Donor acquisition is entering its 6^th year of a prolonged and steady slump for most organizations. And probably another year of playing the blame game —“poor lists”, “weak economy”, “increased competition” — won’t make things better.

Neither will ordering your copywriters, no matter how talented, to “beat the control” be of any help.

After 40+ years as a copywriter, I’m certain the only way to systematically “beat the control” is to stop searching for silver bullets and start addressing the THREE BIG PROBLEMS that plague almost all nonprofit testing. Problems that contribute to the same poor results year after year.

These problem — and more importantly the solutions to them — will be addressed in a Webinar on February 9^th, where we explore and explain a ground-breaking process undertaken by, among others, The American Heart Association, Production Solutions and DonorVoice. I hope you’ll join us. Registration is free for Agitator readers and you can sign up here.

First a confession. For years I’ve been as guilty as everyone else for not facing and addressing THE THREE BIG TESTING PROBLEMS.

PROBLEM #1: Incrementalism to Nowhere. Whether because of aversion to risk or simply out of habit, most testing involves tiny changes (color of envelope, one type of label vs another type, different ask strings, etc). While it’s true that small changes in response can yield meaningful changes on the top or bottom revenue line, it’s equally true that even with these, the vast majority of tests do not beat the control.

PROBLEM #2: The A/B Path to Infinity. The traditional bread and butter testing methodology is the A/B split test. Problem is that neither you nor I will live long enough, nor have enough testing budget, to find a winning combination of elements among countless possibilities. As an oversimplified example, take a direct mail package with 3 components —outer envelope, letter, reply form — and 6 variations for each component.  That’s 729 possible combinations. If an organization does 15 tests a year it will take 48 years to test all the possibilities!

And when you consider a more realistic and complex example that also includes a front or back-end premium (or both), and additional inserts or involvement devices, the possible combinations, for all practical purposes, are infinite. With A/B testing it’s the equivalent of looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

PROBLEM #3: Lack of Wisdom in Conventional Wisdom. Almost every direct response fundraiser I’ve met will acknowledge that the process of determining what components and variations get tested is anything but empirical, rigorous or efficient. Typically, the process borders on the haphazard, with an abundance of caution and conventional wisdom thrown in.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As you’ll see in the Webinar, there is a proven, math-based methodology nonprofits can use to pre-identify solid test ideas — those most likely to compete with and beat the control — and greatly reduce time and cost by not mailing test packages likely to perform poorly, and at the same time increase net revenue by increasing volume on likely winners.

The sophisticated direct mail fundraisers at The American Heart Association have been testing this methodology and have uncovered a solution to one of the most aggravating and wasteful practices in direct mail — the mailing of a test package with not one, but numerous test elements.

The practice of giving thumbs up or thumbs down to the entire package, with zero guidance as to whether individual components were well received, happens all the time. Mea culpa!

Certainly some groups may try to read the tea leaves and infer or guess — based on years of experience and past testing — why a package did poorly and what might be salvageable. But clearly, this is a flawed process fraught with layers of personal bias.

If you’re concerned with direct mail — whether in acquisition or on your house file — I hope you’ll join us for an hour in understanding more about the process, while hearing case studies from The American Heart Association and others.

Roger

P.S.  Registration in the Testing Webinar is free to Agitator Readers.  Sign up here.