Where should you focus for your charity weekly lottery growth and development?
When cost per acquisition (CPA) can come in at around £100 per player (depending on the charity and channel), keeping your players playing is of the utmost importance to enhance your return on investment (ROI) and sustainably grow your weekly lottery.
If you're a charity fundraiser working in raffles and weekly lotteries, our Prize-Led Fundraising Benchmarking and Trends webinar is now available on-demand, covering what is happening in the sector and how you can align your strategy to work with – not against – it.
But what exactly should you be focusing on? We explore three of the main fundraising objectives for charity weekly lottery growth and development down below...
Objective 1: Keeping attrition low
The first main objective for weekly lottery growth is centred around keeping attrition low. Here’s three steps to help you achieve that:
1. Know your points of attrition
Most attrition happens in the first few weeks after acquisition, but there are several subsequent milestone points about which you should be aware. Each charity is different, so it’s vital that you look at your player data to assess where, in their journeys and across which channels, your players have historically cancelled their play.
Here's a generic example of what that might look like:
2. Plan your communications
At each of these key points you should have a plan in place to reduce attrition. For example, sending a welcome communication within the first 2 weeks for sign up can reduce attrition by up to 20% and further thank you or impact communications in the early months can reduce attrition by up to 40%.
You might also consider reactivation programmes to suggest a reduced number of plays per week or discuss why they have left the lottery.
3. Understand your audience
It’s not just when you send/make a communication to reduce attrition; it’s what channel you use and what you say, too. By knowing what motivates your players (be that a direct or indirect connection to the cause, the possibility of winning a prize, or both) and what their preferred communication channel is, you’re able to engage them with the product more.
Demonstrating that you care about them helps to build loyalty, which in turn can help players commit to lottery and raffles for longer.
Objective 2: Enhancing player value
Once your player is on board, a common objective for weekly lottery development is increasing the value of that player. This should always be done sensitively, according to what you know about that player and what their ask level is likely to be.
1. Upgrade communications
Often by telephone, upgrade communications offer you the opportunity to speak first-hand to your lottery players, thank them for their support, and offer them the chance to increase their likelihood of winning.
Although this can be done at any time, there are three main opportunities across your programme to do this:
- Welcome call
- Winner's call
- Superdraw
2. Player benefits
Reminding players of the benefits of playing can also have an impact on how long they play for and at what level. Come back to why they’re playing in the first place – be that cause, or prize - and focus your communication there. Areas you might want to include are:
- Real life winner's stories/photos /quotes
- Number of winners and where they are
- The prizes available each week
- Any additional prize draws (whether specifically for lottery or as part of your wider prize-led programme)
- The impact their play makes each month - i.e., by playing the lottery, every month you feed one donkey for one day
- The impact the weekly lottery makes to your charity beneficiaries
3. Play flexibility
Supporters are increasingly expecting flexibility in how they support charities. A range of ways to play and a range of ways to manage their play allow supporters to feel more in control of their support and more likely to think favourably of your charity.
Objective 3: Build a long-term relationship
A weekly lottery is an excellent product to encourage new supporters to contribute to your charity or provide new ways for existing supporters to give. However, if your supporters came to play the lottery, you need to consider the lottery as part of your wider fundraising and charity activities.
1. Broaden a players’ support
Think about using lottery as a way not just to increase fundraising income, but to start to build a lasting relationship with your supporters. Let your lottery players know what other opportunities there are to support your charity should they wish to. Some examples might include:
- Additional campaigns or programmes they may wish to financially support
- Sponsored events
- Volunteering opportunities
Personal connection to the cause is often a key driver for support. When you know they have a personal connection you can sign post them more effectively to different kinds of support opportunities which will help further build your relationship.
2. Encourage advocacy
Your player may wish to share their positive experience with your charity lottery with their friends and family. Encouraging them and giving them the tools to do so will help build your player base and welcome other supporters into the fold.
3. Testing
As you begin to introduce new, or enhance existing, growth and development activities into your programme, it’s worth including a control cell to enable you to test the effectiveness of the change over time.
By understanding what’s working and what’s not working in your weekly lottery programme you can continuously improve your player relationships and supporter experience.
Grow and develop your charity weekly lottery with Woods Valldata
Growth and development, done well, enhances the supporter experience and builds lifetime value across all your supporters. These three fundraising objectives can provide a starting point, allowing you to get the most out of your lotteries.
We know it can often be overwhelming to know where to start with a charity lottery. That’s why, when you partner with Woods Valldata for your weekly lottery or raffle strategy, you have access to our friendly in-house expertise to work with you to make your programme the best it can be.
With fully customisable options and big cash prizes, our lottery solutions are ready to play instantly, so your charity can increase its income potential and support the causes that matter the most.
Sound like something you’d be interested in? Drop us a line for a no-obligation chat about your lottery and how we can work together to achieve your ambitions.
