I've been very remiss in blogging since the New Year began. I've taken on a new job and focusing my energies to getting familiar with the "new digs". I'm thrilled to have joined the ALS Society of Canada as their Senior Manage Philanthropy. It's an exciting time for this organization and its leadership has worked hard to position its research and development efforts for great things.
As I begin to settle in, new blog-worthy thoughts, topics and questions are purcolating to the surface. One issue that is ever present is the challenge of measuring and quantifying the impact of an initiative. In some areas we have the ability to easily gauge these things. DM is a prime example of easily measured efforts. Targetted appeals, response devices, and similar tools allow us to see an almost immediate result of our efforts. But what about media publicity, stewardship events, planned giving advertisements etc.?
Measuring the Nebulous
Recently the ALS Society of Canada placed the following advertisement in the Globe and Mail.
The advertisements main focus is to inform people about ALS and ALS Canada. However, we decided to add the text about the upcoming ALS Canada hosted event, Tuesday's with Morrie, starring Hal Linden in the same ad.
When I saw the final copy and advertisement together, I sent an email to our Director of Communications saying that of the 3 advertisements we were placing in the Globe, I found this one to be the most impactful.
This was the 2nd of 3 advertisements. This ad ran on a Friday and was located on the inside back cover. I received 8 calls about the advertisement and 3 ticket orders for the play as a direct result of this advertisement.
Is that a good result, given that the goal of the advertisement is not to sell tickets? What kind of response does an organization typically receive from an advertisement in that paper on that day of the week, and in that position of the newspaper? I don't know!
The first advertisement below - ran on a Tuesday and was located in the same position in the paper.
This advertisement received 3 inquiries for tickets and I personally received no other comments about the ad beyond those inquiries.
I don't know if anyone else in the organization received incoming calls regarding the ad, so my direct knowledge may or may not be representative of the entire response to the organization.
But if we use my direct knowledge of response as a guide, we received more than double the response to the 2nd ad than we did this one. Why?
Was it because of the day it was published? Perhaps more people sit back and read the paper on a Friday? Or was it the change in the copy? Or was it perhaps the fact that there's a child in the 2nd advertisement?
I personally commented on how the 2nd ad had a greater impact on me - so why did I respond to that one more than the first? I honestly dont' know. Perhaps it is the picture of a child tying his father's shoe. And somehow that strikes our human nature as backwards and wrong. That's why "I think", it hit me harder... but I can't say for certain. All I know is that it caused me to feel that lump in my throat and cringe in my stomach.
Gut Feeling
In an ideal world and with an unlimited budget, we could run the same advertisements in different locations, on different days, with the same and then different copy on the same images and have more means of measuring response to determine if it is indeed the advertisement or the location, day, copy etc. We don't live in an ideal world, so sometimes we just gotta trust our "gut" and my gut says that the image of a child doing up his shoes, is at least part of the reason for the different response.
So now I am about to place some facebook advertisements for the Tuesday's with Morrie event. Given the low cost of facebook, I'm going to try and split test these ads with the same copy, image and using different demographic targetting. I should have adequate budget to try different ads over a period of time to measure response. Facebook allows for that kind of measurement, but what of those things like the ads above that just don't allow for easily measured impact? To create the ads, we'll have to go with our gut - but ultimately the facebook system will provide some good data to help us determine whether or not our "gut feelings" are on target - or not.
I'll be attending a highly regarded training program for Gift Planning next week and one of the questions I'll be seeking answers to is how others measure the impact of their planned giving marketing and stewardship initiatives.
It would be great if more organizations shared their measurement systems (assuming they have them) so that we could all benefit from the shared knowledge of others. I will share here, what I learn going forward. I'm not a math-geek, but I do like to make informed decisions... all the while accepting that sometimes, you just gotta trust your gut.
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