BHF: Data Pool Solution for Increased Cold Data Acquisition

The British Heart Foundation was founded in 1961 by a group of medical professionals who were concerned about the increasing death rate from cardiovascular disease. Their aim was to raise money to help fund extra research into the causes, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of heart and circulatory disease. Since then there have been vital major advances in the treatment and prevention of heart disease.

Direct mail response rates and ROI for acquisition are dropping – environmental awareness from consumers, over-use of the same lists and the availability of cheaper, more environmentally friendly on-line recruitment methods  have all played their part. Yet charities should not simply stop cold mail as a recruitment method. Not every potential supporter will be attracted by ‘new’ media channels, direct mail responders often will have better lifetime value and on-going relationships will still be partly direct mail based
Conclusion? A multi-channel approach is needed that allows charities to contact the right supporter, at the right time, with the right combination of channels.

The Challenges

BHF was finding that its donor recruitment was diverse and untrackable. As is the case with many charities, BHF was experiencing declining response rates on cold mail fundraising campaigns.

In addition, some research work showed that BHF could target a new audience – Heartland Heritage.

Given all these factors, BHF wished to step outside its existing targeting strategy and target this new group of prospects.

The solution

BHF asked Occam to design, build and implement a full prospect database solution, including an underlying targeted prospect data pool to provide BHF with:

• A single view of prospects and supporters

• The ability to append lifestyle data

• Campaign management and selection

• The ability to track responses and measure response rates

The implementation of such a solution would provide BHF with a robust and scalable  tool to support a long term acquisition strategy.

The prospect data element of the solution was individually tailored to meet BHF’s strategic requirements in the most cost-effective way. Data was purchased on an annual license usage basis, added to the database together with BHF’s existing supporter/customer base. Prospect data could then be matched against the existing supporter base and any pre-existing supporters flagged on the database, ensuring that these were not inappropriately targeted with cold acquisition mailings.

The remaining prospect pool could then be contacted and flagged on the database. Responses from the cold campaign could then be added to the database, enabling BHF to analyse who responded to each cold campaign and why. This insight is invaluable to building an understanding of supporter preferences and to building long-term supporter relationships.

Methodology

Plan
• Look at existing donors and previous campaign performance
• Analyse and build models
• Plan next campaign

Execute
• Test previous and new lists, creative designs, model(s), knowledge based
selections, control groups

Plan Again
• Build understanding continuously to improve results

Execute Again
• In an ever changing market what you do must continuously evolve and adapt

The Strategy

Occam’s strategy was to use the best performing model as the base, enhancing as new responders are identified after each campaign.

At the same time, to test other models, re-using any that outperform the base model and then enhancing them with new responders on a campaign by campaign basis.

Additionally, BHF has used the prospect pool as a source of names to support a non prospect pool model: Heartlands Heritage. This is a postcode based model and can easily be used to select high volumes of names from the 18 million usable names available in the prospect pool.

This can now be directly compared to core prospect pool models to ensure that the best performing models are always used.

Key Benefits

New Supporter Audiences
The provision of this strategically targeted prospect pool solution allows BHF to identify new, untapped sources of potential donors, thereby enabling the charity to widen the scope of acquisition targets.

Invaluable Supporter Insight
The solution enabled BHF to build a detailed understanding of individuals who are responsive to direct mail and those that preferred to be contacted in other ways. A ‘virtuous cycle’ of continuous learning and iterative improvement was implemented that would inform subsequent campaigns, allowing BHF to build a better long-term targeting strategy based on real supporter insight, as well as building stronger individual supporter relationships.

Reduced costs
Don’t pay to mail the same name every time

Increased response rates
Modelling and analysis enables improved targeting

Better return on investment

Better understanding of prospects and testing

Flexibility of communications

Reduced end-to-end process time

Results

At the time of writing, BHF has used the new prospect pool solution in 4 cold campaigns, 3 of which were ‘cash asks’ and one of which included a test campaign for committed givers. Some 691,000 names have been selected from the prospect pool for mailing.

Response Rates

Response rates closely matched the expected average response rate for a cold campaign. The high mailing volumes enabled by the prospect pool meant that it could be used to replace under
performing cold lists and raise the overall campaign response rates.

BHF is now able to understand:

The optimum number of times to contact a prospect before they will respond

What offer – or combination of offers – is best suited to each prospect

What creative/offer/channel works best – and for whom

The ‘triggers’ to successfully contacting prospects, i.e.
- Life stages
- Moving
- Purchases
All valuable insight that enables BHF to stay ahead of other charities that are not maximizing the insight in their supporter data management infrastructure.