A lot of charities may not be aware that they could be sitting on rivers of gold, which right now could be a life saver.
Most charities have archived supporter data that has been put aside because they haven’t responded for some time through various channels. At Thomas Direct we pioneered the telephone reactivation strategy and recognised the opportunity to turn previous supporter lists, long forgotten, into hot responders.
Why Are Reactivation Strategies Important?
As you know, obtaining new supporters and building new lists is expensive with long payback periods.
Face-to-face is one of the most common used strategies to find new supporters, but that is being challenged in today’s Covid 19 environment and It’s often a long way down the donor journey before you start to get payback, sometimes up to two years.
With your archived supporter data there’s no acquisition cost, as you’ve already acquired it. That makes it much easier to get a return on investment from your reactivation strategies.
A lot of the people on the list have responded in the past, so we know with the right strategy some of them will respond again.
Also, we are heading into what will be a tough time for everyone, including charities. We need to look at new strategies to add to the mix for raising funds, including reactivating archived supporter data.
What Are Reactivation Strategies?
Reactivation strategies can take many forms.
The first thing we need is a strong incentive to get them active again. Then we need to decide how to market that incentive. There are three key strategies you could use:
- Digital Marketing
- Direct Mail
- Telephone
The first strategy is the cheapest but often does not provide the revenue volumes required. Direct mail cost more but can offer better results. The challenge with these strategies though is that they are both one way.
Telemarketing is the only strategy where we’re able to have a conversation with the supporter. It’s where, with a good script and an experienced telemarketer, we can connect the past supporter with your charity maybe bring them up to date with what’s happened since they last supported you all sorts of approaches are in play and reactivate them again.
We’re also able to monitor telemarketing by the hour to make sure we’re still getting a return on investment and if were not then we can stop. This means that you won’t waste money.
Telemarketing may be the biggest investment, but it’s the one that will get you a consistent return and where you have the most control and can be blended with digital and mail.
Next Step
I hope you found this information useful. We’ve helped many charities turn their archived data into rivers of gold and we’d love to see if we could do the same for you.
Please give us a call on 07 5588 288 if you like to discuss your situation and see IF and HOW we can help you.