1. The Last Landline in a Mobile Future: Making TM Work
Olivia Gauvin, Oxfam America
Paul Vogel, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Eva Bowie, O’Brien Garrett

2. Planned Parenthood’s Applications
Monthly Giving
Conversion
Retention
Special Appeals and Renewal Campaigns
Acquisition & Lapsed Reactivation
Activist Conversion
Stewardship
Inbound Support
Make over 700,000 contacts per year
Acquire over 20,000 new or reactivated donors per year
Convert over 6,000 donors to monthly giving per year
Raise over $2.6MM per year
Partner with 6 – 8 firms each year

3. Oxfam America’s Applications
Activist Conversion
Monthly Giving
Conversion
Retention
Upgrade
Renewal Campaigns
Lapsed Reactivation
Make over 120,000 contacts per year
Reactivate 500 donors per year
Convert over 3,000 donor to monthly giving per year
Raise over $360K per year
Partner with 3 firms each year

4. 1 Source: CDC National Health Interview Survey, April, 2017
The increasing preference of mobile phones over landlines, coupled with FCC regulations, makes it more difficult and expensive to raise funds via the phone.
65.8% of US households can only be reached via mobile 1
Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requires nonprofits to gain consent (written or oral) from donors to call or text cell phones
The definition of oral consent is subject to interpretation
TCPA prohibits the use of automatic dialers to cell phones, regardless of consent, which increases the cost per call to mobile numbers
50.8% have no landline and use cellphone service exclusively
Another 15% have landlines, but don’t use them
1 Source: CDC National Health Interview Survey, April, 2017

5. So, What Do We Do About That?
Make the extra effort to capture mobile numbers
Invest a little more to append mobile numbers
Offset lower contact rates by lifting fulfillment rates
Target more effectively
Craft the message to be as meaningful as possible
Make the call one part of a multi-channel strategy
Text, Baby, text

6. Learning Outcomes
You’ll get ideas you can put to use in your own program right away, including:
Techniques to expand your monthly giving prospect universe
Ways to leverage SMS to enhance your TM efforts
Tips on strategically deploying the channel within specific donor groups
Integrating TM with other channels

7. Multi-Channel is the Secret Sauce
Case Studies

8. Oxfam America’s Activist Conversion
Phase 1: Generate Leads on Facebook
Goal: Generate 90,000 leads with an investment of $180,000 (avg. cost of $2.00/lead)
Strategy: Serve ads to Facebook members who look like OA’s activists/donors
Tested a variety of ads on topics such as Women’s March Pledge, Refugee Ban Pledge, Climate Change and World Economic Inequality (Davos)

9. Oxfam America’s Activist Conversion
Creative & Copy Matters

10. Oxfam America’s Activist Conversion
The leads generated from the Facebook ad were called the following day
Scripts were customized according to the message in the ad that generated the response
First and second asks were for monthly pledges
Third and final was for one-time gift

11. Oxfam America’s Activist Conversion
Campaign Results:
Generated 25,000 leads with phone numbers at an average cost of $2.50 each
Contacted 34% of leads via phone (heavy concentration of mobile)
Converted 1.25% of those contacted to monthly giving with a nice average pledge of $19.07
Converted 2.1% to one-time gifts at an average of $28.86
Overall cost per sustainer = $698
Three year payback

12. Oxfam America’s Activist Conversion
Ads that generated the most leads:
Post-Women’s March Pledge
Refugee Ban
Post-Election Pledge
Ads with the highest sustainer conversion rates:
Davos Income Inequality report

13. PPFA’s Donor Acquisition
New donors are acquired via TM through four different list sources
TM firm owns prospect list and mine it on our behalf
Coop: we pool our lapsed donors with those from other organizations, the firm selects best prospects (similar to any other mail coop)
Activist conversion
Multi-channel effort: Phone/Mail for Acquisition – we rent names with phone numbers and contact via mail and phone

14. PPFA’s Donor Acquisition
Some of the coops already in the plan as continuations offer the option of phone numbers for an additional cost of $25.00/M.
In January, 2016 we launched a test to measure the value of adding a TM contact to the existing mail contact.
Half of the names were only mailed, as usual. The other half were also eligible for a phone call.
The calling began about 2 weeks after the mail date, as close as possible to the in-home date.
The script was based on the mail piece.

15. PPFA’s Donor Acquisition
By adding the phone call, we were able to acquire 163% more donors at a cost per donor that was just $0.90 more than the control group.
Those additional 802 donors are already identified as TM-responsive, making them prime prospects for additional TM efforts including conversion to monthly giving.

16. PPFA’s Donor Acquisition
So far, we’ve:
Expanded the program to the Action Fund (c4)
Acquired over 6,000 multi-channel donors (~9% of total donors acquired via TM and Mail)
Typical campaign metrics:
Contact ~30% of the file
Pledge rate is normally ~5%
~22% on credit card
~60% total fulfillment rate

17. PPFA’s Donor Acquisition
Lessons Learned:
As we expanded the program, we found we were renting some of the same names month after month. While acceptable in the mail, it’s more intrusive to call as often. So we refined the monthly list orders to exclude donors previously ordered in the last three months from the phone lists.
Timing is less important than we thought. We originally tried to coordinate the call with the mail in-home date. But that became impossible as we expanded, and we saw no impact on performance.

18. PPFA’s Donor Acquisition
What’s next?
Launching a test next month to measure the value of more frequent TM appeals to the donors acquired via TM. Test group will be eligible for a TM appeal every six weeks. This is compared to the three or four contacts/year for the control group.
This month, we expanded the strategy to the long-time lapsed donors. For sometime, this pool of 1.3MM donors has been a valuable list source; optimized based on their giving activity in coops. We mail ~ 1.7MM per year. We expect to add another 100,000 TM contacts in tandem with the mail this year.

19. Calling Cell Phone Numbers
Handled differently by some vendors due to varying interpretations of TCPA
Some vendors require an additional scrub
Some require contractual indemnification to make certain contacts
Manual dialing
Manual dialing is slower, more expensive but increases results
Some firms run mobile numbers through the automated dialer one time before going to manual dialing

20. Future of SMS in Fundraising
Planned Parenthood has successfully used both broadcast and one-to-one SMS to drive advocacy campaigns
Established the Defenders program post-election
Also used to deliver health care information one-to-one
Working to overcome technical and compliance hurdles to replicate in fundraising
We’re working to overcome technical, compliance hurdles in order to replicate results in fundraising

21. Future of SMS in Fundraising
Fundraising applications on the horizon include:
Sustainer recapture
Second gift from canvass-acquired donors who don’t commit to a monthly pledge
TM pledge fulfillment
Activist conversion
Cultivation
Must be one-to-one; some TM firms are now offering support

22. Thank You! Paul Vogel paul.vogel@ppfa.org
Olivia Gauvin
Eva Bowie
Don’t forget to visit the
Solutions Showcase!
Many of the ideas discussed today are on display at the Solutions Showcase!