Our rapidly growing Marketing Effectiveness team have reached a new milestone in 2024, developing and delivering their 100th charity-specific marketing mix model (MMM) in a single year. This is a whopping 60% more year-on-year (and this is only one sector we cover!)
This model count represents our dedication and experience in the charity space, with each model being individually built to help our charity partners navigate challenges, optimise strategies, and achieve tangible results.
Here are ten key learnings from across the sector:
- Looking Beyond Attribution: MMMs have repeatedly shown that relying solely on attributed source codes can undervalue marketing efforts as a whole, particularly with critical channels like TV, Meta and even Mailings. Attributed conversions often underreport media incremental impact (with credit often living in ‘Direct/SEO’ or Other’), leading to skewed perceptions. By reframing decisions with incrementality in mind, charities can unlock the true potential of marketing efforts, and strengths of individual channels and grow their supporter base strategically.
- Brand Activity Builds a Strong Base: Charities with above-benchmark Consideration scores typically have a history of consistent brand activity. While brand media drives awareness, we’ve also found significant “halo effects” appearing in a diverse set of product income lines fundraising appeals, lotteries and Legacy. This underscores the need for a balanced approach across the media mix and considerations impact further along the donor journey.
- Mitigating Economic Pressures with Media: The cost-of-living crisis (which for charities we’ve coined as a more cost-of-giving crisis) has challenged income growth, but MMM insights highlight paid media’s role in stabilising and scaling revenue. Whether through refining channel strategies or introducing new platforms, charities have found ways to offset these pressures and maintain support. MMM is able to quantify those non-media factors which charities are not able to track through platforms to provide a more complete view on performance.
- Increased Personal Interaction: Door-to-door and face-to-face fundraising have resurged, offering direct supporter connections. However, these channels require careful analysis within MMM frameworks to assess scalability and headroom, ensuring efficient deployment of resources.
- Quality Over Quantity: Many charities are prioritising supporter lifetime value over sheer acquisition numbers by shifting the call-to-action of their media. This shift means accepting higher upfront acquisition costs but achieving better long-term ROI through higher-value relationships.
- Power of Smarter Buying: Media pricing makes a difference. Analysis reveals opportunities to improve media efficiency by up to a third through strategic planning and benchmark-driven negotiation, ensuring every pound of investment works harder.
- New Channels with Proven Impact: MMM has helped optimise current channels in the media mix which now allows scope for new channel testing. Regional testing combined with MMM validates the role of emerging platforms like Demand Gen and Programmatic Display. By starting small and scaling based on proven results, charities can diversify their channel mix without overcommitting resources.
- Creative Evaluation Unlocks Growth: Digging deeper into TV performance at the creative level has highlighted opportunities to optimise messaging and engagement. This area of innovation will be a key focus for us and our charity partners in 2025.
- Think Holistically: While starting an effectiveness journey can focus the impact of a fundraising campaign on fundraising income, taking a step back and looking across the product range can unlock broader strategic insight, such as significant supporting charity Shop income, regular giving amounts and long-term legacy income.
- Benchmarking for Better Context: With 100 models from 2024 alone, we’ve relaunched our benchmarks with a clearer focus on ranges. Charities can now see where their modelled performance sits against peers and use this insight to make more informed decisions.
Why it Matters: If you’re investing in paid media but not leveraging MMM, you’re likely leaving critical insights on the table. Download our guide and discover how this approach can supercharge your charity’s performance.
