We work with a wide-variety of clients representing diverse organizations, from product sales, to humanitarian causes and ministries. One thing they all have in common is the need to constantly test in order to improve results and grow.
The Direct Response TV industry knows the importance of “Testing” very well…from a media perspective you must be willing to “test, test, test” before you can “buy, buy, buy”! Most importantly you must “test” in order to be most cost effective and be able to deliver the strongest ROI’s possible.
What does ‘Testing” look like?
It depends on the type of media and programs being tested, but for example, you can test different levels of offers, different types of “asks” depending upon the organization and mission, testing different “CTA’s” (Call to action’s), different media outlets, different call scripts and so on.
One of the ways this is done is testing in a controlled environment or a “model”. This typically means testing in a measured capsule or period of time. On TV networks or stations can mean testing programs on those media outlets that have proven effective for similar types of programs, products, ministries or humanitarian organizations. Various controls can be used, including competitive analysis, and viewer demographic profiles.
The standard protocol for a test is a two week window for media, typically best on a limited number of media outlets, a separate 800# of each media outlet is a must with all calls and orders coming into one 800# and call center. Sometimes, you can test different Call Centers to see who will deliver the best results for that particular type of offer.
Results are collected and then concluded based on the target ROI goals and objects of each offer or organization. Target ROI’s are subject to different criteria and based on the uniqueness of each program, offer and ministry. Newton Media has developed a break-even analysis model to help guide our clients.
Another area to test is the Web or Landing Page for each offer presented on Television or Radio. Some campaigns are focused on driving viewers and listeners to the web to order products, or make donations. Some use it as a secondary outlet to Television and give more detailed information about the product, offer or mission. We are beginning to see a greater number percentage of income through the web than ever before, in some cases, as much as 40% of response can come from web activity.
As we move into a new year, we look to continued ways to improve results for our clients, and so the testing continues…
Steve Newton is the founder and CEO of Newton Media, a full service media planning and buying company headquartered in Virginia with offices in Dallas. Founded in 1995, Newton Media’s team of seasoned experts has become a leader in both Ministry and Direct Response TV and radio.
Ratings … “we can’t live with them, and we can’t live without them” (tic). Most advertisers and their agencies live and die by ratings as a way to determine who is watching/listening to their ads. The advertisers’ reach and frequency goals (and budgets) are based on reaching a certain number of people “x” number of times. For those general-market advertisers, ratings are the only tool they have to determine if their media campaign is “successful”.
Direct response advertisers do not rely on ratings to determine if their media campaign is “successful”. DR advertisers have something much more reliable … viewers/listeners responding by calling an 800# or URL to order their product or service. DR marketers know immediately if they’re reaching their audience, and they can immediately adjust budgets as necessary.
More important than the number of viewers/listeners to a program, is whether those viewers/listeners “respond” to the message and will order the product or service. For example, if the ratings services determine that a program reaches 300,000 viewers and there is minimal response to the message, a DR marketer can quickly shift their dollars to another time period.
What matters most is the number of viewers or listeners who respond to your message … not the total number of people who are exposed to your message. Programmers need to focus their message and schedule on media outlets/time periods to best reach the highest number of people who are likely to respond, which is not always the same as reaching the largest number of people.
By Janet Burke, Director of Media at Newton Media. Janet came to Newton Media with over 17 years experience on national accounts for D’Arcy-Masius Benton & Bowles and Earle Palmer Brown. She provides leadership to the media team and manages client relationships well with her passion for professionalism and attention to detail.
Lots of fundraisers become wary of contacting donors too often They see falling response as proof of so-called donor fatigue. So they scale back, assuming that less communication is somehow better. They’ve bought into the myth that fundraising is an intrusion into donors’ lives.
That’s just plain wrong. Fact is, people who feel passionately about a cause want to hear from nonprofits.
The real issue isn’t the number of contacts but whether the nonprofit has created a meaningful dialogue with donors — the kind of dialogue that offers donors choice and control in how they interact with the charity.
With one group of clients, we’ve been offering donors choice and control for 10 years, asking them how much and how often they want to give and then honoring their preferences.
Testing with more than 100,000 donors engaged in this new way of giving shows the wisdom of this approach. Annual giving rose from $141 per donor to $169 — an increase of 20%. What’s more, donor retention held steady at 92% — which is amazing, considering that retention for multi-year donors is 75%. But even more significant, the number of donors in the program has steadily increased as more donors came to prefer this new way of giving.
But dialoguing with donors doesn’t always mean asking for a gift. For the past four years, TrueSense has run a department of 30 team members dedicated to calling donors and sending handwritten notes to thank them for their generosity. The payback has been incredible. Donors have told us, “No one has ever called before to say thank you!”
Even better, long-term research has shown that personally contacting these middle- and high-level donors increased annual donor value by an amazing 12% — and the only change to the donor marketing plan was adding personal calls and handwritten notes!
Results come from listening to donors and engaging them in what matters to them. The research proves it. Yes, fundraising is driven by metrics and analytics. But in the end it’s really about listening to donors, treating them with respect, and honoring their generosity. When you do that, the numbers take care of themselves.
With more than 30 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Jeff Nickel, Vice President, National Accounts, TrueSense Marketing, is a passionate advocate for fundraising and the causes it makes possible. He combines a rigorous and studied approach to fundraising with the heart-to-heart emotional connection that informs the very best donor marketing and communication. TrueSense Marketing is an award-winning, full-service direct-response agency with idea centers in Pittsburgh, Pasadena, and Seattle. TrueSense provides exclusive donor-preference strategies, personal donor communications, convincing creative, multichannel integration, analysis and growth planning, database management, and cost-saving end-to-end production — all in support of its innovative donor-focused philosophy of direct response fundraising.
Welcome to Newton’s Media Fix (The Fix), the premier best practices newsletter in our industry. I want to share with you not only valuable insights I have learned from my 30 years in the Media Industry but also our teams broad knowledge throughout all aspects of planning, execution and follow up for effective Media Campaigns and Programming.
