ANIMAL LOVERS EXPECTING to find a panda under their Mother's Day tree this year surely were disappointed: The World Wildlife Fund de-emphasized its traditional adopt-a-pet mascot in favor of a sea turtle. (The adoptions were symbolic; no actual turtles or pandas ever changed hands.)
The change paid off. As of late June, the conservation organization received some 2,000 adoption-related donations amounting to more than $100,000.
What does it take to move 2,000 turtles? A creature with an interesting story; a target audience of enthusiasts; and a buckslip inserted into 750,000 copies of a member newsletter that directed recipients to a microsite, allowing the WWF to track the campaign's effectiveness. This effort had all three.
“The mother sea turtle travels thousands of miles from its feeding area to its mating area before returning to the sea,” said Terry Macko, the Washington-based organization's vice president for membership and corporate partners in the United States. “There was a great story tie-in [with Mother's Day].”
Sea turtles don't come cheap. Suggested donations started at $25 to adopt an adult turtle, moved up to $50 for a baby, and topped out at $100 for a nest of eggs.
Macko did not expect that the turtles would be as popular as they were. “[Response] was more than we forecast,” he said. “We did four times the amount [of last year's adoptions].” In 2005 the organization built its Mother's Day campaign around gorillas. According to Macko, gorillas are great mothers, but a maternal instinct isn't necessarily the first thing people associate with them.
Besides testing the reptile, the campaign marked the first time the WWF used an offline component to tout an online adoption center. A URL on the buckslip directed recipients to a Web page that explained the offer (www.worldwildlife.org/mom).
Why rely on a buckslip? The WWF didn't think it could make back the cost of a direct mail promotion focused on a single holiday — or just one animal. “We couldn't drive enough response for a standalone package to work economically,” Macko said.
He also noted that explaining the three donor tiers was too complicated for a small buckslip, and the organization preferred to drive people online, where all the details could be spelled out at leisure.
All WWF adoption campaigns include premiums, allowing promotions to be tailored to gift-giving occasions. Gifts range from the conceptual to the tactile: At the $25 level, donors receive a printable electronic certificate and photographs for their computer desktop. Those who give $50 get all that plus a screen saver and an AOL Instant Messenger icon. Those adopting a nest of eggs for $100 earn the virtual premiums as well as a physical-world bonus: A limited-edition plush sea turtle, which is a lot cuddlier than a screen saver.
At first glance, a Web-reliant effort might not seem the ideal choice for an organization whose average member is a 60-year-old woman. But WWF donors also are highly educated and make larger-than-average incomes, and these two groups are regular Internet users, according to Macko.
Furthermore, “Not everyone you give a Mother's Day gift to is a mother,” Macko said, adding that recipients likely included daughters, sisters and grandchildren. “The day is one in which you recognize all mothers [or potential mothers], not just your own.”
In fact, gender more than age may have helped determine the campaign's success. The WWF did an e-mailing for Father's Day which focused on “great males from the animal kingdom” like emperor penguins, hip-pocket frogs and sea horses. The 400,000 e-mails it sent out — its entire e-mail list — pulled decently, but not nearly as well as the Mother's Day effort, Macko said.
The WWF hopes that information gained about the member base through successive campaigns will allow it to better target solicitations, thereby making more-elaborate mailings cost-effective. It should have lots of data to work with fairly quickly. Every year, the organization sends 30 million direct mail pieces and some 100 e-mail blasts.
The nonprofit is applying what it learns about its donor base to refine solicitations using systems from SAS, a Cary, NC business software firm. This work already has had impressive results: The WWF offered donors a chance to buy gift wrap and greeting cards in spring, rather than promoting the items solely during fall for the holiday season. It pulled in an additional $1 million.
