never met him,
but my guess is auto-pilot would not be tolerable.
For this article, we are talking solely about offers,
regardless of channel. We’ll follow up with
some more tests and trends on multi-channel and specific
channel examples at another time.
So what can you do? Here
are a few examples of strategies that are working
for some of your colleagues…
|
| Deep
Discount Offers –
If you are a membership organization or offer products
on your site and in your communications with donors,
consider deeply discounting, perhaps even by as much
as 50%. Yes, the average gift is usually lower, but
that is the point. We have seen several organizations
discount by 50% on both membership and premium offers
with higher response rates than the control offers.
And while the average gift is lower, the Net Revenue
per Response is higher because of the high volume response.
Remember, donors are looking for deals! |
You Decide –
This empowering offer again works best for membership
organizations, but can
find its way into regular appeals, too. We have
tested this in deep lapsed and acquisition mailings
and seen great response. The idea is to have no
ask ladder at all, but to allow the donor to decide
what membership is worth to them. We have seen
several campaigns where response has eclipsed
the coveted 1% response rate with average gifts
ranging between $22-$28. |
 |
The letter actually
reads, “You decide! A gift in any amount
entitles you to full membership benefits for an
entire year.” |
| At Eight/KAET,
Arizona’s PBS station, they even received
a $1,000 gift in response to this mailing from
a donor who had not contributed in more than five
years.Will this strategy work for you? You decide!
|
|
| Matching
Gift/Challenge Grants – These are a nice
tried and true way to engage both new and current donors.
Raise money from current donors for a Matching Gift/Challenge
Grant Fund and use that money to entice new donors.
For a spin on the traditional approach, try a Hometown
Member Challenge, one that provides a little competition
among neighbors and allows them to spread some hometown
pride. This is not for everyone, but we have a client
in North Carolina who has raised millions over the years
with this strategy.
Surprise Us! – We
have covered the use of “Surprise Us”
in a previous article and you can read more on
it on The
Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration
(SOFII- if you have not subscribed for SOFII updates
yet, you should hurry up and do it now so you don’t
miss any of the latest information!)
Freemium/Premiums
– Yes, they still work. From mailing labels
and note pads to T-shirts and luggage tags, the products
are getting more sophisticated but the premise is
the same. Find a way to brand a premium with your
logo or tie it into your mission and you have a potential
winner. One of our current clients is having trouble
keeping blankets, water bottles, key chains and cooler
bags from flying off the shelf. Their goal is to flood
the market with logo-branded premium items and they
are well on their way to doing just that.
Sustainer/Evergreen
Asks – Wouldn’t it be great
if every donor make a loyal commitment to give
you a specified gift amount every month? It might
change the way we plan our fundraising communications?
So why not be more aggressive in this area?
|
| More
and more, donors are seeing the convenience and
environmentally-friendly advantages to giving
this way. To test this concept, we added a sustainer
box to appeals and some renewals. |
 |
The results have been strong – as much as
1.5-2.5% of donors are choosing to make their
gift a monthly contribution to the organization.
The example above shows the “Sustainer Box. |
Adjusting Ask Ladders
– Should ask ladders be ascending or descending?
Should we use last gift or cumulative year giving
as the starting point for ASK1? Should we have two
ask amounts, three ask amounts, or more? Well, the
good consultant's answer is “it depends.”
Try some testing to see how your donors respond. Keep
it simple so it is clear what they have to do - you
don’t want obstacles in place when they are
so close to giving. If you are stuck on whether to
ask for more or not, for the time being it may be
wiser to keep the ask amount lower. I know, “if
you don’t ask for it, they won’t give”
and “donors like for you to suggest amounts
so they can follow it” and all that. These are
new times, though, with extra-savvy donors and you
don’t want to give them an excuse to abandon.
The Power of Free
– Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, released
another insightful book this past summer called Free!
Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. It’s an
eye-opening great read and could offer some ideas
for your fundraising offer strategy.
Have an offer that is working well
for you? E-mail
us at ideas@mcphersonassociates.com with offer
strategies that have been successful for you and we’ll
post them in a follow-up article.
|
Other Recent Articles:
April 2010
You snooze, you lose
Why bother with social networks?
January 2010
Where are all the new donors?
Nov/Dec 2009
November 2009 Conference Wrap-Up
Fake nuns, donkeys
and your strategy for 2010
October
2009
Content vs. Usability
Think inside the box
We said surprise us - They did.
About McPherson Associates
McPherson
Associates, Inc. • 312 E. King Street •
Malvern, PA 19355
•(610)640-1555 • Fax (610) 640-1456 • |
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