8 Qs on donor recruitment through media ads

As it is now a year on, and you will no doubt have spent your budget and tracked the results, could you share what you did and how well it worked to help other users of the forum?

Cheers

2. Which magazines/newspapers have a policy of offering sizeable charity discounts or last-minute knockdown (or free) offers on ad space?
Use a media buyer like Total Media Direct - Maddie is very helpful

3. Anyone had any joy in local newspapers?
Never

4. Inserts vs. ad space? Which one tends to perform best?
Inserts are better for low-value high volume, press for high value low volume

5. Is it better to spread ads throughout the year or block book series of ads in particular seasons?
The latter - but a big story can wipe you out!

7. What works best as a response mechanism - a cut-out form to be returned to charity, or a tel number/web address for enquirers?
In emergency appeals upwards of 30% of response comes through the web. Talk to Maddie.

8. What kind of creative works best for donor recruitment? Is it best to stick to tried and tested formulae or be a little innovative?
Long copy works best - imagine a direct mail appeal on the page.

I did a talk about this at the IOF last year - find it at:
[url]www.nationalconvention.org.uk/programme.php?SessionID=15[/url]

Aye, Alastair

[quote]James - thank you so much for taking the time to reply to all this! Above and beyond the call of duty. + some really good suggestions. I'll let you know how we get on.[/quote]
Now all I have to do is resist the temptation to figure out justification for the completely opposite answers... Good luck, and I'd be very interested to hear how it goes!

James - thank you so much for taking the time to reply to all this! Above and beyond the call of duty. + some really good suggestions. I'll let you know how we get on.

[quote]1. Which MAGAZINES might generate good response rates for charity recruitment ads (theme: children/African development)? Are there any that are really worth splashing out on?
[/quote]

This is almost certainly a question for someone with mounds of prior data - if you've not included questions on magazine reading in a moderately recent membership survey, your guess is as good as anyone's. If I had to gamble, I'd do an office survey of what people read, and find out what hasn't had a similar ad in the past few months. This will either find you something that's read by like-minded people and is inexplicably neglected, or you'll eventually figure out why all the other charities were avoiding it...

[quote]2. Which magazines/newspapers have a policy of offering sizeable charity discounts or last-minute knockdown (or free) offers on ad space?
[/quote]

As I mentioned in the other post, I'd expect this to be the sort of thing people tend to keep to themselves. But it's potentially all of them: if you're phoning up a magazine about a rate card and discounts, I'd check the deadline for their next three or four issues and phone up a day or two beforehand. If the choice is between having a blank space, taking a pittance from you, or tweaking the layout and paying someone for 500 words, the pittance is going to look tempting to most publishers.

[quote]3. Anyone had any joy in local newspapers?
[/quote]

Not a clue, but I suspect it varies hugely with the demographic.

[quote]4. Inserts vs. ad space? Which one tends to perform best?
[/quote]

Particularly with your cause, I'd say ad space. First, inserts are seen, rightly or wrongly, as expensive and potentially more dubious (e.g. assorted scratch card schemes) than ad space. Second, ad space pretty much enforces a focus on the picture and the four or five words that people will read before deciding whether to go any further. Buying ad space forces you away from all the arguments over paper size, gummings and perforations that are irrelevant to 90%+ of the people who'll read any charity ad.

[quote]5. Is it better to spread ads throughout the year or block book series of ads in particular seasons?
[/quote]

Pass. But I'd expect the key factor in this not to be response rate, but how quickly the budget for this is released, and how fast you're going to be able to monitor the response, tweak the design/layout/wording if necessary. Ultimately, given the figures you were taking about, I'd rather spend early and get people signed up than wait till later in the year to and put a lot of effort into getting a 10% response rate increase: the numbers don't add up on that, I think.

[quote]6. Is there much of a difference in response rates between mono and colour?[/quote]

Yes, and in both directions, unfortunately. But with your cause, I'd expect a simple, straightforward black and white ad to convey honesty, seriousness, and a degree of frugality that never hurts to get across!

[quote]7. What works best as a response mechanism - a cut-out form to be returned to charity, or a tel number/web address for enquirers?[/quote]

Both, if at all possible. Let people decide how they want to give: even if they don't want to ask any questions, the phone number will be a marker that you're willling to give them some informaton for their money! If it's got to be one or the other, any paper/magazine should be able to give you demographic information about their readers, incuding things like web access. But I'd encourage you to give people as many routes to sign up as possible, and make it as easy as possible (freepost and so on) - it has a dramatic effect on response rates.

[quote]8. What kind of creative works best for donor recruitment? Is it best to stick to tried and tested formulae or be a little innovative? [/quote]

The cheating answer is "both". I tend to worry when organisations go for innovative before they've done the tried and tested stuff properly, but if you can't add something to an old formula that's unique to your cause, it's not an encouraging sign. Certainly all the other adverts, commercial and otherwise, will be trying to do something new, but I tend to find that the big challenge is distilling it down to the 4-5 words I mentioned earlier. After that, as long as things are well-written, you've at least got something to start with.

On this subject, one thing I've always found useful (and colleagues/clients have hated) is to get a plain postcard, and say (in this case) "write what people are going to get for their money on the back of this". Give people 5-10 minutes. Then tear the postcard neatly in half, and take it down to one minute. Repeat until there's room for one word, and the original long version is lost forever. There's a good chance that there'll be some good material in the last three or four pieces. And if there isn't, you've at least got the look on people's faces when you tore their first draft in half...

James