getting supporters active
TRANSCRIPT
3 steps to getting (and keeping)
supporters active
Katie Bannister – [email protected] Shaun Roberts – [email protected]
Wouldn’t it be nice if supporters were like Pluto?• Ready to play• Wanting to please• Unconditional love• Dependent on you• World revolves
around you
And the key to engaging Pluto…
But most supporters are more like this…• Busy lives –
families, friends, work, etc
• Many different priorities
• On lists for multiple organisations
• Lots of distractions
And a tennis ball won’t do the job…
What getting engagement right can mean…
April - June July - September October - December January - March0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
1000000
Total supportersSupporter actions
Step 1 Understand and segment
your audience
What can your data tell you?
• Somewhere on everyone’s database(s) will be - – When a supporter joined– What actions they’ve
taken (petition signs/donations/etc)
– Email open rate– Email click rate
• There may well be a lot more -– Surveys completed– Types of campaigns
supported– Events attended– Postcodes (can then use
to append other info)– Demographic information
At Which we’ve created these basic segments
Hot active4+ actions in a quarter or >8 in year
Warm activeAn action in previous 12 months
Cold activeNo actions in previous 12 months, have opened email
Supporters with no email opens in 12 months are no longer inactive and will be moved to a ‘Dormant’ segment (where reactivation efforts will take place)
Research your audience
• At Which? we conduct our own in-house (free!) surveys, polls and focus groups– Using our emails– Using our landing pages– Using Survey Monkey– Using our Community website
Behavioural segmentation - PopulusValue honesty above all elseAre motivated to tackle injusticeGet frustrated when people are treated unfairlyThink consumers need to stand up to big business
Fam
ily fi
rst (
Jere
my) • Strong
opinions• Low level of
trust in the system to deliver
• Better deal for my and my family
• Optimistic about future
Self
suffi
cien
t (Ro
n) • Look after themselves
• Financial security top goal
• Not into campaigns
• Pick and choose where they get involved
Com
mun
ity g
lue
(Em
ily) • Caring and
concerned• Hands on
making things better
• Practical solutions, dislike bureaucracy
• Worried about their and others’ future Pr
ogre
ssiv
e w
arrio
rs (L
isa) • Passionate
with strong opinions
• Progressive, liberal, see the big picture
• Happy with own lives, want to help others
• Worried about our future
Prob
lem
solv
ers (
Char
lie) • Take
leadership roles
• Professional, logical – want to fix things for others
• Trusting of institutions
• Optimistic about future
What kind of characters have you got?
• What do your supporters look like?
• Do they all have the same motivations?
• What would you like to know more about?
• What can we find out to improve the supporter expeerience?
Step 2Test and implement creative ideas using
what we’ve learned
Starting with welcome journeys
Does yourWelcome Journey have a purpose?
A specific objective?
Our main purpose is to avoid the hardest part of my job…
Dormant supporters
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
Dormant1 action only
Welcome Journey, Welcome Journey, Welcome Journey
Just take a moment to look at the 8% of list that are Dormant (no opens in 12 months)
Supporters must take their 2nd action on our welcome journey
…then we got to keep the momentum going!
Objective became clear…
Prepare for the stats!
WJ GroupPeople on the Welcome Journey (email every 4 days)
2 test groups
Control GroupPeople getting the regular sends (email about every 5 days)
The results
120% increase over the Control Group
WJ
Control
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
22%
10%
Control group had 4 chances to take an actionWJ Group had 6 chances to take an action
Once the Welcome journey was over we looked at the % that had taken a 2nd action
% of group who took a 2nd action
Petitions, polls, survey, quiz- find what works
Now… refining what works
Click to open 47.5%
63% complete survey
Old email 5 New email 5
Click to open 21.4%
Now you have their attention…
Keep it going… a new type of ask
“Hi there
Here is the issue. We want to know what you think. Please take the survey.
Types of asks and daisy chainingTraditional Ask
Email Survey Completion
Types of asks and daisy chainingNew Ask
“Hi there
Here is the issue – what do you think?
Email Poll Survey Completion
The new ask – Step 1Poll Email
The new ask – Step 2Survey Page
The new ask – Step 3Thank you Page
Types of asks and daisy chaining
The proof is in the numbers. Two different emails to similar groups of people
Traditional ask
Email click through
45%
Completed survey
80%
Openers then
completing
36%
New askEmail click
through
75%
Completed survey
74%
Openers then
completing
56%
Improving the new ask! The Train email
Personalising actions
Good news for Virgin Trains users.But we needed to find a way to tell the non VT users
Click to open at 70%(remember this is train talk, not easy to get actions)
Be our guest – create your welcome journey
• Create a welcome journey for one of your organisations
• What will the key elements be?
• How will you get a new supporter to engage?
Step 3Learn and improve
No one gets it all right first time• At Which? we got a
company to analyse all our old data for patterns of supporter behaviour – result there were no patterns!
– But this information helped close off an approach to supporters that wouldn’t have worked
• Take the Change.org approach – A Festival of Failure
Review and evaluate regularly - WJ survey
• WJ Ver1: Step 3 (take our survey ask)• 29% open rate
• 28% click to open rate• 50% completion rate• For every 1000 supporters,
receiving email, an average of just 42 completed the survey • Ver2: Step 1 (poll ask
with survey landing page)• 35% open rate • 59% click to open rate• 64% completion rate• For every 1000 supporters,
receiving email, an average of 128 complete the survey
An increase of over 300% of the number of people completing our WJ survey
LEARNING FROMOUR FIRST WELCOME JOURNEY
Test, test, test – dramatic differences!
24.9% click
through
62.7% click
through
For every 10,000 people that open your email, that’s an extra 3,780 people taking the action
And finally…
Here’s why you should love this…
Engagement is an adventure – you don’t quite know at the start where it will take you. It requires a curious and open mind, creativity, a willingness to try things out and a strong focus on results. If you get it right, the rewards are huge.
How will your boss feel if…
…you could double the number of people
arriving at a donate or volunteer page?
An engagement approach can deliver this with a relatively low cost/risk.
All it takes is a willingness to try!
