Supporter Retention

Recruiting supporters is only one part of the challenge - next you need to keep them.

This group would explore different experience and ideas in retaining and developing supporters.

Event Notes

Supporter retention

Purposes:

• Keep them coming back to your website to (e.g.):
• Convert them into funders
• Pull them deeper into campaigning and activism

Oxfam's traditional method:

• Capture details of users who have taken a Web Action (e.g. interested in doing further actions? Users sign up and select areas of interest).
• Start communication stream targeting specific audiences (e.g. segmented email lists)

RE: Oxfam newsletters, content gets ranked depending on user's interests

Christian Aid example (generating traffic over a specific period):

• G8: professional journalists donated time to become volunteer bloggers and also used mobile phone pics

Build-up user profiles:

• Aim is to get as detailed a profile as possible (ideally supported by 1 database).
• Lifestyle is important: do your users watch Big Brother, read heat magazine - this info gives clues on what tools to use for retention and places for promotion (reaching the uninformed & disinterested)
• Embed registration form (e.g. to sign up to newsletter) everywhere
• Don't ask for too many details at once (first encounter is like a first date!): email & postcode to start with; build up details over time

Tools:

• New content: news, videos, diary pieces, etc
• Communities (e.g.: www.myspace.com/)
• Competitions
• Opportunities where users can talk about themselves: discussions, reading other user's comments, http://www.lifeswitch.org/ (e.g. Christian Aid's psychometric test leading to donation page - was internally condemned, but won an award)
• Voting
• Games (e.g. "detective" slant: collect clues & keep coming back to website)
• Entertainment, humour-based
• Piggy-back on other people's initiatives (e.g. HIV issue dealt with in soap operas in India)
• Emails to drive traffic back to website

Microsites (pros and cons)

• Microsites help to segment an audience
• It's best practice to integrate/centralise microsites as much as possible, since they drive away traffic from your main site
• A website should a couple of objectives and microsites help to satisfy more needs

Youth sites: Oxfam Generation Why, Christian Aid, Amnesty International

Useful misc tips:

• More cross selling (of campaign, etc) the better, across different media, or different areas of same medium.
• Online gift shop: even there you can capture user details for campaigning (i.e. campaign-related gifts express an interest in an issue)
• Editorial partnerships: putting our content on other sites

Useful websites:

• Agency.com (online strategists)

Interested Participants

comments:

... -- Fri, 13 Jan 2006 10:55:18 -0600 reply
Richard English - interested in attending

... -- Wed, 18 Jan 2006 07:35:53 -0600 reply
Matt Hill - Carers UK interested in this one