Targeting works: Pathways of engagement for fundraising (and advocacy)

1. Targeting works: Pathways of engagement for fundraising (and advocacy) • Marc Ruben, M+R Strategic Services • Paul Phillips, PETA Foundation • Kristin Koch, NARAL Pro-Choice America

2. Top barriers to targeting

4. The Hidden Costs of Email Recruiting List maintenance Evaluating success Paying for your database

5. Segmentation at work:Two case studies Presented by: Marc Ruben M+R Strategic Services

6. Finding Your Audience

7. Read emails. Not too many. Call my Senator. Tweet. Take action once a year. What can you do for us?

8. Oxfam: Engagement Pyramid

9. Volunteer Leader – Hosted 2+ events in 2 yrs. Core Activist – 6+ online actions or 2+ offline in 1 yr. Basic Activist – 1-5 online or 1 offline in 1 yr. Inactive– No action online or offline in 1 yr.

10. Plus: Volunteer invites, trainings, impact report Plus: Unlimited extra actions! Plus: Monthly action, followup messages Start with: eNews, quarterly action, quarterly fundraising

11. Moving activists up the pyramid Inactives: only the BEST content. Foot in the door? Ask for more. Core activists: high threshold for overexposure.

12. 7% of the activists. 1/3 of the actions. Source: eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, 2009

13. Break it down • Past Behavior • Interests • Geography • Recency • Recent donors • Recent activists • Recent joins

14. 2007: One-size fits all Die-hard activist Fair-weather fan

15. Constituent-Centric Strategy

16. Constituent Profiles Core Activist Volunteer Donor Activist Donor Inactive Activist

17. 2008: List Management Strategy Are you sitting down?

19. But it works! Industry ➘ ➚ Advocacy response rates, 2006-2008 Benchmarks Studies

20. It works wonders on donors, too! • Accurately forecast income! • Talk specifically to Prospects • Do they like to “donate” or “join”? • Talk specifically to recent donors • Thanks! Now we need you to… • Talk specifically to Lapsed • Channel your grandma

21. $7,792 Lapsed member test $1,150

22. I’ll give over the phone Online only! Holiday guide? I get my letter, I write my check The next level: Integrate with offline

23. Questions? Marc Ruben M+R Strategic Services mruben@mrss.com

24. Targeting for Conversion: Segmenting your populations to cultivate and create new donors. Paul Phillips Online Fundraising Manager PETA Foundation

25. Targeting for Conversion About PETA. PETA is the world’s largest animal rights organization with more than 2 million members and supporters worldwide that we reach through our main site, five blogs, seven e-newsletters and a variety of social media channels.

26. Targeting for Conversion Before: The Bad Old Days Before the Dawn of Thoughtful Segmentation • In our case, that was largely before we began consistently using e-mail marketing for fundraising purposes. What this means from our experience: • Minimal acknowledgement of newly acquired constituents: • Some saw a welcome e-mail, but most received no unique messaging as a new member of the community. • Little segmentation by interest, recency, or even population type: • While typical donor segmentation like highest previous contribution or origin source may have been applied, non-donor populations saw little difference in their segmentation. • One-size fits all messaging: • All populations, get all messages, all the time. • Over-messaging:  • Little distinction between segments of the non-donor e-mail file meant it was possible for some populations to be messaged as many as five times in a single day in some circumstances.

27. Targeting for Conversion After: Moving Slowly Toward a Better Constituent E-Mail Experience • While there’s still a great deal of work to be done, we’re already starting to move toward our goals thanks to a better crafted segmentation plan: • Unique messaging tracks for newly acquired names: • Improving the experience of the recently registered during those crucial first weeks in our community and making them more open to a fundraising message. • Become better able to measure the value constituent sources: • Making it much easier to control the number of e-mails received by different constituent groups. • Distinct donor and prospect messaging: • Non-donor constituents receive more targeted language encouraging an initial gift. • Easier to identify and reengage the inactive … :  • and promote and acknowledge the more engaged. So how do we meet these goals?

28. Targeting for Conversion Goal 1. Unique messaging tracks for newly acquired names • Now that they’re in the front door, what do we want them to know? • Newly acquired e-mail constituents are segmented out of most e-mail messaging during their first three weeks in our system. We want them to become more aware of the organization’s mission and cultivate them into becoming more responsive to all messaging, including fundraising. This done by: • Encouraging e-news subscriptions for those who don’t join through that channel (in order to get them into channels receiving more communication about the organization as a whole). • Helping them become aware of the wealth of online materials available to them through PETA (recipe databases, cruelty-free shopping lists, downloadable videos, social network presence, etc.) • Making a strong case for the organization and its mission in all initial conversations.

29. Targeting for Conversion Goal 1. Unique messaging tracks for newly acquired names Improving the experience of the newly registered by segmenting to ensure they receive only messaging that acknowledges their joining our community and emphasizes PETA as an institution is already seeing results. E-mails sent within first week of joining our online community often contain multiple citations of available online resources, many with additional data collection points. • 2006 new e-news subscriber upon receiving their first appeal message without a welcome series: • Avg. open rate: 14.3% • Avg. click-through: 1.78%Unsubscribe: 0.23% • 2008 new e-news subscriber when receiving their first appeal message as part welcome series: • Avg. open rate: 20.22% • Avg. click-through: 5.13%Unsubscribe: 0.16%

30. Targeting for Conversion Goal 2: Become better able to measure the value of constituent sources With thousands of new constituents filtering into our system from a variety of opt-in sources each week, we’ve got a lot of prioritization to do. In PETA’s case, we start by using a constituent’s point of origin as the universal segment definition. E-News Subscribers Advocacy Responders Activist Names Catalog Buyers Contest Entrants Information Pack Requests Advertising-generated Leads Care2 and Other External Sources

31. Targeting for Conversion Goal 2: Become better able to measure the value of constituent sources • Now that we’ve got our sourcing sorted out, it’s come time ask the top-level questions … • What groups are the most invested in the organization? • Which groups appear to have the greatest crossover with the existing donor file? • Which groups have been the most responsive to our requests in the past? Activist E-News Subscriber Contest Entrant CatalogBuyer And once those are answered by doing some research on our file, it’s time to get our business rules in place and define our engagement/segmentation priorities …

32. Targeting for Conversion Goal 2: Become better able to measure the value of constituent sources In our case, that resulting pyramid may often look something like this: And this pyramid is further qualified by segmentation that took into account those whoexist in multiple buckets and the time that each population has spent on file.

33. Targeting for Conversion Goal 3. Distinct donor and prospect messaging: • While donors were acknowledged, prospects frequently did not receive either unique e-mails after a welcome series or a limited number of better-tuned appeals during a series. • To rectify this, we did the following. : • Made a better effort to segment and exclude populations that weren’t necessarily as open to fundraising messages. In our case, this was largely names from our youth site PETA2 and the “free stuff/contest” populations that opted-in through our forms. • Revised our house appeal e-mail copy so that non-donor constituents both received additional background/cultivation content on the organization and we’re directed to giving pages that linked to additional background information about the organization. • Segmented to acknowledge online actions taken within copy when possible to help make e-mail content seems more tuned to the constituent.

34. Targeting for Conversion Goal 3. Distinct donor and prospect messaging: So how does this work in practice? Most directly, this is represented by segmentation of non-donor populations within house appeal fundraising messages. Turkey Investigation Announcement E-Mail: • Receive E-Mail With Ask: • Recent E-News Subscribers • Advocacy Responders • Receive E-Mail Without Ask: • Activist NamesOlder E-News Subscribers • Don’t Receive E-Mail: • Catalog BuyersContest Entrants • Information Pack Requests

35. Targeting for Conversion Goal 3. Distinct donor and prospect messaging: It also allows us to do better head-to-head testing of fundraising strategies for conversion in appeals series. • Factory farming appeal without match received by other advocacy populations simultaneously. • 18.4% open rate.0.31% unsubscribe rate.0.35% response for piece. • Factory farming appeal with match received by some advocacy populations. • 22.9% open rate.0.45% unsubscribe rate.0.81% response for piece.

36. Targeting for Conversion Goal 4. Easier to identify and reengage the inactive and promote and acknowledge the more engaged: • This is probably the most “work-in-progress” of these goals. • For the inactive we’ve just begun sending reengagement e-mail communications to those with poor open and click-through rates who have not taken any additional actions online (such as responding to an advocacy alert). Those who fall into this category have begun to receive a “we miss you” e-mail that contains links to many of the PETA-unique online resources that are also in some of our newly acquired messaging after six months of inactivity.It’s still too early for concrete results, but initial reactivation and donor conversion numbers look promising. Future tests to this group include a survey piece and combining the “we miss you” e-mail with a regional online advocacy action.

37. Targeting for Conversion Goal 4. Easier to identify and reengage the inactive and promote and acknowledge the more engaged: • For the more engaged we’ve begun to send communications that are directed only to those who have taken the action step requested in a previous e-mail message. • These small “thank you” messages are in addition to any received immediately after taking the requested action and may include a special coupon for a vendor through our online mall or a brief, but personal message from a worker on the campaign the recipient has supported.This is probably the least quantified of our goal results regarding eventual gifts, but response to the e-mail on the right following our 2008 seals campaign was great. • 87,000 non-donors received the e-mail • 35.6% open rate among the group7.6% click-through on the coupon77% are still active in the community a year later58% have already responded to this year’s seals efforts.

38. Targeting for Conversion What’s missing from this picture? • While we’ve accomplished a lot, we have many more goals to define as we move into more complex data and fundraising systems for the organization. There is much, much more analysis to be done over the coming year. • Which prospects will make the best sustainers? • Which of our campaign topics generate the most new constituents? • Which of our campaign topics generate the most loyal donors? • How much messaging is too much for each constituent population source • Where does social network activity fit in?

39. Questions? Comments? Paul Phillips Online Fundraising Manager PETA Foundation paulp@petaf.org

40. Making Segmentation Work for State and Local Groups Presented by: Kristin Koch NARAL Pro-Choice America

41. NARAL Pro-Choice America • Elect pro-choice candidates • Lobbying Congress • Issues include protecting the full range of reproductive choices, including preventing unintended pregnancy, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion.

42. One list 23 state affiliates and a national organization 63 nationwide alerts in 2008 1,063 state-based alerts in 2008 TX OH NY MO MT NARAL Pro-Choice America NH VA AZ WY

43. NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio and Recruiting Postcard Captains

44. Postcard captain email recruitment Three alerts to a universe of about 4,000: • June: people who had 5+ actions • July: same audience and new petition-signers • August: 3+ actions

46. Results • 74 postcard captains recruited online – nearly 2% response! • Online recruits made up 90% of postcard captains • Minimized unsubscribes to 12 • Identified key activists in new regions for future campaigns

48. NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts and Chocolate Madness

49. The Schedule: 2008 • 1/14 - volunteer kickoff Boston-area, 8+ action takers • 3/10 – buy tickets Boston-area, not limited by action history • 3/28 – buy tickets before price goes up Boston-area and opened 3/10 message • 4/14 – last chance to buy Opened 3/10 or 3/28; or 5+ action takers • 4/21 – buy tickets People who attended previous year but hadn’t bought tickets yet • 5/23 – thanks for attending List of people who bought tickets and are on email list

50. Results • 75% gifts/50% of revenue were made online • Prevented list burn out – 29 unsubscribes • Further established relationship and added value by talking directly with activist