Always Be Closing

04:30 PM Jul 31, 2006

You got the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy don't walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. -Glengarry Glen Ross

In its continuing project of marketing through white papers, D.C. consulting shop M+R Strategic Services offers a new short report, "Want to Cultivate New List Members? Skip the Small Talk!"

While M+R's last big release, the eNonprofits Benchmark Study, delivered disappointingly few meaningful data points, this new memo (at a compact three pages) is well worth perusing.

The gist of it is that in playing around with the sequence of communications to new members, M+R reports a much greater openness among your list's brand-new enrollees to immediate action and (especially) donation requests. It must be allowed that it's essentially reporting on only a couple of tests consisting of pretty small panels, so hold off any grand conclusions.

But it suggests some skepticism for that "ladder-of-engagement" model that we sometimes assume for cultivating mailing list members. One of the weaknesses of the "relationship" metaphor is that it counsels caution in asking for the other party's commitment, and especially their donations. Money's a touchier subject than religion; most folks would want to be on intimate terms to ask a personal acquaintance for money.

The e-campaign expression of that is, send a welcome message when they subscribe; send periodic updates with news, wade into action alerts, identify what motivates them, and when they're fully acquainted with your work, risk an ask or two.

But relationships come in all shapes and sizes, and one needn't treat an e-mail subscriber like one treats one's next-door neighbor. They've already proven that they want a relationship with you by asking you to e-mail them! The month an organization spends "building the relationship" probably isn't experienced like that by the recipient, who's meanwhile sifting scores of bulk e-mails from other organizations, finding new issues and causes to care about, and absorbed with innumerable external personal and professional matters. By the time you get around to asking, they may have forgotten all about you.

At least, that's a just-so story that's as plausible as any other. As is often the case, the only true wisdom is knowledge of one's own ignorance.

M+R's numbers suggest -- and when you think about it, it makes sense -- that your prospect is never more open than at the moment s/he signs up.

Two figures jumped out at me most in this report:

• The huge response rate in actions taken when the call to action is sent as the welcome message. 12.5% converted is amazing. In fact, even the hair under 10% generated by the soft welcome message that also contains an action alert is impressive. This e-mail presumably hits people when they're already thinking about your issue and they're expecting to see a reply. That initial message is some valuable real-estate. So, the next logical step here is to test a fundraising ask in the welcome message, no?
• While the numbers for a fundraising ask in week one as opposed to one built-up to in week three (following other messages in the first two weeks) are slightly better, it's the lifetime giving results (the actual "lifetime" span is not defined here) for a different test panel at the bottom of page three that stand out. It'd be great to see this grid with the initial fundraising ask excluded from the last column to see very clearly what the relative propensities to give look like subsequently.

Again -- beware small sample sizes; the last has panels of only 2,600 supporters apiece.

As always, the most important lesson of eyebrow-raising reports like this -- though probably not the one M+R would most like to encourage -- is that expertise in online campaigns is a remarkably democratic field. Undiscovered nuggets of strategic innovation are just waiting to be scooped up and turned into tomorrow's conventional wisdom by anyone ready to think creatively and experiment liberally. And as always, your results may vary.

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