Case Study
At ENCCUK, Georgina Rawes, Digital Content Coordinator at St Mungos, shared how the charity transformed their cash welcome journey through marketing automation and split testing.
Prior to the pandemic, the email programme for supporters at St Mungo’s very much mirrored the offline individual giving programme, rather than being tailored for a digital audience. The content didn’t focus on generating income or share the impact of the charity’s work. Instead it just updated supporters on what the charity was doing at that particular time, in a newsletter format.
The cash journey followed the offline programme and sent an introduction to the charity through an online PDF of the supporter magazine.
Whilst Gemma’s team was thinking about how to transform the email journeys, the pandemic hit. The emails used to go out monthly but during the pandemic the charity sent them out weekly to existing supporters to let them know how they were trying to get people off the streets as part of the government’s ‘everyone in’ initiative.
They began to send the same emails to their cash supporter list and found a massive increase in revenue.
Previously, the cash journey was used similarly to regular giving, where people were rarely asked to donate. As the response positively increased donations, they thought about how to create a similar journey post-covid that would engage the new cash audience and increase donations.
During the pandemic St Mungo’s increased the amount of emails they sent by 425%. Their emails had an average open rate of 40% and they had an impressive 150% increase in donations from email.
The team learned a lot from split testing and their key learnings were:
They launched the marketing automation journey in November 2020 and it consisted of three emails with case studies focused on outreach, accommodation and services. They split tested and reviewed every six months.
They had donation asks throughout each of the three emails, which linked back to the case studies, and set specific price points. The final email encouraged cash supporters to set up a regular gift.
The results of the marketing automation journey so far are impressive, with a 52% open rate compared to previous open rate of 32% – an increase of 20%. Click through rate increased to 5% from 3% and there was a 180% increase in revenue.
Some learnings from the 17 months of testing the automation journey are:
The next steps for St Mungo’s is to integrate their systems, so that they can add more personalisation and segmentation, and to start using Engaging Networks fundraising modules.
They want to continue growing their email list and to add campaign specific welcome journeys. Now that they have grown their audience considerably since the pandemic, they want to gain some insights into them and how they’re engaged.
The main takeaway from the last two years is that they need to remain active and agile and send emails when there is something to say, rather than sending a monthly newsletter.
Request a demo today and one of our team will be in touch with additional information about how Engaging Networks can help you raise more money and win more campaigns.
