Getting supporters active

3 steps to getting (and keeping)

supporters active

Katie Bannister – katie.bannister@which.co.uk Shaun Roberts – shaun.roberts@which.co.uk

Wouldn’t it be nice if supporters were like Pluto?• Ready to play• Wanting to please• Unconditional love• Dependent on you• World revolves

around you

And the key to engaging Pluto…

But most supporters are more like this…• Busy lives –

families, friends, work, etc

• Many different priorities

• On lists for multiple organisations

• Lots of distractions

And a tennis ball won’t do the job…

What getting engagement right can mean…

April - June July - September October - December January - March0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

700000

800000

900000

1000000

Total supportersSupporter actions

Step 1 Understand and segment

your audience

What can your data tell you?

• Somewhere on everyone’s database(s) will be - – When a supporter joined– What actions they’ve

taken (petition signs/donations/etc)

– Email open rate– Email click rate

• There may well be a lot more -– Surveys completed– Types of campaigns

supported– Events attended– Postcodes (can then use

to append other info)– Demographic information

At Which we’ve created these basic segments

Hot active4+ actions in a quarter or >8 in year

Warm activeAn action in previous 12 months

Cold activeNo actions in previous 12 months, have opened email

Supporters with no email opens in 12 months are no longer inactive and will be moved to a ‘Dormant’ segment (where reactivation efforts will take place)

Research your audience

• At Which? we conduct our own in-house (free!) surveys, polls and focus groups– Using our emails– Using our landing pages– Using Survey Monkey– Using our Community website

Behavioural segmentation - PopulusValue honesty above all elseAre motivated to tackle injusticeGet frustrated when people are treated unfairlyThink consumers need to stand up to big business

Fam

ily fi

rst (

Jere

my) • Strong

opinions• Low level of

trust in the system to deliver

• Better deal for my and my family

• Optimistic about future

Self

suffi

cien

t (Ro

n) • Look after themselves

• Financial security top goal

• Not into campaigns

• Pick and choose where they get involved

Com

mun

ity g

lue

(Em

ily) • Caring and

concerned• Hands on

making things better

• Practical solutions, dislike bureaucracy

• Worried about their and others’ future Pr

ogre

ssiv

e w

arrio

rs (L

isa) • Passionate

with strong opinions

• Progressive, liberal, see the big picture

• Happy with own lives, want to help others

• Worried about our future

Prob

lem

solv

ers (

Char

lie) • Take

leadership roles

• Professional, logical – want to fix things for others

• Trusting of institutions

• Optimistic about future

What kind of characters have you got?

• What do your supporters look like?

• Do they all have the same motivations?

• What would you like to know more about?

• What can we find out to improve the supporter expeerience?

Step 2Test and implement creative ideas using

what we’ve learned

Starting with welcome journeys

Does yourWelcome Journey have a purpose?

A specific objective?

Our main purpose is to avoid the hardest part of my job…

Dormant supporters

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

Dormant1 action only

Welcome Journey, Welcome Journey, Welcome Journey

Just take a moment to look at the 8% of list that are Dormant (no opens in 12 months)

Supporters must take their 2nd action on our welcome journey

…then we got to keep the momentum going!

Objective became clear…

Prepare for the stats!

WJ GroupPeople on the Welcome Journey (email every 4 days)

2 test groups

Control GroupPeople getting the regular sends (email about every 5 days)

The results

120% increase over the Control Group

WJ

Control

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

22%

10%

Control group had 4 chances to take an actionWJ Group had 6 chances to take an action

Once the Welcome journey was over we looked at the % that had taken a 2nd action

% of group who took a 2nd action

Petitions, polls, survey, quiz- find what works

Now… refining what works

Click to open 47.5%

63% complete survey

Old email 5 New email 5

Click to open 21.4%

Now you have their attention…

Keep it going… a new type of ask

“Hi there

Here is the issue. We want to know what you think. Please take the survey.

Types of asks and daisy chainingTraditional Ask

Email Survey Completion

Types of asks and daisy chainingNew Ask

“Hi there

Here is the issue – what do you think?

Email Poll Survey Completion

The new ask – Step 1Poll Email

The new ask – Step 2Survey Page

The new ask – Step 3Thank you Page

Types of asks and daisy chaining

The proof is in the numbers. Two different emails to similar groups of people

Traditional ask

Email click through

45%

Completed survey

80%

Openers then

completing

36%

New askEmail click

through

75%

Completed survey

74%

Openers then

completing

56%

Improving the new ask! The Train email

Personalising actions

Good news for Virgin Trains users.But we needed to find a way to tell the non VT users

Click to open at 70%(remember this is train talk, not easy to get actions)

Be our guest – create your welcome journey

• Create a welcome journey for one of your organisations

• What will the key elements be?

• How will you get a new supporter to engage?

Step 3Learn and improve

No one gets it all right first time• At Which? we got a

company to analyse all our old data for patterns of supporter behaviour – result there were no patterns!

– But this information helped close off an approach to supporters that wouldn’t have worked

• Take the Change.org approach – A Festival of Failure

Review and evaluate regularly - WJ survey

• WJ Ver1: Step 3 (take our survey ask)• 29% open rate

• 28% click to open rate• 50% completion rate• For every 1000 supporters,

receiving email, an average of just 42 completed the survey • Ver2: Step 1 (poll ask

with survey landing page)• 35% open rate • 59% click to open rate• 64% completion rate• For every 1000 supporters,

receiving email, an average of 128 complete the survey

An increase of over 300% of the number of people completing our WJ survey

LEARNING FROMOUR FIRST WELCOME JOURNEY

Test, test, test – dramatic differences!

24.9% click

through

62.7% click

through

For every 10,000 people that open your email, that’s an extra 3,780 people taking the action

And finally…

Here’s why you should love this…

Engagement is an adventure – you don’t quite know at the start where it will take you. It requires a curious and open mind, creativity, a willingness to try things out and a strong focus on results. If you get it right, the rewards are huge.

How will your boss feel if…

…you could double the number of people

arriving at a donate or volunteer page?

An engagement approach can deliver this with a relatively low cost/risk.

All it takes is a willingness to try!

Questions?

Katie Bannister - katie.bannister@which.co.uk

Shaun Roberts - shaun.roberts@which.co.uk

We’re all ears