WHAT WE WISH WE HAD KNOWN 10 YEARS AGO

WHAT WE WISH WE HAD KNOWN 10 YEARS AGO

INTRODUCTIONS Two lengthy job titles... Michelle Director, National Philanthropy Business Operations Jay Director, National Donor Experience & Engagement For our monthly giving program, Michelle owns the data integrity and business processes while Jay owns the responsibility to retain/reactivate monthly donors 2

MONTHLY GIVING AT THE RED CROSS 1) Started our monthly giving program just over 10 years ago starting with a few hundred across the country 2) Primary acquisition vehicle has been F2F with a very strong telemarketing presence 3) Several team members have a role in monthly giving across Philanthropy THE FACTS 4) Monthly giving now makes up over 20% of our undesignated giving each year 3

MEET THE PLAYERS Pushes the buttons Holds us all accountable Finance Team Pulls and cleans the data Monthly Giving Manager Monthly Donors Data Team Manages the strategy and execution Stewardship Team Donor Services Prepares data; starts Reactivation 4

Stewardship Operations Q s to ask yourself Analytics 5

ANALYTICS Gifts need to be coded with the original appeal. Generic appeals just won t cut it and you will never be able to track the proper ROI Track your monthly fail rate (for each processing date that you have). Look for trends if you see large swings, it could be a processing issue. Dive deep into those decline reasons. Look at the credit card type or bank Let us tell you the story of VISA Debit Record in your database what you did to reactivate the donor. Send a letter? Add an action Made a call? Add an assigned appeal evaluate/analyze and find patterns of what might be effective in fighting attrition Track attrition the hard way. Treat each month of donor acquisition as a cohort. How many donors that signed up as monthly in April 2015 are still giving in April 2016? May 2016 - May 2017. Flow out each month, each year. And track how many donors you are losing each month. 6

ANALYTICS 7

Stewardship Analytics Q s to ask yourself Operations 8

OPERATIONS Work smart, not hard Don't waste your time keeping a list of (a) who dropped off (b) who upgraded, (c) who signed up Just to compare to last month to make sure this month is correct. Run some 'validation' queries to make sure you aren't missing anyone or overlooked anything. Anything else is a waste of time that you could be using to call a donor to get their new credit card number. I know some of you rely on partners to host your data: ask them if they can do this kind of work for you. You re looking for the canary in the coal mine so you can investigate... 9

OPERATIONS Try to process failed transactions (non fatal like general decline, NSF etc) on the 5th business day. And again at least one more month (if not two) but after that 5th business day, add to re-activation. Just don't put them on hold! When we processed on Day 2 we got back 5% of declined transactions. When we moved to Day 5 reprocessing, we get back 25% of declined transactions 10

OPERATIONS Know why the donation failed. Don't accept if someone tells you it doesn't matter. Put 'fatal' errors on hold right away. Add to re-activation strategy immediately. 11

OPERATIONS - REACTIVATION TMK calls end Payment Missed Day 0 Declines reprocessed Day 45 Day 5 TMK calls begin Day 31 Day 8 Gift placed on hold Email Sent Day 30 Day 8 Data Ready Day 29 Day 9 Donor Services calls end Day 9 Donor Services calls begin Letters Sent 12

OPERATIONS Push through expired credit cards. Check with your payment gateway and make this happen. $250K in donations being pushed through EVERY MONTH $3MM in donations being pushed through every year 13

OPERATIONS Offer as many processing dates as you can handle. Be as donor-centric as possible. 14

OPERATIONS 1. Record your policies and procedures. We call this the 'win the lottery' scenario (after realizing that the 'hit by a bus' scenario was too negative). Don't risk anyone forgetting all these steps if there is staff turnover. 15

OPERATIONS Make sure you are re-activating ALL your monthly donors. Make sure that when you import those donations you are identifying them as monthly. And don't let these donation sit in online gift purgatory. Get them in your database and into your Operations flow 16

OPERATIONS Ask for 'missed payments'. When you call to re-activate, in letters, in emails. If you are sending correspondence about a failed payment, ask to make up a missed payment. Over 67% of donors make up missed gifts 17

OPERATIONS When someone asks to cancel, try to downgrade them instead. An example downgrade chart Original Gift Offer them... $30 and above ½ of their previous gift $15-29 $10 Under $15 $5 Remember - there s nothing wrong with asking someone to reconsider or offering a donation holiday. You worked hard to get that donor why not work diligently to keep them? 18

OPERATIONS Figure out the payment method that has the best retention and push it. When people sign up, ask for it. When a gift fails, ask them to switch. Hell, just ask them as a stewardship piece. For us it's direct debit. Others it's credit card. Whatever it is, make it your mission to get more donors giving that way. 19

Stewardship Analytics Operations Q s to Ask Yourself 20

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF 1. Review your transaction fees. 1. Did you know that recently the interchange fees on credit cards for charity accounts dropped? 2. Did your payment gateway drop their rates? Might be time to negotiate. 2. Do you own the rights to your credit card numbers? 1. If you were to leave your database company/ online donation page hosting company - would you have trouble getting the credit card numbers of your donors? Write that into the next contract renewal! 3. Does your bank/database company offer credit card or bank account updater? 4. Who is responsible to reactivate donors? 5. How about a OTG ask to your monthly giving file 6. Would you be putting your file at risk by asking for a second monthly gift? 7. Would you be putting your file at risk by asking for an upgrade? 21

Analytics Operations Q s to Ask Yourself Stewardship 22

LOOK FAMILIAR? You put time and money and effort and human resources into acquiring new monthly donors BUT... Sometimes they leave you. Either actively or passively. But either way money pours out of your bucket 23

STEWARDSHIP: THE AIM To engage donors with the goal of deepening their commitment and increasing their loyalty to the mission of the Canadian Red Cross 24

DONOR(-CENTRIC) STEWARDSHIP: OUR PRINCIPLES It s (almost always) not about us Re-positioning the donor Everyone deserves a warm welcome Bringing donors on board Nobody donates to early recovery support Speaking to the donor in a language they understand Donors must be at the core of the organization Recognizing donors, and taking them on a journey to see their impact 25

HOW WE MOVED FORWARD EXECUTING ROLLING STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM Build the content and find operators Determine a control group to find efficacy of the program Wait. Patiently. 26

MONTHLY STEWARDSHIP A ROLLING PROGRAM Welcome kit (sign-up) Auto blast (week 1) Welcome mailer (defunct) Welcome email (week 3) Internal memo (month 6) Invitation email (month 4) Impact Report (week 10) Preparedness email (week 6) Donor Appreciation Package (1 year) 27

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? $3.12 How much does it cost you to acquire a new F2F monthly donor? Costs us about $315. 28

SO WHAT? Email open rates between 26%-54% (on average) benchmark -25.58% Email click thru rates between 5.3%-28% (on average) benchmark - 2.94% 80.0% 70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% October December (Yr 1) 67.9% 62.0% 23.1% 25.9% 9.0% 12.0% Active Held Terminated Stewarded Test 20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0% 0.0% January (Yr 1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PROJ TY LY 29

THIS PART IS A LITTLE BORING Segment Month of sign up % still active variation Month of sign up % still active variation Jul-13 May-14 Control 36.1% 50.9% Stewarded 44.1% 8.0% 50.8% -0.1% Aug-13 Jul-14 Control 35.4% 58.1% Stewarded 41.3% 5.9% 57.3% -0.8% Sep-13 Aug-14 Control 41.4% 53.7% Stewarded 45.8% 4.4% 55.9% 2.2% Oct-13 Sep-14 Control 31.8% 55.9% Stewarded 43.8% 12.1% 54.4% -1.6% Nov-13 Oct-14 Control 44.4% 55.5% Stewarded 43.3% -1.0% 56.5% 1.0% Dec-13 Dec-14 Control 43.9% 68.6% Stewarded 47.2% 3.3% 65.4% -3.2% Jan-14 Jan-15 Control 40.0% 56.4% Stewarded 48.1% 8.1% 62.1% 5.6% Feb-14 Feb-15 Control 40.3% 63.8% Stewarded 48.7% 8.4% 65.5% 1.7% Mar-14 Mar-15 Control 47.9% 63.0% Stewarded 49.3% 1.4% 70.1% 7.1% Apr-14 Control 45.9% Stewarded 49.6% 3.7% 30

SURVEYS: TREASURE TROVE OF DATA As part of the survey, donors are asked to rate 5 experience variables: Answers are converted to scores to give donor commitment score We have seen donor scores rise from 23.75 to 25.9 since onset Have not seen significant difference in active/terminations based on score but still require more data 31

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES Strengths Measureable increase in monthly donor retention Valuable feedback for future stewardship ideas and premium test Donors talked to us informing stewardship choices and products Things we changed Moved to automated email deployment MailChimp is a gamechanger Eventually control group test had performed the same way for so long that we scrapped the control group: everyone gets stewarded now Removed a mail piece early on in the process no change to retention 32

AND SO... 6% better retention $400K per year Train 250 volunteers Deploy an immunization centre Buy 6 emergency vehicles 33

WE PLUGGED THE BUCKET Lower attrition make more money 34

Credit Card Direct Debit Polices & Procedures Reduce Interchange costs Try the gift again Data: Who Own It? Text here Reactivate Putting it all back together 35

PUZZLE COMPLETE Learn from our mistakes make new ones instead Steal our line The X Red Cross is doing it...and it works Start small there are some quick wins that won t require anything more than an email or a phone call 36

YOUR HOMEWORK 37

THANK YOU @MICHELLESTEF @JAYHOLLISTER1