May 11, 2011, The NonProfit Times NPT Instant Fundraising
Multi-buyers are a successful component of many organizations' direct mail acquisition programs. According to Matthew Frattura, director, client services at Paradysz in New York City, for programs that might have lost their luster, consider applying a fresh strategy to significantly elevate multi-buyer performance.
- Package Rotation: A simple change in the offer or creative delivery being mailed to multiple buyers can reignite prospects' interest. A package that differs from what they received upon initial contact is important. Remember that sometimes exclusion can be as effective as inclusion of a “freemium” to invigorate an organization's appeal.
- Segmentation: Don't view all multi-buyers as one homogenous group. Many of these prospects are further qualified by the fact that they appear on three or more of your acquisition lists. Take advantage of that factor; if overall multi-buyer performance is lagging, mail only from the 3x+ pool.
- Bucketing: The ability to isolate pockets of your multi-buyers can be invaluable. Consider ranking your acquisition lists by Gross Revenue and mail only those groups generated by lists in the rank's top half. A variation of this concept is to mail multi-buyers derived from specific list types or categories. If, for example, Subscribers don't perform as well as Buyers , don't mail multiple buyers identified solely from Subscriber lists.
- Modeling: A ZIP code model can be an effective tool for mining your multiple buyers pool. If the pool is large enough to harvest, apply the model's top performing segments to reach the best prospects. If the pool is limited, use the ZIP code model to suppress the lowest performing prospects.
- Lapsed Reactivation: Use multiple buyers to qualify deeply lapsed donors that are not currently being utilized. This includes prospects who have made recent direct mail transactions, they've previously exhibited an interest in your organization's mission, and you already own the names.