IMAB's Mark Rhode Shares Advice on Integrated Marketing
	Posted by Guest Blogger at Jun 22, 2012 10:02 AM CDT

Guest blogger Margaux Smith is a copywriter at the London fundraising agency, Bluefrog. After completing a post-graduate in Fundraising at Humber College in Toronto, Canada, she moved to the UK. She believes integrated marketing has become vital for the success of non-profits, and looks forward to learning more as strategies evolve.

This week, I was fortunate enough to sit down with IMAB member, Mark Rhode, to get his views on integrated marketing for charities. As well as being a Vice President at Russ Reid, Mr. Rhode has worked in direct marketing for 30 years, both on the client and agency side, and he’s been integrating communication channels since the late ‘80s. He was kind enough to share the great advice below with the hope that it will help raise even more money for great causes.

Q: Why do you think all fundraising organizations should adopt an integrated marketing strategy?

A: Integration is no longer an option. Because of the Internet, it’s happening whether we like it or not. I think that’s something people don’t yet fully understand. When they do, they’re going to get more proactive and strategic with how they manage their marketing communication channels.
 
These days, whatever channel you use to communicate your advertising message, it’s more likely you will receive the response through a digital channel. In other words, the digital channel may not have stimulated the response, but it’s how the donor responded to the ad. It could have been direct mail, television, an event, radio, print -- it could have been any number of communication channels. The response now often comes through a landing page or website, regardless of the initial motivation.

So that, by definition, is integrated marketing -- you have more than one channel in the communication process and they all work together. I think any good marketer will now view their marketing communications process as an integrated process if they’re hoping to maximize the relationship with the donor.

Q: What are the first steps to starting an integrated marketing strategy?

A: At Russ Reid, we began by creating a digital department but we quickly dismantled it. We realized that digital was not a stand-alone entity. It was integrated with every one of our other channels because that’s how donors interact with content now. That doesn’t mean direct mail isn’t important. It’s still the backbone of most charity fundraising, but it’s now direct mail plus digital.

So we’ve integrated digital throughout the agency. Every single channel and discipline that we have -- TV, direct mail, telemarketing, event marketing, etc. -- all include digital in their departments instead of having a separate digital silo. Our landing pages, our websites, and our optimization work are all integrated with everything else we do, all the time.

Q: So for those just starting out, is pairing digital with all their other platforms enough to see a big increase in response?

A: It’s a good starting point. I was recently working with a very small non-profit that has a major opportunity coming up. They’re going to be the charity of the day on AOL, which will mean a lot of exposure in the marketplace -- all on one day. But their digital assets were not ready for the likely onslaught of attention they’re going to get.

To solve this, I helped them integrate their digital platforms with all their other channels to ensure they’re each promoting the same key messages and the same key offer. Integration requires that the organization’s most important message and offer be absolutely clear to their donors. Simplicity and consistency across channels is an essential part of that. For smaller charities, this one step can transform their fundraising.

Q: Can you explain the importance of measuring bottom-line campaign results instead of individual channels alone?

A: The key word here is attribution. We spend a lot of time tracking which response has come from which channel. Many donors will respond using the landing page or website, but that’s not what initiated the dialogue. It’s just the response vehicle. That’s why it’s important to trace where that initiation came from. Was it DRTV, direct mail, an event that they may have attended, etc.? You have to measure the campaign results as a whole.

At Russ Reid, we call our system of attribution ‘Match Backs’. It’s a data process that allows us to take responses from online, and match them back to, for example, mailing lists. We know who we’ve mailed to, so when we get a response on the website a week after the mailing from the same person at the same address, and we had no other communication, we can attribute that response to the direct mail campaign with high level of certainty. If we aired a DRTV ad in their zip code, in some cases we can match that back as well. The same goes for other channels.

By keeping track of this data, you have the ability to attribute your results to the channels that earned them rather than giving all the credit to your digital channel. This process is key to attribution. You can do it internally or hire an agency to help, but either way, it’s important to know which channels are your strongest in order to plan your next round of communications.

Q: What are some common mistakes charities are making with their integrated marketing?

A: Lack of attribution is one. They can’t determine what worked and what didn’t.

Another is not having clear enough messaging and offer structures. It can become confusing to a donor if too many things are going on at once. If you’re promoting different offers or different campaigns to the same people, you’re a victim of your own silos. You need to break down the walls within your organization to confirm and assure that the same donor is not getting multiple campaigns with different offers and messages at the same time. Unfortunately, it’s a very common mistake. The folks that handle direct mail will have their communication calendar set up. The folks that are doing TV and media buying, or digital banner advertising or other zip code related digital activity won’t be in sync with each other and they’ll be getting different types of campaigns hitting the same donor at the same time, which not only confuses them but it can actually interrupt or decrease overall response.

A third mistake I often see is charities that don’t have their landing pages and their website optimized. At Russ Reid, we run A-B split tests for all our landing pages to test copy, offers, images and design. Just like any direct marketing test, there’s always a winning approach and a losing approach. So by constantly testing our landing pages, we ensure they’re changing frequently to adapt to the marketplace and getting the best test results day to day. We’re learning on a real time basis what works best and helping our clients update their work with the winning approach. Landing pages and other digital assets should be kept alive and vibrant.

It does take time and effort to measure and test -- our analytic team, creative team, and strategy planning teams work very hard to do these things well. In the end, it translates into incremental revenue for our clients. We tend to get a very significant ROI on optimization. It’s one good way you can increase results and help your cause.