How can you use online advertising to reinforce traditional direct mail campaigns and boost returns?

Until recently, despite many noble efforts, the answer was almost always, “You can’t and you shouldn’t ‘cause it just doesn’t work.

And the reason was/is that most online advertising models — whether based on contextual or keyword search or behavioral profiling—don’t work for the following reasons:

• They’re incapable of measuring the cross-channel impact of an online ad on direct mail.
• Online advertising is not a ‘direct response’ channel but instead acts to reinforce the nonprofit brand. And unless the messaging between the ‘brand’ and the direct response campaign is absolutely consistent no reinforcement occurs.
• Online advertising is almost always treated as a stand-alone channel. This fragmented ‘silo’ effect, along with inconsistent messaging almost always dooms the effort.

The result: generally a 4:1 loss on the investment at worse and a 2:1 loss at best. Clearly a losing proposition for most acquisition programs.

Fortunately, there are now signs of hope – both in theory and in actual practice – that we might soon benefit from the marriage of the web and postal mail when it comes to acquisition. Let me explain.

Last month at Blackbaud’s BBCON12 conference Richard Becker, the President of Target Analytics, gave a fascinating presentation titled  Brave, New Multi-Channel World—Implementing & Measuring Integrated Multi-Channel Campaign Strategies.

I gotta admit that given the session’s title and the fact that it was being held at 8:15 a.m. I almost punted. Thank heavens Starbucks and my admiration for Richard’s data and innovation skills won the day.

Here’s what I learned and why I think all this particularly valuable to those Agitator readers who run large and sophisticated acquisition efforts. [For readers with smaller programs and budgets but with large interest in multi-channel marketing a dive into this is well worth your time.]

The process as employed by Target Analytics is called Connection360. By way of background and detail you can download Richard’s presentation here, and a whitepaper Richard prepared here.

Here are the key points; you may wish to explore Richard’s presentation in more detail:

• A new system of online household-level targeting enables nonprofits to target specific audience segments consisting of active donors, lapsed donors, or prospects generated by their previous philanthropic characteristics.

• This is big change from the old, inference-based profiling to a more effective strategy involving actual donor behavior. Essentially a change from “Where” (as in what sites likely donors may visit) to “Who (as in targeting a specific household on any website the prospective donor visits.)

• Because of the ‘closed-loop’ process the nonprofit now not only has the ability to calculate the effect of the advertising impressions in terms of online conversions, but also measure the increased response rates across direct mail or other one-to-one solicitation channels more accurately.

• This new model gives the ability to understand cross-channel or multi-channel impact of brand impressions on a channel like direct mail.

Does It Work?

Yes. Check out the case histories in Richard’s presentation. And it works for both acquisition and house file efforts. (Generally better for housefile than acquisition, but even in acquisition the overall return on investment is impressive, yielding a 2:1 return on the ad spend itself and a 28% lift in direct mail response rates.

Is this for you? Perhaps. But take the time to understand this highly sophisticated and metric-oriented process.

If I Can’t Use It Today, Why Should I Care?

Even if you can’t put Connection360 to work today or tomorrow, there’s plenty you can learn from Richard’s presentation, including some great examples of landing page creative and some very, very helpful suggestions on what online ads should do, along with some very practical do’s and don’ts.

Online ads should accomplish 3 goals:

• Drive brand awareness
• Communicate cause message & reason to donate
• Contain a clear call to action

A multi-channel campaign should adhere to 3 standards:

• The multi-channel marketing components must be integrated
• Use only marketing channels with clear performance measurements
• Prior philanthropic behavior is the best indicator of future philanthropic behavior.

BEST PRACTICES—DO’s and DON’Ts

• Do: Use strong brand reinforcement with prominent brand name display – CLEAR

• Do Not: Use intrigue in an effort to get people to click thru

• Do: Keep the message simple, with an obvious call to action – URGENCY

• Do Not: Promote social media or other intermediary steps to your desired outcome

• Do: Use imagery to compliment your effort to reinforce your brand – USE EMOTION

• Do Not: Use imagery that does not involve a living person or animal

• Do: Use consistent creative across all landing pages and off-line media – CONSISTENCY

• Do Not: Treat online advertising as a stand-alone channel, it exists to reinforce your brand

• Do: Make the donation form and landing page as simple as possible – SIMPLICITY

• Do Not: Drive click thrus to your homepage or page other than the donation page

• Do: Use rich media, flash, and color to attract attention – BOLD

• Do Not: Use white as the background for your online ads

Are you experimenting with the use of web advertising to boost returns on channels like direct mail?  Care to share your experience?

Roger