The American Lung Association (ALA) faced a problem with their subscriber base. As time went on, more and more donors became disengaged with ALA. A whopping 75% of their donor file had not interacted with them for over a year. On top of that, new subscribers would sign up but then not engage, adding to the number of lapsed subscribers instead of being active.
So, how could ALA win back 2.3 million lapsed donors? And how could they ensure that new donors stayed engaged from the get-go?
To tackle this challenge, ALA recognized the need to upgrade outdated technology. They invested significantly in SalesForce Marketing Cloud, unlocking a range of powerful new capabilities they had never utilized before. The question was how to leverage these capabilities to turn their engagement around and start growing their active donor base again.
CEO Harold Wimmer prioritized reversing the decline as a critical strategy. With the guidance of the formidable new CMO, Julia Fitzgerald, ALA embarked on a long-term plan to boost engagement and drive member growth, immediately impacting lapsed subscribers.
We are still benefiting from their work years later.
Julia Fitzgerald, CMO
A Winning member winback strategy
- Establish achievable objectives by referring to industry standards in the nonprofit sector. To help them strategize and aim for success in member welcome stream winback efforts.
- Consolidate all the various donor data sources into one unified Salesforce platform to effectively manage member winback efforts.
- Create an interactive dashboard that displays the outcomes of all marketing campaigns, with a special focus on retention and winback.
- Develop a well-crafted strategy to synchronize messaging at both national and local levels, ensuring its effectiveness.
- Identify three efficient donor segments (instead of the previous thirty)
The outcome of these foundational steps resulted in the creation of two meticulously planned campaigns that aim to reengage lapsed donors and attract new donors right away. Namely:
- The multi-part Welcome Stream not only asked for information, but also provided opportunities to engage and made targeted requests for repeat donations, creating a more interactive and effective experience for donors.
- Create a personalized and CRM-driven drip campaign that reaches out to lapsed donors, reminding them of their previous donations and inviting them to contribute again.
Game Changing Results: Fifty Percent Growth in Two Years
ALA surpassed its campaign and growth objectives, remarkably expanding its active donor database. By tapping into a previously untapped resource of dormant donors, including those inactive for an extended period, ALA swiftly recovered a significant portion of their previous losses and kickstarted a period of robust growth. Moreover, by implementing a welcome stream that consistently engaged donors throughout their first year, ALA successfully mitigated the risk of further attrition and substantially enhanced donor retention rate.Â
Among their successes were that:
- The donor file grew by 50%, from 600K to nearly 900K, in two years
- They reactivated over 7% of lapsed donors the first year, some of whom had been lapsed for years. Email engagement has leaped by 50%
- First-year and multi-year retention both are steadily increasing
- ALA now adds 4K net new donors to their file every month
Association Growth Takeaways
For another case study of explosive membership growth, see Case Study: The Executives Club Of Chicago’s Membership Doubled