From online to on the box… can digital testing inform your DRTV fundraising?
Given that DTV Group works across digital and DRTV in 30+ countries, you can imagine we get asked that headline question A Lot.
The topline answer is that as well as being a successful stand-alone fundraising strand, digital (and specifically social) is a wonderful playground. It’s a place where you can test pretty much anything you want to. It presents some great opportunities, but there are also potential pitfalls to consider if you want to use digital to inform another channel, like DRTV. Just like any playground: swings and roundabouts.
Sal Tejani, Head of Digital, takes a deeper look at testing different propositions and creative treatments for meaningful digital testing.
Audience first
Let’s start with an audience-first approach. Is the digital audience close enough to a typical DRTV audience to give us a meaningful result? Now, we know the beauty of digital allows us to create highly refined audiences that could reflect a DRTV audience. However, we also know that the more refined the audience the higher the costs to reach that audience and in turn the higher the cost per donor (CPD). Therefore, you have to be cautious around setting up a test that may show you which creative approach worked best but may also have eye-wateringly high CPDs due to refining the audience so tightly.
And then, we must consider whether the precise creative execution we are testing will actually be used in the final DRTV creative, as this is rarely the case. If you are testing an audience and creative that won’t be duplicated for DRTV, then you need to be very cautious as to what you are actually learning and how useful that learning is.
So let’s start to unpick what we can test in digital first to inform DRTV.
Two-stage models (like Value Exchange or Petition campaigns)
Cats Protection
With two-stage propositions it’s fine to test a number of things that will give you good insight before developing a DRTV execution:
Different Val-ex products/hooks to see which has the highest response.
What the conversion to RG is on the phone once a lead has been solicited.
What the no-pay and 1st month attrition is like to inform the retention journey.
Legacy offers
Royal British Legion, Legacy
If you are unsure which offers of call to action to go with, digital can be a cost-effective way to test them prior to in DRTV:
Different offers and calls to action to see how they impact response (eg. free will guide Vs free will service Vs incentives like pin badges etc)
Incentives (effect of adding one)
Cats Protection, Sponsorship (with free photo frame)
If you’re already running creative in a digital programme and know its performance, then you can test:
The potential impact on response of adding an incentive to an existing creative (e.g. Free tote bag when you become a donor).
Lottery
PDSA, Lottery
If you have a lottery product that is strong/attractive compared to similar causes, then you could probably go straight to DRTV development. However, there is an area that makes sense to test in digital:
If your Lottery product prizes are comparably lower/weaker than your competition then it may be worth testing this in digital first.
New products
Diabetes UK, Membership
If you have a successful product that’s already running in another channel (e.g. Membership or Sponsorship etc) then:
Digital testing of that product is a valid option to build a digital programme and give trust that it works in another channel before developing your DRTV creative.
Now for the more challenging area around testing ‘Propositions’ and ‘Creative treatments’ in digital.
Propositions
It’s important to clarify what we mean when we say ‘propositions’. When we talk about propositions we don’t mean creative treatments, we mean overarching propositions that are used for integrated campaigns (e.g. Unicef’s winter campaign under a banner of ‘Safe and Warm’ or RAFBF’s proposition ‘Against the Odds’).
If we want to understand if different propositions are more appealing to an audience, then it would be better to test this using a ‘research methodology’ in an online survey or focus groups where you can control the audience and stimulus better (e.g. using YouGov panels). This can provide some insight into the comparative strength of different propositions.
Creative treatments
This is the area that I get asked about the most and carries the most caution. If you want to test a specific area of your work in digital to inform DRTV (e.g. ‘animal focused Vs people focused’) to see which works best then this seems to make sense to test in digital BUT if we are testing a creative treatment to a non-TV audience with digital creative that wouldn’t end up on TV, what would you actually learn? This seems best to either test it to a refined DRTV audience (and accept the higher CPDs) or use research to test it. Any research methodology that attempts to predict real-world behaviour (responsiveness), must of course be treated carefully; what people feel, and what they say, and what they do are often far from the same thing!
Of course, all of this is by no means exhaustive. I’d welcome your comments, feedback and any other thoughts or experiences around digital testing to inform DRTV.
Bio
Saleem has spent more than 19 years working in the UK’s leading fundraising agencies, firstly at Bluefrog, then at Open and now at DTV. He has helped many charities build highly effective acquisition, retention and legacy fundraising programmes integrating both on and off line channels. Saleem joined DTV to develop and implement their digital offering, including web optimisation for DRTV, digital donor journeys and using direct response video effectively for recruiting donors in social channels. He is a passionate fundraiser and loves creative development and digital integration.
