113. SPN (Some Personal News)
Digital tactics -> DM to fuel the Donor Lifecycle this EOY; Is Principal Media Principled? and plenty of nonprofit Jobs
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Game changer? It is for me!
In this week’s SPN:
3 tactics from Digital that can fuel the Donor Lifecycle in Direct Mail this EOY
Is Principal Media Principled? Guidelines to embrace it or not
Transparency and accountability are paramount in media transactions
Jobs that took my fancy this week
Figure Out Your Hard Lines
Do you know if Principal Media has been part of your Org’s paid media activity in the past year?
I recently met with a media agency who is bulk buying media, taking ownership of that inventory and then reselling it to their nonprofit clients at a time in the future... The norm is an agency buys media on a need-per-campaign basis.
It’s a practice known as Principal-based trading or Principal Media. Though it’s been around for years it hasn’t been on my radar.
I don’t presume many Org’s are aware of its prevalence or what it could mean for them, so let’s get a deeper understanding and then I’ve shared some recommendations.
Principal-based media buying occurs when agencies buy inventory from media owners at bulk rates and then resell it to you at a markup.
Agencies become the owners or vendors of the media, rather than acting as independent agents for you and me/our Org’s.
The ANA’s latest report published in May “The Acceleration of Principal Media” shared the following:
Less than 50% of the hundreds of marketers surveyed were familiar with the practice.
About one-quarter (27%) of respondents noted Principal Media was part of an agency pitch in the last year.
What’s been your experience of Principal Media?
For some agencies, this Principal media-buying play has produced media cost savings for their nonprofit clients of up to 15%. You need to weigh up the potential cost savings with the worry that ads populate in places that aren’t the best fit.
The biggest issue is likely the potential conflict of interest.
Is your agency recommending X media because it’s the best media for you (the client) or are they recommending it because it’s the best media for the agency that they make the most money on?
Org’s certainly have the right to audit where their ads run and the quality of the buy. Few do. If you don’t know where your brand is showing up in the world, that’s a risk - some might even say a dereliction of duty.
On the flip side the factors that have encouraged the existence of Principal Media seem persistent and strong. There’s downward pressure on spend, higher expectations on ROAS, deterioration of payment terms and an overall focus on “driving media costs down.”
Gartner recently published a survey of marketing leaders, which showed that available marketing budgets as a share of revenue had fallen to a post-pandemic low and budget being invested into agency work is shrinking.
The Go-Forward
Work with your agencies to ensure you understand what they deem acceptable for their media plans, and how well that sits with you.
If principal-based buying benefits agencies, that doesn’t necessarily mean it hurts you. Generally everyone should be looking to maximize everyone’s business - if you decide that your agency is doing good work and it’s a partnership more than transactional vendor-type dynamic, then I’d be trying to figure out what makes most sense for us all to win together.
A candid conversation with your agency to figure out where their hard lines are is going to allow you to set expectations and hold hands. Or not. Both outcomes are ok. Inaction is not.
How to Get There
1. Keep agency contracts up to date, with clear language that addresses Principal Media.
2. Agencies should be required to provide a clear business case detailing why Principal Media is recommended and to ensure consistency with your Org’s media strategy and buying guidelines.
3. Ask for options that do not include the use of Principal Media.
4. Develop a clear internal approval process for the use of Principal Media.
5. Require that Principal Media be clearly identified on media flowcharts.
6. Request the same proof of performance metrics and access to transaction data for both principal and agent-based media buys.
While Principal Media can provide the benefit of cost savings, pursue such tactics with your eyes wide open.
Explore: Nonprofit Tools Landscape (link)
Jobs & Opps 🛠️
Children's Miracle Network Hospitals: Social Media Manager
WaterAid: Global Head of Campaigns (UK, Sweden or US-based $126,500 - $148,637)
Juilliard: Senior Director of Principal and Major Gifts ($225,000 to $250,000)
Make-A-Wish: Manager, Donor Analytics ($58,934 - $72,800)
UNICEF: Digital Marketing Communication, Eastern & Southern Africa Regional Office, Nairobi (Consulting)
Wikimedia Foundation: Senior Manager, Fundraising Data & Analytics ($144,597 - $223,659)
National Geographic: Senior Manager, Principal Gifts ($116,800 - $123,000)
African Parks Foundation of America: Senior Conservation Funding Manager
NYC Public Schools: Chief Comms Officer ($222,972+)
Cause Leadership Inc.: VP, Philanthropy Second Harvest ($160,000 - $180,000)
Fund for Public Health NYC: Chief Development Officer ($190,000 – $210,000)
HIAS: VP, Individual Giving & Revenue Operations ($180,000.00 - $225,000)
Charity Water: The Experience Lab Senior Manager
Direct Mail at End of Year
Every few months in SPN I get tactical and talk about the queen of all fundraising channels – Direct Mail.
Despite consistently declining revenue – the most common number I find is (-14%) in the last year in the US – it remains a highly converting channel that won’t go away anytime soon.
Not in 2024, at least. With political campaigns causing Email and SMS inbox overload, Direct Mail can and should to play a critical role in EOY fundraising. Check out SPN #30 for more DM thoughts around its role, attribution, audience considerations, and creative test ideas.
Here are 3 practical ideas from Digital that can be applied in Direct Mail and fuel the Donor Lifecycle.
1. Acquiring new first donation donors – “Direct Mail look-alikes.”
Look-alike is traditionally a digital-first targeting mechanism. It’s based on behind-the-scenes descriptors that Google or Meta has about your Org’s donors.
Technically the same logic can be recreated for Direct Mail by enriching the donor data in your CRM and acquiring a CDP with look-alike functionality or building a data segmentation model in-house. BUT that’s a complex, expensive, and time-consuming process!
Instead, leverage the pre-existing digital look-alike algo’s you already have, albeit with some limitations.
Create a traditional digital look-alike of your donors, ideally in Google Ads or your programmatic platform, or use the audience already working in the digital fundraising efforts.
SPN Tip: I usually create several look-alikes by breaking them down into four quartiles by average donation value, specific cause they donated to, time since the most recent gift (<30 days, 30-60, 60-90, 90+), and one-time versus monthly donors. Aim to have a total of ~ 10 best-performing look-alike segments.
SPN Tip: To use Direct Mail as an expansion channel, create look-alikes only of donors who donated digitally. Exclude the ones who contributed via DM in Google Analytics, using “vanity” LPs or QR code landing pages as criteria.
Choose a large Direct Mail list provider that also offers identity resolution services - for example, Acxiom or Experian - and get the tagging guide on implementing their pixel as an impression tag in your programmatic platform. An impression tag is a cookie that fires with each impression. Since Google dropped its plans to deprecate third-party cookies, these solutions are now going to remain viable for the foreseeable future.
SPN Tip: Acxiom, Experian, and some of their competitors also offer to build their look-alike list building service off your Org’s CRM data. These usually work worse than Google’s or Meta’s in digital fundraising campaigns and offer far less insight into donor profiles – so I’ve no idea why they’d work better for Direct Mail!
Run a one-time campaign to “tag” the created look-alikes with just one impression, limiting the frequency and not applying other targeting options.
Then work with Acxiom/another provider to convert the acquired impression tag data into a list of addresses for direct mail.
The cost of one impression in digital is negligible. Assuming a CPM of ~$3 with no other targeting applied, it’d cost $3,000 to “tag” 1M of prospective donors - far cheaper than any other way of creating a look-alike for DM use.
It also allows you to scale your DM campaigns into a great prospecting channel with far better targeting than intent data.
Meta doesn’t allow external impression pixels, so its algorithm can’t be used for this use case. Instead, tag Meta look-alike users when they click through to the website but don’t donate via click tracker for future DM retargeting.
Convert one-time donors to second-time and monthly donors: Use Email to validate Direct Mail creative beforehand.
Creative is by far the most impactful aspect of any Direct Mail activation. Yet, the cost of production is still far more significant than for email, and the frequency is much lower, prohibiting testing.
Create a random holdout representing 5-10% of your one-time donors.
Convert your DM concepts into HTML5 emails and add them to the sequence for this holdout group, keeping the rest of the sequence the same.
SPN Tip: DM assets usually differ from email mockups – stick with it and prioritize recreating the DM experience over following Email best practices. The possible negative impact of one less appealing email sent to 10% of donors will be compensated for by an improved performance in Direct Mail.
Implement heatmap tracking in addition to the standard Open and Click-through rates and A/B test your DM creative assets. Keep the total number of assets tested under 10 and serve each to at least 1% of donors.
SPN Tip: Most platforms include only the “click heatmap” functionality, not allowing for email “attention” heatmaps. If you only have one DM concept and can’t do A/B testing, create an actual landing page instead of an email creative.
Increase the LTV of monthly donors - personalized “donation achievement” assets.
Similar to email, DM can be highly personalized (more than just adding a donor's first name to the asset).
My favorite tactic is to send personalized “donation achievement” reports at some point in October - ahead of the EOY fundraising season - highlighting a specific donor’s impact on our mission over the last ten months, with no ask for a subsequent donation.
SPN Tip: To practically templatize such assets, the number of dynamic fields has to be limited. At UNICEF, we had a template like this per donation cause (Education, Health, Protection) - each with several “impact options” (gallons of water, emergency response vehicles, number of vaccines). Then, every individual asset outlined how many of those a particular Jane Doe helped us acquire.
SPN Tip: You can also divide this into High-Value (e.g., >$5,000) audiences, First-Year, and “Other” donors. The first group’s assets should be based on their total contributions throughout the years instead of the last 10 months. The First-Year donors should receive a special “thank you for becoming part of the mission” paragraph upfront.
Bonus: A couple of fab lifecycle DM creative ideas from my screenshot library.
WWF used the below “candle” campaign for the High-Value donors in light of the Earth Hour campaign. It combined a tangible asset and memorable message to align with their mission:
Greenerprinter (and others of this ilk): For any Org particularly with a climate-first message, using sustainable paper in the asset itself is a super way to leverage DM, stay true to the mission, and emphasize the core message.
St. Jude took the use of user-generated content to the next level. If your Org works with children or has other assets from impact sites that can be used publicly, it’s going to make for much better “thank you” card to a donors than any other option.
That’s all for today!
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Now onto the interesting stuff!
Reads From My Week
Taco Bell CMO Reveals Why Gen Z Is Flocking to the Brand’s Retirement Community (AdWeek)
BCG weigh in with advice on what to do about cookies (BCG)
Can Snapchat’s Ad Business Ever Scale to Rival Meta, YouTube or TikTok? (Variety)
Meta moves chatbot focus to new AI Studio, which lets creators make their own. (Verge)
Meta’s Revenue Popped 22% YOY In Q2 – And It’s Spending That Moolah On AI (Briefly)
Antoine Arnault on luxury leadership, LVMH’s Olympic partnership (Jing Daily)
YouTube is underrated - a huge part of the future of television (The New Consumer)
Chromecast is dead. Meet Google TV Streamer - more chess moves in TV from Google (TechCrunch)
How Going to the Movies Is Changing, in Charts (WSJ)
Man vs. machine: DeepMind’s new robot serves up a table tennis triumph (ARS Technica)