Written by Fri, 01/25/2019 - 15:30
In 2018, The London Business School brought direct mail into its fundraising marketing mix – more than two years after the school had dropped the offline marketing channel because of lacklustre results.
But then, Hamish Stewart joined LBS. As former head of Alumni Fundraising at UCL, a longstanding client of Formara, Hamish knew first-hand about the potential of personalised direct mail to achieve better fundraising results than through email alone. Having previously worked with Formara on direct mail campaigns with impressive results, he was now keen to give this offline marketing channel another chance at LBS. Integrating direct mail with the school’s event and email campaigns was an opportunity to make the LBS audience feel more valued and offer more choice on how they interact with the school.
“LBS already does a considerable amount of fundraising through events and stand-alone email campaigns. We also have dedicated fundraising managers who communicate with alumni on a regular basis, via phone and meetings,” Hamish explains. “In addition, we have a number of volunteers who are alumni themselves as well as soon-to-be graduates, who all help us raise donations.” Direct mail however had in the past “not worked” due to poorly executed campaigns with little personalisation and generic content that had limited relevance to the recipient, he says. LBS had therefore scrapped direct mail in favour of email newsletters.
This changed in June 2018, when the school started working with Formara and went live with its first direct mail campaign. The goal l was simple: Increase average and median donations from alumni. “The campaigns had highly personalised aspects and tailored content for each recipient, to increase the individual appeal,” Hamish says. With Formara’s extensive knowledge of personalisation and based on information that LBS had provided us with, we created personalised letters for each recipient.
The campaign started with an email to the around 27,000 alumni, followed by a reminder email seven days later. After that, recipients who had not engaged with the emails, and had verified postal addresses, received their personalised direct mail letter.
Average Gifts And Median Gifts Were Above Forecasts
While the response rates were below Hamish’s initial forecasts, he determined that the results were in line with the LBS audience. He says average gifts and median gifts were above forecasts and for every pound the university has spent, it generated revenue of £1.57.
Working with LBS, Formara created a highly targeted and relevant direct mail campaign with complex variable data design, personalisation, and database management. We achieved significant postal discounts for not only UK but also overseas mailings.
In October, the school went live with its second campaign which is on-going. So far, Hamish says, the results are similar to the June campaign.
Direct Mail Has Great Potential To Help Us Increase Donations
“We think direct mail has a great potential to generate more returns in future. We are therefore keen to push the boundaries of direct mail as a marketing channel further.” he says.
It looks like direct mail will remain an important marketing channel for LBS fundraising.