A Deep Dive Into Paid Acquisition ROI: Analysis and Case Studies

#13NTCROI

Vanessa Kritzer – League of Conservation VotersKate Thomas – Change.orgMichael Ward – M+R Strategic Services

Agenda

• Why Should You Track ROI?

• Identifying Your Goals

• What Are the Options?

• League of Conservation Voters Findings

• Planning and Preparing for your ROI Analysis

• How do you use the ROI Analysis?

• Keys To Success

• Q&A

Why Should You Track ROI?

• $ in vs. $ out• Help allocate ALL

resources more effectively.

• ROI can be good or bad.

• We want the good one, so we must start measuring.

Articulate Your Goals

• Know your goals before you start• Make sure what you’re measuring is

reflective of your goals. • There are a lot of things you could

measure, but you can’t measure it all.• Depending on your goals, one

acquisition channel may be more effective than another.

Sources of acquisition• Paid online acquisition of petition signers (non-donors): Change.org, Care2, etc.

• Paid List Chaperone: MotherJones, Democrats.com, Alternet, etc.

• Non-Paid List Chaperone (Cross-Promotion): Working with partner org.

• Paid offline acquisition (non-donor): Canvassing

• Organic non-donor acquisition (events, organic signups, advocacy, Facebook)

• Paid direct donor acquisition (online, offline): E-Miles, Telefundraising

ROI by Source: 2006 Joins

ROI by Source: 2007 Joins

ROI by Source: 2008 Joins

ROI by Source: 2010 Joins

Cross Promotions: Total Revenue by year

$ Raised per subscriber:Paid ads vs. Cross Promotions

ROI by Source: Canvassing Recruits

Planning your ROI

• Every 6-12 months (prior to major planning meetings?)

• Allow 3 weeks or longer the first time

• Planning the analysis– Determine data to be included – what sources and what

revenue– Determine protocol for analysis

• Download and review source code data to identify problems – no or incorrect source codes

Way before starting analysis• Track source of every recruit

– Source/origin code by far the best mechanism • Distinct lists and using upload files requires a lot of

data work– Know origin for every record (from both paid

and unpaid sources)– Include time period for sources that are ongoing

and update tracking mechanism• For example, 2012-JanJun-HomePage, for home page

recruits

• Ensure your system is tracking key data in usable and extractable way

• Submit suppression files for paid and earned recruitment whenever possible

Investment

• How much did you spend to acquire email address?

• Cost per acquisition / direct vendor costs

• Creative development costs• Cost of staff time – most groups don’t

include

Returns • Total revenue is key statistic• Other factors to consider:

– List churn – number of people lost• Only looking at revenue since this is a

fundraising seminar, but activism or volunteerism are other “returns” that can be evaluated

• Offline revenue– Can easily be 1/3 of total revenue for online

source– Hardest part of ROI can be matching offline

donations to online donors

Analysis

• Data clean-up is the most time consuming part of process

• Our rules:– Do not count email subscribers as part of an ad

buy if they existed online prior to their paid acquisition

– Do not count offline gifts toward their ROI for donors who gave offline prior to paid acquisition

– Do not count cost of offline mailings and telemarketing if offline revenue included. This is up for debate, but we treat as a constant for simplicity.

Analysis – Our Central Analysis

• Dollar raised / Dollar spent ($1 breakeven)

Using the Data

• Is any of the data impacted by timing? High profile campaigns, e.g., end of year?

• Time is a key factor. We shoot for 1-2 year pay-off.

• Short term analysis is harder to do, but we are establishing some benchmarks

• Explore increasing scalable sources first

Keys to Success

• 2-3 messages on-boarding series before putting into more regular communications stream, unless you have something really timely to send them.

• Communicate with new recruits within 7 days

• Do not overstate what they signed up for, e.g., avoid “thanks for joining our movement” language

• Do not be afraid to ask!

Next Steps• Plan your ROI Analysis• Q&A• Contact Us to Chat!

– Kate – Kate@Change.org– Vanessa - Vanessa_Kritzer@lcv.org– Michael – MWard@mrss.com

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