Legacy Marketing at Bible Society

John Ranford

Fundraising Officer: Strategy and Innovation

Incorporating contributions from Claire Routley

Head of Legacy Giving

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005-6 2006-7 2007-8

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1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Legacies 1999 - 2007-8

Our starting point

• Static around £2.1m – or growing?» This excludes inflation.

We did some research

Christians and Legacies

• 644,000 Churchgoers are over 70

• 60,000 Churchgoers die every year

• Their estates are valued at £9.6 billion pa

Sector Legacy investment(as a percentage of total expenditure)

• 1994: 0.50%

• 2003: 1.90%

• Cancer Research 2007-8:– £8m = 3.1%

• 2011: ????

Income declines. Ratios worsen

20% allows little for investment – eg donor recruitment

The '20%' shrinks

Cannot justify investment

Lack of investment slows growth

Must spend only 20% on non-missional costs

Can we afford to invest?

Supporter recruitment justified at lower 1-yr ROI

20% increases and allows more supporter recruitment and legacy marketing

Income increases

More donorsMore legacies

Life-time value of new supporter is higher

Y 3+

Yr 1-2 – less for recruitment

Invest in LegacyMarketing

Legacies: the key

Bible Society Legacy analysis

• 188 legacies

• Women: 138 (73%)

• Average: £12,000

• Average 'Miss': £17,000k (87% lift)

• Legacy Foresight say:– Total faith-based legacy income

=£228.3 million each year”

How much potential?

Choosing a strategy

• Direct Marketing?

• Awareness?

Touchpoints

• The value of a Brand is the sum of all its touchpoints (Guy Smith 2004)

• A Legacy must have resulted from a touchpoint with Bible Society

• Each touchpoint has a legacy value.

• Suppose that we knew the value!

… Its all about touchpoints

• The more personal, the more effective

• Use Direct marketing

• 'secondary' marketing - piggybacking

• 'secondary' (soft) products – in memoriam

How many touchpoints are there?

Channel

F2F 10,000

Supporter Services 30,000

National events 10,000

Regional events 56,000

540,000

700,000

Other / Viral/ Products 2,000,000

PR 1,000,000

4,346,000

Touchpoints /opportunities

(Pre 2005)

Warm comms

Cold comms

Life-stages time-line

travel/holidays

marriage

Buying property

birth of children

divorce

Fear of accident

Bible Society

Produces Bibles

House is big asset

Guardians

Disinherit spouse

Bible Society

Needs funds

Bible Society Bible a Month

Will-making prompts

Typical Bible Society messages (current)

'Defensive will-making in early life

Bible Society needs your legacy

Bible Society needs your legacy

New messaging… New messaging… New messaging… New messaging…

Life-stage

Bible Society needs your legacy

disasters

inheritance

change in legislation

death of parent

retirement

Death of relatives/friends

illness

death of spousedeath

Cancer research asks for Legacy

Bible Society

Needs cash

Bible Society Needs

legacies

Bible Society

Needs cash

New wealth

Re-write will

Esperience value of will

'Pro-active' will-making in later life

Will-making prompts

Typical Bible Society messages

Bible Society needs your legacy

Bible Society needs your legacy

Bible Society needs your legacy

New messaging… Life-stage

Our strategy process

• Understand where we are

• Set objectives

• Set out strategy

• Work out tactics

• Put together an action plan

• Monitor and evaluate

Our Audience

Profile

- Women – live longer – leave almost 70% of legacy income

- Well off – in asset terms

- Single – as a proxy for childless

Who to talk to?• Warm donors

• Lapsed donors

• Customers

• Volunteers

• Staff

• Trustees

• Service users

• Influencers

• cold audiences

Warm Audience Objectives

• XX legacy enquirers in year one

• XX legacy considerers

• XX legacy intenders

• XX legacy pledgers

• To follow up all previous legacy enquiries

• To convert X% of considerers to intenders, pledgers or nos

Cold Audience objectives2011-12

• Recruit new donors with legacy potential

• Improve web pages on website

• Search engine optimisation 'Bible Society'+'legacy

• New media promotion - review

• Cold legacy recruitment

Promotion examples

Legacy brochure

Integrated legacy message across communications

‘Bible Society relies on the prayers, donations and legacies of supporters’

• Legacies are at the top

Write your own legacy mailing

Talk about…

• Abstract v concrete

• Visionary

• Big PictureSargeant and Shang 2009

Telephone

• 1: Call – ‘look out for our letter’

• 2: Mail – Legacy ask

• 3: Call – enquiring about the reaction

Customer service

More than a third of the charities did not respond to requests made by researchers posing as potential legacy givers

We Don’t…

• We Don’t say leave us a legacy because x% of our income comes from legacies

• We don’t use will-making puns

• We don’t cut pledgers out of the fundraising programme

• We don’t spend money on advertising in solicitors’ directories

What are the big challenges?

• Consistency over the long term

• Investment levels (v. DM)

• ‘Legacy income is down – so we’ll have to cut… legacy marketing’

• Legacy Marketing needs to be championed at the highest level

• It’s not something ‘anyone can do’.

Now let’s dream…

Legacy KPIs in Bible Society

Embedding legacy marketing

What about the other 50%?

• 30% of Bible Society’s legacies come ‘out of the blue’

• Many charities report up to 50%

Choosing a strategy

• Direct Marketing

• Awareness

Can awareness produce legacies?

There are 3.5 million church-goers. How many are we reaching through our mailings?

30,000 churches…?

300 staff visiting 100 churches each

● Bible Society ● Care for the Family ● CMS ● The Leprosy Mission  ● Livability ● Tearfund ● Scripture Union ● Stewardship

Only 18% of churchgoers said their church teaches

about legacy giving

Christian Legacy Vision

Together we want to create a Christian Legacy for future generations

Christian Legacy

• Objective:

• Think Legacy = Think Christian

Phase 1 advertising

Phase 2 advertising

Phase 3 advertising

Phase 4 advertising

Interim results

biblesociety.org.uk01793 418100