A strong offer is the heart and soul of fundraising.
That’s why, with response rates and return on investment for direct-mail acquisition at historic lows, it is becoming increasingly important to find attractive new offers with high potential that can shore up sagging cultivation and acquisition programs.
But uncovering great offers can be expensive and time-consuming. You could easily spend months (or years, if you’re evaluating based on long-term value, as you should be), plus a ton of your precious marketing resources, just to find a promising offer.
So it’s no surprise that I’m eager to share a real breakthrough in offer development that could save you time and money, AND breathe new life into your fundraising.
To combat waning direct-mail acquisition response for one of our clients, we needed to find a new method of testing offers — one that is both faster and less expensive than traditional direct-mail testing.
So we embarked on a new approach, simply called Offer Testing. Our goal was to test for under $35,000 per offer. (Assuming only one new control is identified for every three packages tested, the cost to find a new control could otherwise exceed $100,000.)
In a period of just two months (as opposed to as much as 15 or more), and at a cost savings of 90% over traditional direct-mail efforts, we were able to identify two promising new offers.
Offer Testing turned out to be the perfect solution. Three new offers were tested against the control by leveraging online surveys (with the same copy and design as the direct-mail offers) and telemarketing. Only offers that showed high potential in Offer Testing were further vetted in actual direct-mail testing. This approach saves time and money.
When tested through direct-mail channels, both new offers earned a return on investment one-third higher than the control. Both offers received higher response rates and average gifts. As a result of this new testing method, our client now has two new co-controls.
If you’d like to know more about whether Offer Testing can work for you, I encourage you contact us at Masterworks. If you’re a current client, call your account executive. If not, get in touch with Rory Starks, our Executive Vice President of Strategic Engagement, at rstarks@masterworks.agency or 360-394-4300.
We’d be happy to take a look at your situation and make a recommendation.