New guide to fundraising from charity TV appeals published
Howard Lake | 8 November 2016 | News
Digital insight firm fast.MAP has published a new guide for charities on using direct response television (DRTV) appeals to raise funds.
The 18-page guide offers advice on creating and measuring the results of DRTV campaigns in the context of growing interest in the channel following the “triple whammy” of intense media scrutiny, marketing consent regulation and collapsing response rates.
It covers DRTV’s structure – advert, ask, call to action, and who will respond. Not surprisingly given the company’s data background it devotes a chapter to “the fundamental importance of DRTV testing”, followed by infomration on measuring and predicting DRTV performance.
Advertisement
It suggests DRTV engagement benchmarks, based on interviews with tends of thousands of donors over the past 10 years. It suggests that both originality and affinity are key factors in driving immediate donations.
It concludes with a case study of the Children’s Air Ambulance and its TV advert:
David Cole, Managing Director at fast.MAP, admits that there are several challenges to embracing DRTV. The market is beginning to get crowded, the costs of production and media spend are hight, and the time taken to learn what works and what doesn’t is longer than that for other channels.
The guide, however, aims to mitigate some of these by explaining, according to Cole: “how a new kind of benchmark measurement can be deployed to help reduce the risk of DRTV failing. It considers the technical structure of a DRTV advert and the impact that advert has on a donor in a holistic way as well as the likelihood to respond”.
The DRTV guide includes a foreword from David Cunningham, Board Member at the Fundraising Regulator:
“The evolution of fundraising to a more donor-focused, relationship based activity is to be welcomed and will apply in DRTV too. This important guide is a helpful step in that direction and will support charities to understand the real outcomes of DRTV, how long they may take, and steps to consider to mitigate risk in an expensive fundraising method”.
Andrea M Jones at Macmillan Cancer Support welcomed the guide saying:
“This guide explains how a new kind of DRTV benchmark measurement can complement live testing to help reduce the risk of DRTV failing. It considers….the impact that advert will have on a donor in an holistic way as well as the likelihood to respond. It provides Macmillan with early indications of an advert’s relative strengths and weaknesses prior to launch”.
Following publication of this guide fast.MAP staff are meeting individually with the Fundraising Directors of 16 of the largest UK charities and benchmarking their own DRTV adverts.
fast.MAP’s A guide to optimising DRTV creative performance is available at £50 + VAT. It is available free to IoF members.
UK Fundraising readers can also download it for free using the code FMTV1.
More fast.MAP fundraising news
- New fast.MAP guide aims to help charities maximise legacy fundraising (1 September 2017)
- 11 steps to your consent and permissions (28 April 2017)
- Fundraising Media DNA delivers direct mail donor insights (20 December 2016)
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.