- For the National Museum of the American Indian’s acquisition program, we ran tests in our co-controls and beat both with fairly minor tweaks. Turns out the social justice themed package did better with premiums, and in the survey version, adding a teaser to the back of the outer envelope resulted in a 20% increase in response rate and a 20% lift in revenue per thousand mailed. Again, small changes, big rewards.
- In October, we unveiled The National Parks Conservation Association’s donor acquisition control facelift – NPCA has two long-standing controls: a survey package and a member card package, both very effective and cost-efficient. But we thought we could improve on our results. Since the message of each was resonating, we wrote new copy and refreshed both designs – inexpensive changes that increased the revenue per thousand mailed by 8% for the survey and 10% for the member card. Simple, but effective.
- We also ran a test in NPCA’s renewal program. We typically send an e-renewal (R0, or Renewal Zero) before we mail R1, to give members the chance to renew early and stop the paper reminders – very effective for a conservation organization. Earlier, we’d tested adding urgency with a deadline for renewing, which produced a minor lift. In the next test, we made the deadline text more prominent by highlighting it in yellow. And we hit the bull’s-eye. The highlighted version was the winner at 99%, boosting response rate seven times and average gift by 45%. Not only was this rolled out, but it was the strongest R0 performance to date!
