How Measuring Individual Channels in Your Integrated Campaign Can Be Dangerous
	Posted by Guest Blogger at Aug 16, 2012 07:02 AM CDT

Guest blogger Margaux Smith is a copywriter at the London fundraising agency, Bluefrog.

We’ve talked before on this blog about the importance of measuring the bottom line results when you’re looking at integrated fundraising campaigns, and this message was strongly reinforced during my recent talk with Rick Christ, Vice President of Online Fundraising at Amergent.

Integration can come in different forms. We commonly think of it as using one channel to uplift the results of an existing channel. For example, sending an email immediately before a direct mail appeal drops that tells the donor to expect a very important letter in the mail. The email doesn’t have an ask in itself, but uplifts the open rate of the appeal significantly, and drives the response rate up an average of 10-20%. Or, sending out a legacy mailing to prospective donors and following up with a phone call that lifts pledge rates.

These channel add-ons are easier to measure because you’re still largely looking at the results of the main appeal. But charities can get into trouble when they’re running larger campaigns that use different channels to raise funds separately. You have to keep in mind that today’s donors don’t always respond in the way you expect, but it doesn’t mean your channels are ineffective.

Rick shared his story of caution. “A few years ago, a prospective client called up and said, ‘We’ve noticed our DRTV ads are producing fewer and fewer gifts, and yet our website is bringing in more and more. So we’re thinking of taking some money out of DRTV and investing it online.’

“I asked how much they planned to shift and they said it might be a quarter of a million dollars. So of course, I cautioned them to wait. ‘Let us study where this web traffic is coming from,’ I told them. But they didn’t. They cut a large amount from their DRTV budget, and guess what –- the web stopped looking so good. Their website was the response device donors were using after viewing the TV ads. And they said, ‘But we don’t even put the website in our TV ads. It’s our 1-800 phone number that’s shown.’ Well that’s fine, but people aren’t so dumb that they can’t find you online. Donors these days respond in the way that feels most comfortable for them and increasingly, that’s online.

“The danger in measuring channel by channel is, let’s say you spent an extra 5% on social media, but find the increase in your social media fundraising was only 1%. So the amount of money that came in was only 20% of what you spent in social media. The immediate indication would be, well that was a loser. But you have to look at what came in online, in the mail and over the phone to see if they went up. Your channels may be reinforcing each other, which is hard to measure without looking at the big picture. That’s why measuring the bottom line becomes so important when you integrate your fundraising.”