CBA Integrated Direct Response Fundraising
in•te•grate
1. to combine (one thing) with another so that they become a whole
CBA believes that successful fundraising involves integrating the most important forms of communication — direct mail, telemarketing, email and the Internet — to maximize response and increase retention.
This involves:
- Creating fundraising materials and content that share a common message and design.
- Scheduling delivery and launch of all components to achieve maximum impact.
- Using member data to communicate with prospects and donors personally and effectively.
Contributors want to interact with organizations on their own terms: where, when and how often. But, they are ultimately limited by the options that are given to them. So we must make all possible options available. We want to give them freedom to do anything online that they can do offline via direct mail and other means. It can be efficient and costeffective.
Impact of Integrated Marketing
By the year 2010, it’s expected that nearly 30% of all gifts will be made online. But direct mail isn’t going away any time soon. It still has the highest response rates and it’s the best way to target segments within the marketplace.
By integrating efforts with cross-media support, direct mail response improves. When a direct mail appeal is followed by an email and donors find links online that are related to a promotion they’ve seen in the mail and their inboxes, the message becomes even stronger.
Email and online appeals are extremely low cost and can be edited with ease, and what’s learned through testing is easy and fast to implement. Test results can be read in real time.
How it all works
Traditional direct mail, the most vital component of your direct marketing efforts, is the vehicle through which most members will be contacted and how the majority of revenue will be raised. It arrives in your donors’, prospects’ and members’ mailboxes, bringing a timely, personalized message.
CBA uses direct mail as the primary effort in an integrated campaign — driving the overall message and design.
In order to engender brand recognition, when we create email, we edit direct mail to make it suitable for email; reducing overall length, personalizing with member data and using hyperlinks to drive recipients to specialized landing pages (donation forms). Integrated donation forms also carry the direct mail message and suggested gift amounts.
Online appeals are created to fit your organization’s website. CBA has found that online appeals bring in considerably more revenue than email — as much as three times more. But it’s how they all work together — direct mail, email and online — that has a total positive impact on direct response performance.
CBA works amicably with organizations’ web staffs to deliver online content that complements the site’s design and attracts attention, without disruption.
CBA’s Capabilities
The ubiquity of email and the Internet has spawned great technology that organizations can utilize to accomplish amazing tasks, which not long ago were considered too technically cumbersome and expensive.
As CBA has expanded its expertise in online and email marketing, we’ve mastered the best, industry-leading software tools (among them Convio and GetActive) and are proficient in a variety of web technologies. Our creativity and flexibility makes it easy for our team to adapt to whatever situations or challenges are presented to us.
Many PBS stations’ websites are powered by either Convio or GetActive. CBA has expertise in both. Our interactive team — including a former GetActive Account Manager — has years of experience creating electronic campaigns, raising hundreds of thousands of fundraising dollars for clients.
If your organization uses one of these two products — or other similar products — and has the ability to market via email and online, or if you are looking to get started with email and online marketing, CBA is ready to assist you.
CBA will partner with your organization’s web and database staff to build and deploy electronic campaigns that integrate with current direct mail and telemarketing efforts. We’ll set production schedules that revolve around direct mail dates, ensuring timely email and online promotions to generate high levels of revenue.
To learn more about CBA’s integrated marketing capabilities, contact us at (914) 761-2800 or click here to send email.