Five things I wouldn’t have guessed about lead conversion at the start of the year.

When I last wrote about online lead conversion in January, I was coming off what seemed like an incredibly steep learning curve.  At that point I expected a levelling off of my understanding, but if anything we’re discovering more new things and more often. Some of these are obviously just further nuance to a general idea, but others are things that I would not have imagined this time last year.  This then, is a run-down of some of the most important things that have come up since then and some of the ways we’re dealing with them.

Lead source plays a significant role in retention

As a dialogue fundraiser I always assumed that the influence of the lead source would be tiny compared to the influence of the other systems.  If you consider that you’ll convert around 6% of contacted leads (I’m talking about surveys here) to regular givers, you’d expect the quality to be driven by the conversation with them rather than the criteria of initial selection.  However we’ve seen that different lead sources have a significantly better, or worse retention rate.  When comparing across all our different phone suppliers we’re seeing a difference of up to 5% on second donation. That’s a substantial  amount and will make a noticable difference to ROI to even medium term ROI.

Still not eveyone is uploading data on a daily basis

The recency with which someone has taken an action, be it a survey response or a petition ask is directly relevant to how likely they are to convert. More than one fundraising phone room looking to take on live uploads in six months’ time it seems unlikely anyone will be looking at weekly uploads. .

Older data has value too

Although the biggest and easiest wins will come from the first week after someone has responded, that is not the time to throw the data in the bin.  I’ve seen some phone rooms have success with data that’s a month or two old when using it as “filler” and, assuming that you have a decent amount of volume, asking the donor via email or other inexpensive streams can produce some exciting results.

The market hasn’t finished growing

The market has matured over the last 12 months.  Penetration and conversion results have dipped marginally, but not enough to suggest the market is full. That may change with rumours that some charities with much the bigger budgets are planning on increasing their presence. However, for the moment there seems to be plenty of room for growth.

Face to Face agencies should be worried

With the Australian face-to-face market being short of quality volume (there are some great agencies, but overall quality is dropping), lead conversion is becoming a much greater part of the fundraising mix.  Not only are ROIs and donor retention significantly better but volumes much more consistent than face-to-face as well.  With F2F (anecdotally) trending in exactly the opposite direction on all those aspects you have to if anyone is going to be growing their F2F campaigns.

(There are of course F2F agencies who have moved into the lead conversion space incredibly successfully).

How are you finding online lead conversion?  What’s surprising you?

 

RG Lead Generation and Conversion 101

Probably the biggest development in Australian Regular Giving in the 2010s and certainly has been lead generation and conversion.  In fact I’m happy to blame a lot of the absence of blog posts on the effort I’ve expended on getting this to work for my organisation. (I may be happy to do that, but it’s probably not correct).  Generating warm lists of potential donors, calling them and converting them into regular donors hardly reinventing of the wheel, but the growth of lead generation sources over the last couple of years has turned it into a viable recruitment model, not just in terms of ROI, but  also in terms of volume.  Given that here are some of the basics I’ve learned about LGAC (does anyone have a snappy name for this yet?).

Lead Generation

What sources are there?

Lots.. from pre-transactional grids, to bespoke survey questions, through petition sites, onto giveaways and post transactional surveys.  There’s a lot out there.

Which source is best?

This is the most obvious question, but also the wrong one.  All sources will work to a greater or lesser extent.  The important thing is to work out the cost of acquisition including conversion.  The only real way to find out is this is to trial it.

How much should a lead cost?

About the length of a piece of string. Some are incredibly cheap, less than an Australian dollar.  Some can be over $10.

Are all leads created equal?

No, of course not  As different leads are produced in  different ways, the have different levels of engagement. If someone has opted into calling you because they started filling out a survey because they wanted to win a car, half way through that survey they are given 5 different charities to opt into and you’re one of the three they tick, they won’t have made the same amount of investment in opting in as someone who’s seen a petition related to the cause your organisation works, signed it then seen an opportunity to opt in to hear from you. That level of emotional investment during the lead recruitment will be a big part of how the lead performs later on.

How much incorrect data should I expect?

Again it depends on the lead source. If it’s expensive data then you should expect them to have systems of checks and balances that clean the data before you see it.  If it’s cheap as chips then don’t be surprised if you call centre is going to report a high number of wrong numbers or people named Seymour Butts.

Lead Conversion

How soon should the lead be called?

I’m yet to find too short a time.  It’s pretty much accepted that the leads decay incredibly quickly.

What is decay?

Decay is the idea that the longer the amount of time from when the donor opting in to be being called until you actually getting on the phone, the less likely they are to become a donor.

Why do leads decay?

Many reasons, firstly when they opted in to be contacted they were at a peak on interest in being contacted, although it’s not a guarantee that they’ll be less interested when you ring, you will be further removed from that moment and it will be harder for them to recall that they really wanted to hear from you. Also unless the lead is exclusive to you then they will have had calls from other telemarketers even from other charities.  They’ll be less likely to pick up the phone if you’re their 50th call from a number you don’t know and they’ll be less likely to convert if they’ve signed up to another charity or decided to have solar panels fitted in the last week.

Do leads decay at different rates?

Absolutely.  They are effected by many things.  The level of engagement people had when opting in.  The number of other things that they opted in to hear about at the same time as you and a host of other things.  The best way to establish how the lead will perform is really to try them out.

How do these donors stay on board?

A very good question, there isn’t nearly as much data as F2F donors.  They appear to have slightly fewer donor driven cancellations early on than face to face but slightly more than conventional (whatever that means) telephone recruitment.

What’s the deal with capacity?

It’s important to balance the number of leads you have coming in with the amount of leads your suppliers can call quickly. This is one of the hardest things to manage day to day.  If your phone provider is flooded with more leads than they can call the leads will decay.  However at the same time you don’t want them to bring in more callers than they have work for. The only most effective way of manage it is to spread the load across a few sources and providers.  This also has the benefit of meaning you can see if different providers perform better with certain lead sources.

What are the figures I should be looking at in a providers performance?

Well I haven’t seen any proper bench marking so it’s a bit hard to judge.  I always believe in judging the provider against their own targets.  As long as the supplier’s targets provide a good cost per donor then go with them.  Look at the penetration and conversion rate the supplier expects, calculate that against the costs of buying the data and doing the calling and you’ll find your expected cost per donor.  Roughly speaking should probably be a bit cheaper than face to face.