A Digital Program Facelift:How to Reinvent your Program without Reinventing the Wheel

Cathy Jenkins, Paralyzed Veterans of America

Tiffany Quast, Paradysz

Bethany Maki, PM Digital

#Bridge14

Reinventing your Digital Program without Reinventing the Wheel

Why Was it Time for Paralyzed Veterans to Reinvent the Program?

• Recognizable need for change, but fear of negatively impacting revenues

• File growth and Online Revenues were starting to flat line YOY

• Delta between what used to work and a new emerging strategies was becoming more apparent

• This industry MOVES FAST! Need for change is constant!

• Testing new concepts where there is little revenue impact

• Started testing with a 10 month campaign series

Objectives of Today’s Session

Develop meaningful audience segmentation for an online and multichannel donor file

Test into a new email cadence without sacrificing net revenue

Integrate social media and email efforts

Develop meaningful audience segmentation for an

online and multichannel donor file

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

Demographic

Consumer Behavior

Financial Landscape

Channel Preference

Attitudes & Preference

Interests & Hobbies

How can we identify and convert relevant data into marketing

intelligence that improves performance?

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

Model Variables

Prospects & Donors

DemographicConsumer Behavior

Financial Landscape

Channel Preference

Attitudes & Preference

Interests & Hobbies

Data Append

Personas Identified

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

Gender

Male 35% 39% 27% 37% 36% 35%

Female 58% 53% 66% 56% 52% 57%

Unknown 7% 8% 7% 7% 13% 8%

Age 77 59 68 77 56 68

# of Adults in HH 1.79 2.59 2.39 2.17 1.66 2.13

Income $ 27,500 $ 75,000 $ 37,500 $ 45,000 $ 30,000 $ 43,000

Home Market Value ('000)

$120 $292 $124 $239 $134 $197

Thrifty Seniors

Affluent Boomers

Compassionate Seniors

Golden Seniors

StrugglingBoomers

PVA Average

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

DM/Catalog - Channel

Preference 117 70 96 117 99 100

Online - Channel

Preference 107 108 93 81 127 100

Retail - Channel

Preference 109 107 104 75 116 100

Likeliness to Buy High

Speed Internet 51 149 81 49 193 100

Likeliness to use Smart

Phone 50 186 71 89 121 100

Thrifty Seniors

Affluent Boomers

Compassionate Seniors

Golden Seniors

StrugglingBoomers

PVA Average

Persona Mail Qty Resp % Resp Index Gift Gift Index Rev $/MRev$/M

Index

5,121,800 2.43% 116 $10.77 90 $261.78 105

4,287,520 1.67% 80 $14.58 122 $243.03 97

4,769,440 2.18% 104 $11.02 92 $239.86 96

4,885,960 2.09% 100 $13.29 111 $277.54 111

4,350,140 2.02% 097 $11.14 93 $224.91 90

Grand Total 23,414,860 2.09% 100 $11.97 1.00 $250.32 100

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

Thrifty Seniors

Affluent Boomers

CompassionateSeniors

Golden Seniors

Struggling Boomers

What can we learn from Direct Mail Performance?

Persona Mail Qty Resp % Resp Index Gift Gift Index Rev $/MRev$/M

Index

Overall Thrifty Senior Performance(Across all packages)

5,121,800 2.43% 100 $10.77 100 $261.39 100

Package A 1,776,340 2.80% 115 $9.44 88 $264.39 101

Package B 228,420 1.76% 72 $11.18 104 $196.36 75

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

Thrifty Seniors

Audience Optimization – Use the right message/format to maximize performance

Persona Mail Qty Resp % Resp Index Gift Gift Index Rev $/MRev$/M

Index

Overall Affluent Boomers Performance(Across all packages)

4,287,520 1.67% 100 $14.58 100 $243.03 100

Package A 149,540 2.40% 144 $11.64 80 $279.74 115

Package B 220,300 0.98% 59 $20.74 142 $203.68 84

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

Audience Optimization – Use the right message/format to maximize performance

Affluent Boomers

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

What is next for the Affluent Boomer from an Online perspective?

We started with Direct Mail as volumes and budget allowed. We will be transferring this validation process over to specific online segments to measure how different email

messages and treatments influenced performance

The Affluent Boomer

DemographicLate “Baby Boomer” and is the wealthiest of the group. She has a college degree and is

most likely married. She is also the most likely to have older children in the home.

Channel Preferences Of the group, she is the most connected; indexing high on smart phone usage

Attitudes/InterestsLeans conservative but is not as philanthropic as the others. Has interest in reading,

travel, and sports.

Consumer Behavior Is most active around the Holidays

PVA Support Online and Offline donor; Nonpremium donor

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

3rd party segmentation

Relationship to veterans’

cause

Relationship to PVA

Donor Lifecycle

Channels affected by

and transacting by

Interest Area

BETHANY

Developing Meaningful Audience Segmentation

We have great data now what?

• Overlay personas onto the PVA database and improve segmentation across all channels

• Exclude less responsive online personas to online communications

• Improve DM messaging based on persona interests to attract the desired donors

• Utilize personas to better qualify prospects for both online and offline acquisition and reactivation efforts

Test into a new email cadence without sacrificing net

revenue

Paralyzed Veterans Email History• Previous testing indicated that Tuesdays were the

best day for email delivery

• Each month was comprised of:• Three e-appeal emails• One Newsletter• All deployed, one at on each Tuesday of the

month• Email themes were generated based on Holidays like

Veteran’s Day or Thanksgiving

• Little resting between deployments based on segmentation

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT

New Email Cadence, Content & Segmentation

June 2013 Email Campaign

• Calendar event focused email series

• Email 1: Father’s Day

• Email 2: Accessible Travel

• Email 3: 4th of July

• Emails were deployed one week

apart every Tuesday:

• June 11

• June 18

• June 25

• Emails were deployed to full file

New Email Cadence, Content & Segmentation

June 2014 – What was Different?

• Consistent theme based on current need

not a holiday

• Scheduled to create urgency

• Audience defined by recency of donation,

prospects excluded

• Personalized copy and ask

New Email Cadence, Content & Segmentation

So which email series

generated stronger

performance?

36% Improvement in Revenue

New Email Cadence, Content & Segmentation

August 2013 Email Campaign

• A three calendar series was sent one week

apart on Tuesday mornings on 8/13, 8/20 and

8/27.

• Slight content changes were made in email 2

and 3.

New Email Cadence, Content & Segmentation

August 2014 Email Series

• Focus on National Veterans

Wheelchair Games

• Adjusted deployment dates

• Two leading up to games

• Two during games

• Emails 3 & 4 will be sent “real time”

during the games as if we are

following Ryan Lynstrom (a

featured athlete)

RESULTS PENDING –

Deploys in August!!!

New Email Cadence, Content & Segmentation

Evolving approach to content marketing

• PVA sends out a monthly enews, but has seen

plateauing performance

• A deeper dive into the data shows a large segment of

constituents opening but not clicking through on stories

• FY14 approach was to test minor design changes

• Results leading to FY15 approach of scaled back enews

cadence and supplemental feature focused content

emails, new segmentation (mission seekers versus

donors)

Opportunity for Small Tweaks & Improvement

• Change cadence/deployment dates to make series more timely and meaningful to

prospect/donor

• Create more program specific appeal series vs. focus on calendar events

• Improved content for engagement with donor pool and prospects

• Segmentation improvements

• Sustainers are now only included on year-end or high value appeals (1-2 times a year)

• Determine if prospects should be rested or included in all campaigns

• FY15 will see continued evolution the cadence as well as of segmentation based also on

content interest and action. We will also be designing purposeful conversion and upgrade

series

New Email Cadence, Content & Segmentation

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

Why should we care about social integration?

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

• 46% of internet users leverage social networks to aid in making purchasing decisions

• 288 Million active monthly Twitter users; 76% of active users post regularly

• A new user signs up every second on Instagram and 3,400+ photos are uploaded every second

• 27% of total time spent online is on social networking sites

• Referrals from Pinterest spend 70% more

• +1 button is used 5 Million times/day

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

Why Social Media Integration is Next

Logical Step

• Your Facebook page can be a good place for

email acquisition, BUT…

• About 84% of your email list should

already be fans on Facebook

(convinceandconvert.com)

• Because of the audience overlap, your

strategies (ie: cadence, content, etc.) in email

and social media need to be complimentary

and create a seamless constituent experience

• Integrating social and email allows your

constituents to become more engaged

(beyond donating), and extends the reach of

both your social and email campaigns

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

In February 2014, PVA launched a social media campaign called, “Show Love for Your Veterans”

Facebook and Tweet Memes

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

While the February email series was focused on getting signatures for congress, Paralyzed Veterans of America also used this opportunity to weave the “Show Love for Your Veteran” theme into the email series to further enhance engagement and integration.

Results?

12%REVENUE

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

Tying it all together…..

• For those who responded, subsequent

emails in the series was a thank you

with a social integration CTA

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

The Show Love for Your Veteran was a BIG Success for Paralyzed Veterans!

Campaign Results

138 Posts

112 Users

98,300 Reach*

191,347 Impressions

*Unique Followers53% Original post46% Retweets

56%44%

Where to start integrating your social media and email programs

Integrate Social Media and Email Efforts

• Remember that your social and email audiences likely overlap a lot

• Test your email timing against your Facebook post and Tweet timing (ie: keep

your nonprofit top of mind when someone switches venues throughout the day)

• Encourage current email subscribers to like and follow you (ie: in receipts,

autoresponders, enews, etc.)

• Pay attention to what your social audience is talking about/what’s popular with

them and let the trends guide what content you serve in email

• Make sure your email and web content is optimized to be shared

• Use stories from email, told from a different angle, as posts and tweets (ie: more

imagery, a video, a pull quote, etc.)

• Measure how the channels affect each other!

Wrap Up

Conclusion:

Purposeful disruption and small changes can lead to improved performance

• Take the learnings you can from direct mail and extend the analytics approach

to your digital program

• Identify who your non-donor audience on your email file are and what they are

doing with your content and engagement opportunities

• Stay on top of your KPIs and recognize when your program is plateauing

(ps…and if you don’t have KPIs defined for your program as part of an annual

planning process, start there)

• Define the best times in your program for testing, when revenue risk is

minimized and learnings can be rolled out for high impact campaigns

• Be mindful that a plateauing email program likely points to other areas of

opportunity (ie: other channels like social, web site optimization, etc.). Your

digital program is an ecosystem, not just an email cadence

Thank You!

Cathy JenkinsSenior Director of Fundraising, Paralyzed Veterans of Americaemail: cathyj@pva.org

Tiffany QuastVice President, Relationship Management, Paradyszemail: tquast@Paradysz.com

Bethany MakiVice President, Non Profit Strategy, PM Digitalemail: bmaki@pmdigital.com

Don’t forget to visit the

Solutions Showcase!

Many of the ideas discussed today are on display at the Solutions Showcase! #Bridge14