Phone Room’s cold donor acquisition achieves pay back in a year
Howard Lake | 2 December 2013 | News
Telephone fundraising agency The Phone Room has developed a ‘cold’ donor acquisition programme which they say “is delivering a pay back in under a year”.
The first campaign to recruit large numbers of new donors using the new model is being run with Bible Society.
[quote align=”right” color=”#999999″]The campaign with Bible Society has been particularly successful with payback of their investment in around eight months.[/quote]
David Kent, Managing Director of The Phone Room, explained that the ‘TPR Momentum’ model involves using existing donors to recruit new cash donors “in a way that means that there is greater initial affinity to the charity and far less likelihood of attrition”. Although the new donors are ‘cold’ by any definition, they are warm in that they have an immediate connection with the charity, and have been, in effect ‘screened’ by the existing donor.
The Phone Room has found that the first cash gift is much higher than is normal in cold acquisition. This makes the subsequent conversion of those new donors to long term committed donors, part of the TPR Momentum programme, more successful.
Cold acquisition campaigns do of course vary considerably, but some can take up to two years to achieve a return on investment. Kent says that:
“TPR Momentum is better than a year. The campaign with Bible Society has been particularly successful with payback of their investment in around eight months.”
Naomi Buckler, Bible Society’s Fundraising Officer, confirmed:
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“We are certainly very pleased with the results to date and excited to be working with The Phone Room on this innovative project”.
The Phone Room is engaged in a second test campaign with a non faith-based charity and reports similar results to those achieved with Bible Society.
Kent added:
“The Phone Room is so confident in getting results that we will be shouldering much of the financial risk on future campaigns”.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.