Cultivating channel-loyal donors

Opportunity

Analyzing donor behavior across various channels, we discovered a striking insight: approximately 97 percent of donors are channel loyal. This means donors who contribute via Facebook will most likely continue giving through Facebook. This behavior aligns with our everyday habits, such as how we prefer to pay bills or engage with media.

Despite the surge in online donor engagement, mature organizations have hesitated to reduce mailings to online donors, fearing it would lead to a drop in donations. The prevailing belief was that fewer mailings to online donors would result in fewer contributions. Our hypothesis, rooted in the observation of channel loyalty, was that we could cut mailings to online donors by 50 percent without compromising donor retention, while simultaneously boosting overall net revenue. We put this theory to the test, and our results confirmed it: reducing mailings by half for online-responsive donors did not affect donor retention and value. Moreover, it increased net revenue, enabling reinvestment in reaching donors through their preferred channels.

Study

Masterworks conducted a longitudinal study for one of the nation’s largest Christian nonprofits. We selected donors who had made at least one online donation in the past 24 months and had not donated via direct mail within that same period. We employed a stratified representative sample based on their value scores from MRI — our proprietary, predictive modeling engine — over the course of 8 mailings in four months. For the test, we excluded online donors from 6 of the 8 mailings.

Impact

The results were compelling: there was no significant difference in donor value or retention, and net revenue saw a 6% increase, amounting to over $33,000 in savings on postage and printing. The organization adopted a strategy to reduce direct mail by 50% for online donors, leading to a conservative estimate of over $150,000 in annual savings. These savings are expected to grow as more donors transition to online giving. Those savings have been reinvested into the Always On digital media program to further their digital growth.