From the Ground Up: Building Resilient Acquisition Programs

Presentation Summary: Both World Food Program USA (WFP USA) and USA for UNFPA have rebuilt their direct mail acquisition programs from the ground up on all fronts: creative, messaging, offers, asks, cadence and list strategy.

That’s a pretty big feat and we hope you’d like to learn how we did it.

World Food Program USA has built their current acquisition direct mail program through continual testing to identify effective acquisition creative and messaging, campaign cadence, and last but not least, prospect audience strategies.

Today, WFP USA’s acquisition direct mail program remains in growth mode. It has also leveraged tried-and-true appeal packages for active donor audiences to not only reactivate lapsed high dollar and mid-level donors, but to also target prospect audiences to acquire new-to-file mid-level and major donors.

USA for UNFPA began revamping their program almost a year ago, first with varied and strategic list testing with the goal to find new avenues of yet unreached categories of prospects. More recently, aggressive package testing has begun to be layered in, campaign by campaign, to find the messaging levers and asks that resonate with prospects. But all this started with rapid initial strategizing for revamps and a long-term timeline for testing and making progressive program overhauls.

In this one-of-a-kind session, hear about how both organizations tackled revamping their programs and get a unique glimpse of the process at work in the beginning stages and many years down the road.