Opportunity

In May 2005, the Planned Giving office of the American Cancer Society approached Mansell Group regarding the possibilities of generating online leads for the National Professional Advisors Network (NPAN). NPAN is a group of professional advisors including accountants, attorneys, CPAs and other professionals working in the legal, brokerage and estate planning industry. The primary question was one that many organizations seek to answer: “Are my constituents online, and will they engage with me through this channel?” Mansell Group worked in partnership with the leadership of Planned Giving to research various email and online channels that could potentially create avenues for communicating.

Solution

Mansell Group and the Planned Giving team conducted a feasibility study and found several appropriate online channels for reaching these professional advisors. In August 2005, Mansell Group and ACS launched a test campaign with a budget of $24,000. The goal of the test was to confirm that NPAN members could be identified, contacted and motivated to join the free group by registering their contact information via a form located online at http://www.cancer.org.

The test included three online media outlets: 1) email marketing to a third party list 2) advertorials and 3) embedded sponsorship opportunities within industry related e-newsletters. The goal of the test program was to generate 100 new members for the NPAN program through online registration. This program required that Mansell Group team members pull from our extensive experience including online marketing, creative design, editorial services, email deployment, data management and proactive campaign management.

Results

The program ultimately generated more than 200 new members to the NPAN program through online registration at www.cancer.org and was considered a success. Thus, the team moved quickly to analyze lessons learned and how these lessons could be applied to future online acquisitions programs. After completing the initial test campaign, the team moved forward with a larger online acquisition strategy. In May 2006, the team began developing a broader strategy. This campaign included continuing the online strategy targeting professional advisors, but targeted individual donors as well. Since that time, the Mansell team has conducted several additional acquisition campaigns and most recently (camapign ending in December 2007) acquired significantly more individual donors and professional advisors than original response metrics forecasted.