Integrated E-mail Campaign

How Integrating Direct Mail with E-mail Helped One Non-profit Increase Overall Revenues by 66%

THE PROJECT

Food & Friends, a Washington, D.C.-based specialized meal delivery charity serving clients with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other severe illnesses, wanted to take its Summer Food Fund Campaign to the next level by incorporating email appeals into its direct marketing strategy.
PS Digital, Production Solutions’ Digital Services division, worked with Virginia-  based fundraising advisory firm, AEM Consulting Group, to design, test and measure Food & Friends’ first integrated fundraising campaign. The end result not only exceeded original goals and expectations, but also defined the unique strategies and best practices for future integrated campaigns tailored to Food & Friends’ audience of existing and potential supporters.

THE SITUATION

Food & Friends needed to create an effective direct marketing partnership to identify, test and implement their first- ever, integrated fundraising campaign that incorporated email marketing with its traditional direct mail appeals while increasing dollars raised and overall revenue.
Of significant note is the fact that this new print/online campaign was taking place in the middle of the summer in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area – when school is closed, Congress is out of session, and many area residents are out of town.

THE SOLUTION

Food & Friends partnered with AEM Consulting Group and Production Solutions/PS Digital to revolutionize its approach to fundraising for their Summer Food Fund Campaign.
The resulting multi-channel campaign included a notecard direct mail appeal, six emails and two direct mail appeal letter mailings.
The team employed a thoughtful and strategic approach to the integration of digital and direct mail – timing of emails, coordination of messaging, and other tactics were used to tie the campaign together across multiple touch points.  Production Solutions/PS Digital was able to test various content strategies with Food & Friends’ audience, perform a variety of email tests, understand and map the effect of the emails on direct mail, and define best practices for future Food & Friends integrated campaigns.

THE REAL BENEFITS

The results of the integrated campaign strategy and creative by PS Digital far exceeded Food & Friends’ goals and expectations with an immediate increase in total dollars raised.  The organization also gained a roadmap for future successes based on the insights yielded by Production Solutions/PS Digital’s testing strategy.
The real benefits of this PS Digital integrated campaign included:

• Unprecedented ease of process provided by Production Solutions/PS Digital.
• An increase in online giving – far surpassing goals and expectations.
• Average online gift significantly exceeding industry benchmarks for both health and other types of charities.
• Open and click-through rates significantly exceeding industry benchmarks for both health and other types of charities.
• There was a 17% lift in direct mail response and 13% lift in direct mail average gift.  As a result, revenue- per-donor-mailed increased by more than 32% over comparably timed mailings the previous year.
• Key insights into how Food & Friends’ audience of current and potential donors were responding to both online and direct mail appeals, including:
  • Which email elements drove the most traffic to the donation page;
  • Optimal placement for visual assets (like imagery and videos); and
  • Linking strategies to enhance the donor experience and remove barriers to giving.

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