Pre-COVID: Build the foundation

RKD began our partnership with North Texas Food Bank in 2018. Prior to working with us, they had a stable direct mail program but hadn’t yet refined their approach or expanded into digital. In the two years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, our focus was helping the food bank:

• Refine direct mail efforts through testing, data and analytics to better understand what offers worked – and what offers didn’t
• Expand presence in digital media, adding evergreen campaigns and campaigns integrated with other online and offline efforts
• Optimize donation form to increase conversion rate
• Implement digital tracking to improve visibility
• Develop a robust content calendar that planned out all communications for the fiscal year
• Fully integrate their annual campaign, “Face of Hunger”
• Attend events and collect resources to localize creative and messaging for their audience

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During COVID: Ready for the influx

Thanks to the foundation built in digital and the optimizations made across dircet mail, we were able to be extremely nimble when COVID hit. As COVID arrived on U.S. shores, we:

• Pivoted quickly to get digital messages in market within days of COVID being declared a global pandemic and direct mail pieces within weeks
• Capitalized on acquisition and media efforts at high conversion levels, bringing in 77,258 new donors in FY20 and FY21 combined
• Executed our strategic plan to convert new donors into multiyear donors, growing their core donor base by 70% in FY21

Today: Optimize and retain

Like many food banks, North Texas Food Bank is now seeing charitable giving slow down as the emergency of the pandemic begins to fade. But what’s important to note is that giving levels are still well above where they were pre-pandemic.

RKD’s customized dashboards allow us to continually monitor what’s happening and make adjustments that keep the program moving forward. To ensure growth continues and COVID donors retain, we’re implementing the following for the organization:

• Strategic stewardship efforts to strengthen bonds with COVID donors, including a text series with a thank you from their CEO
• Optimizing segmentation structure to refine donor experiences based on giving habits and demographics. At times, integrated messaging is most effective. However, we’ve found other times where standalone messages in digital or direct mail work better. For example, Thanksgiving messaging starts in October for direct mail, while digital requires more timely messages.
• Promoting the monthly sustainer program across digital and direct mail
• Leaning heavily into renewal efforts to finish capitalizing on COVID growth
• Strategically removing digital-only donors to save costs in mail where campaigns don’t align with donor behavior
• Continuing to expand digital investment to retain COVID donors, increasing investment 846.2% over FY19
• Adding new channels and tactics like texting images through MMS, stewardship videos, telemarketing for lapsed reactivation, and voice broadcasts before big campaign launches
• Auditing and optimizing SEO to improve awareness

Results: Exponential program growth

Thanks to the foundation we built before COVID and our work to capitalize off their growth post-COVID, North Texas Food Bank has seen:

• 168% increase in direct mail gross revenue over FY18
• 480% increase in digital net revenue over FY18
• 57% YOY lift in core donors from FY21 to FY22
• 28,923% rise in sustainer revenue over FY20