Big Mistakes, Unexpected Tests
Told by Katie Mutrie, one of the best strategists to ever work at Frontier
Gather round, it’s time for a tale of tragedy from my very first week as a fundraiser.
Unfortunately, sometimes lessons are learned by making mistakes, really big mistakes. Because at the end of the day, it is impossible to know what you don’t know.
So let me tell you about a mistake that has gone down as one of the worst in Frontier’s history. It happened in my very first week, in fact it was one of the very first things I ever did.
Christmas appeals were being sent to print rapid fire style and one of my tasks was reviewing and approving proofs from the printer. I looked at the design we sent and I looked at the PDFs they sent back. It was a bit like a big spot the differences puzzle, where ideally you don’t see any differences.
We were sending a lot of appeals for our largest client. One email thread had 4 different pieces that were all sent in together.
In all the proofing that I’d done there were two distinct stages. In the first stage, we’re looking at the big picture, at photos and headlines and margins and colours. At this stage anything variable that would be merged in at the end was marked in bright pink.
One variable element that is always added at the end of the process is donor information like address and name and the amount that we are asking them to give. So in the first stage of proofing, the ask amounts appear as bright pink placeholders.
Well, it turns out there’s a very specific time when you don’t need to merge any donor data. And that is when there are no donors involved at all - when the goal is donor acquisition.
Well, I didn’t have any idea what acquisition was. I’d never heard of a postal walk or a rented list or any other type of mail. Every proof I’d seen had that bright pink placeholder copy for the ask amounts. And so, when the proof came in for a postal walk and the reply card said in pink “ask1” “ask2” “ask3” and “ask4”, it didn’t cross my mind that I wouldn’t see it again to proof those ask amounts in stage two … once the donor data was merged in. Approved!
335,000 pieces into the 500,000 piece job and our printer noticed something was wrong … “ask1” “ask2” “ask3” and “ask4” appeared in black on every one of the reply cards they’d printed.
After already printing a whooping 335,000 copies, it was decided not to reprint such a huge quantity. The appeals were mailed out, error and all, while the remaining volume was printed with the correct ask amounts and a unique tracking code - an unplanned, but interesting test!
When the results came back, the response rate was almost identical between the two versions. The average gift was higher on the version that offered suggested amounts. And so in the end we were able to learn an interesting lesson about mistakes and about donors. For the people who were moved to give, the mistake didn’t stop them. But giving some guidance certainly pays off since people give more when prompted with a specific amount.
This went down in Frontier history, but we also learned a lot. If there’s a takeaway, perhaps it’s that people want to be generous and mistakes won’t change that. So while they are best to avoid, sometimes the biggest mistakes can end up providing the most interesting insights.