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Direct Marketing on a Tight Budget : Campaigns for Non-

Profit Organisations

Ian MunroDirectorSysware Consulting Group

Brian O’GradyCEONew Zealand Stroke Foundation

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The Challenge for Non-Profit Organisations

• Increasing donation revenue through targeted letter campaigns

• But with very small direct marketing budgets

• Stroke Foundation took on the challenge

• With the help of Sysware Consulting Group

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Campaign Inputs • Stroke Foundation’s customer mailing list with…

• Donation responses from past campaigns

• 2001 Census data down to meshblock level from Statistics NZ

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Campaign Issues• Need to identify the strongest characteristics of

customers who respond, but…

• No Stroke Foundation customer demographics to categorise customers, just names and addresses

• Need to add census meshblock demographics but no common key to join on

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Campaign Methodology• Meshblock the addresses

• Join with Census data to derive customer demographics

• Derive and standardise demographics ready for analysis

• Compare the Stroke Foundation responders’ demographics with the general population

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Comparison of Responders - Retirees

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Campaign Methodology Continued

• Identify the responders’ strongest characteristics, limit to the top 5 or 6

• Rank the meshblocks in descending order to donate

• Target highest-ranking meshblocks in mailouts

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Effect of Targeting Highest-Ranked Meshblocks

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

% All Customers

%

Responders

LiftNormal

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Campaign Outcomes• Easy, quick, efficient data mining techniques

• Basic statistical knowledge only required

• Cost effective approach

• Has increased donated dollars over 100 percent in the last two years

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Acknowledgements• Linda Allan was the original developer and campaign

producer

• Jack Schierhout did most of the recent campaigns

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Direct Marketing on a Tight Budget Means

• Using simple, cost-effective data mining techniques

• To get much better responses from your customer campaigns

• Improving campaign profitability

• And growing your business