The League of Women Voters has a mature prospecting program. Like many well-established direct marketing programs, it was necessary to prepare for the future marketplace and go beyond traditional trades and exchanges. Avalon designed a modeling program to increase the League’s ROI, and give it a competitive edge in the mailbox by more tightly targeting our prospective donors.

We wanted to share with you a couple more case studies from Avalon’s MAXI Award submissions – the first is a direct mail donor acquisition test, and the second a multi-channel campaign.

 

While our primary objective was to acquire new and valuable donors for our client Farm Sanctuary, it was also important to know if an acquisition audience would be more responsive to tragic or cute animal images on the carrier. The control package focused heavily on the cruelty of the factory farming system and featured a bleak image of a downed pig on the carrier. Conversely, we had had much success with an email campaign featuring a cute animal.

Here are our Top Six Testing Tips:

To continue Avalon’s 10 essential elements of direct marketing testing:

To kick off our new Best Practices section of FYI, let’s run through Avalon’s 10 essential elements of direct marketing testing, and tips for setting up a good test:

Avalon has run a number of successful tests in our marketing efforts recently, so I’d like to share a few of our best results:

 

• In an acquisition program for an environmental advocacy client, we created a new control package by borrowing from a successful online appeal to update our existing control. We designed a new, visually compelling carrier and a new lead for the letter that referenced the envelope photo. We saw a 27% lift in response and a huge increase in net per thousand – a terrific reminder that a fresh, winning prospecting package may be hiding among your non-acquisition materials…

Test, test, test – and tested we have. Each of our clients has had some interesting results this summer that have strengthened their programs.  There is one, though, that really stands out for me.

Testing has to be one of the most fascinating aspects of direct marketing—from the art of identifying and prioritizing which tests matter most, to the science of analyzing the results. Sometimes, it’s the major package overhaul that delivers a winner. More often than not, it’s the small incremental content or design tweak that succeeds in toppling a control. But whatever the nature of the test, a winner is a winner. And testing is part of the continuous learning and improvement process that makes direct marketing so dynamic and exciting.
 
At a staff meeting earlier this month, Avalon account teams shared recent client tests that beat their controls by 10% or more based on at least one performance metric. Here are some of the interesting themes noted among the “performance breakthrough” winners …