Successful Reduced Appeals Strategy
Mailing smarter, not more.
Cost Savings
Situation
Appeal mailings play an important role in retaining and educating donors, especially for the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). However, with postage rates rising, and paper prices increasing due to supply chain challenges, NPCA needed to mail smarter.
Typically, NPCA sent its active donors just about every appeal, which totaled 14 mailings. Yet our analysis showed that there was a large number of members who had been on the file for five or more years and had not given any direct mail appeal gifts, even though they had given to other campaigns, like online appeals or direct mail and digital renewals. With costs increasing, we needed to find a way to make NPCA’s appeal mailings more productive.
cost savings!
fewer mail pieces
Solution
We questioned whether every active member really needed to get every appeal. So we tested reducing the number of appeals for chronic nonresponders to gauge the impact on overall response and revenue per thousand. We defined this group as donors who’d given in the past two years (e.g., to a renewal or an acquisition) but had not given an appeal gift in the past four years. If the test proved successful, we could continue a scaled-back schedule for these members. For the yearlong test, the control group received the regular 14 appeals, and the test group got only six mailed appeals.
Success
The test panel (reduced appeals) had a slightly stronger response and marginally lower revenue per donor, which was offset by the cost reduction in mailing fewer appeals to this group. Our analysis shows that we can limit direct mail appeals for non-appeal-responsive donors and still raise roughly the same gross revenue. This will result in significant cost savings and a boost in net revenue without compromising retention. Our next step is to conduct a similar test specific to web joins to determine what the ideal number of direct mail appeals is for this group.
We know what works, when to test, and how to turn insight into action. Let’s work together to turn your direct mail program up a notch.
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