Remember these four top tips to elevate your weekly lottery programme
Weekly lottery is an amazing regular giving product for UK charities to raise more sustainable income for their good causes. It’s rapid rise in popularity as a fundraising product within the third sector has brought both benefits and challenges. As a fundraiser working with weekly lottery you'll constantly be looking for ways to improve your weekly lottery retention and acquisition. Read on for 4 quick and effective considerations to help you achieve more.
If you're a charity fundraiser working in raffles and weekly lottery, you might find our Prize-Led Fundraising Benchmarking and Trends webinar of interest which is now available on-demand.
Background
Benefits of weekly lottery
Of course, the main benefit for charities operating a weekly lottery is the additional unrestricted income generated. It provides charities with a way of communicating with their audiences about good news stories, positive impact and the more joyous side of their work. Running a lottery can also often diversify the supporter demographic away from their traditional supporter audience.
Current challenges
But with the increase in the number of charity lotteries available to the public, combined with impact from the cost of living crisis, there is much more competition for ‘share of wallet’ when it comes to lottery. What’s more, cost per acquisition for new players has also increased in recent years making return on investment more challenging for this product where the minimum value is just £1 per week.
To that end, the most important consideration when operating a lottery is keeping (retention) and growing (acquisition) your player base to deliver individual giving net income and lifetime value.
Here's 4 quick and effective ways to do just that.
1. Know your audience
Possibly the most important element of increasing lifetime value from your weekly lottery is knowing who your player-supporters are.
Use what you have now and plan to build this over time. Whether you find out through data analysis, audience profiling or persona building or direct survey, the information you have will help drive:
- The type of message you use in your communications
- How are your players motivated to support? Do they have a direct or indirect connection to your cause?; Are they simply motivated by winning the prize money?; Or is it a combination of both?
- The type of channel you use to communicate
- How do they prefer to be contacted? Is it by phone or email or post?
- When and how much you upsell or cross sell
- How often are they happy to be contacted? And what is their ask level?
- To whom and how you target your future acquisition
- Understanding your most loyal players can help identify similar segments and preferences in the future to improve your acquisition ROI
By knowing your supporters you will help build stronger relationships, communicate in ways which are relevant to them and show that your care about them leading to higher lifetime value.
2. Reduce no shows and early cancellations
The majority of cancellations happen in the first few months. No-show averages, or those that cancel before the first payment is taken, sits at around 8% and cancellations can hit 15-20% before three months on certain channels of recruitment. Knowing your own hot spots, by channel, audience and product, will enable you to build supporter journeys to reduce attrition.
Think about some of the ways you can engage with your RG supporters:
- Welcome your supporters as soon as you can and certainly within the first 2 weeks. This can reduce attrition by up to 20%
- Ongoing communications in the early months can help increase the engagement and relationship reducing cancellations in the early months by up to 40%
By setting up automated communications through your response handling partner, you can do this through a single set up delivering targeted communications to each of your identified segments.
It's very tempting to think that if we don’t remind players that they’re supporting us, they won’t cancel. But actually, lifetime value is built through lasting, ongoing relationships that take supporters on a journey with you. You will improve retention over time through:
- thanking players at key attrition points,
- letting them know you value and appreciate them,
- showing them the impact their support is making,
- making winning tangible.
3. Encourage upsell or cross-sell
Upgrades, when done well, generate loyalty and a higher lifetime value from your supporters. It’s best to thank and engage alongside the ask. Phone works well, with up to 15% response rates. We find an early upgrade ask can work well when combined with a thank you.
The ideal for most charities is to invite the new lottery player into a wider, longer-term relationship with the charity. Use your data analysis to identify which segments would be interested in which messages and additional ways to give from your charity – and test approaches to engage and build your relationship over time.
4. Diversify your acquisition channels
We not only recommend that you expand your methods of acquisition for new players, but that you also ensure the message is consistent across all media. This will increase your impact and optimise your overall investment.
Face to Face (F2F) has traditionally been the go-to for lottery acquisition either directly or as a regular giving drop ask – and it’s still the top way to recruit new players to your lottery. But we also know it might not be accessible to all charities. In these cases alternative recruitment methods need to be employed.
By diversifying your acquisition channels you are able to continue to acquire players at a sustainable level alongside, or without, F2F. Think about organic channels such as your own retail outlets, social media, website and volunteer, staff and corporate networks as well as paid channels such as DRTV, social ads and direct mail.
The key is in the weekly lottery player relationship
To summarise, the key to successful weekly lottery retention and lifetime value is building a successful two-way personal relationship with your supporters. That starts with acquisition and their first experience of you and continues throughout their lifetime with your charity.
Woods Valldata are specialists in weekly lottery strategy. When you work with us on your weekly lottery you have access to our friendly experts to support your:
- Data analysis and player profiling
- Weekly lottery acquisition strategy including programme forecasting
- Ask strategy including upgrades and reactivation programmes
- Supporter journey strategy involving key touchpoints and milestone communications planning
- Automated communications providing a highly personalised package of thanking and administrative digital and postal communications
Sound good? Drop us a line today to talk through how we can partner with you to enhance your weekly lottery retention and acquisition.
