Katie Bannister is the Senior Mobilisation Communications Manager at Which? the UK’s not-for-profit consumer champion. Which? use Engaging Networks to deliver campaigns, emails and automated journeys to their audience…
Which? have been working to increase engagement and boost retention among their supporters. “After someone signs a petition we send them on a 2 week welcome journey, contacting them every 4 days with a different topic” explains Katie Bannister, who has overseen the development of the journeys Which? have been testing.
The team at Which? vary the actions they share with new supporters frequently, keeping their welcome journey topical and relevant while swapping out quizzes, polls and petitions to help build engagement. New content is tested with their existing audience, when it does well, it’s swapped into their welcome journey where it might be used for a few months.
“At Which? We’re lucky, we don’t have huge issues with internal silos, it means we see each supporter as an individual without tying them to a set of asks or thematic areas…”
– Katie Bannister, Which?
However, the one thing that always stays the same, is the first email, where they ask new supporters what matters to them. “It’s like getting to know someone” says Katie “you don’t just talk about you, you listen, find out about someone and treat them as an individual.” That first email also plays an important role more broadly at Which? feeding into their topic modelling process, helping influence their communications and messaging.
“After those 2 weeks are up, we focus on enabling and empowering our audiences with actions we share at least once a fortnight” explains Katie “we KPI ourselves on deeper engagement, not clicks or opens; for example in our Affordable Food campaign we asked people to share their stories with us and received over 20,000, with almost half agreeing to a follow-up, giving us a huge bank of potential case-studies!”
The team at Which? can also predict the long-term return from an acquisition channel through the level of engagement an audience has over their 2 week welcome journey “We use those KPI’s to decide which acquisition channels we’re going to invest in, supporters from sources like Care2 have performed really well, which is why we do so much work with them.”
“Engagement and action is at the heart of everything we do. We use it to decide what we send and what we share. It even decides what acquisition channels we invest in…”
– Katie Bannister, Which?
As well as helping develop a more efficient and effective acquisition process, the journey supporters go on is helping drive retention and engagement across Which’s? supporter base “Right now, out of the hundreds of thousands of campaign supporters around 80% engage regularly with our emails” says Katie “we’re currently exploring a more multi-channel approach to push that number even higher.”
Care2 are the World’s largest online community empowering people to take action on important causes, while helping charities find new supporters to help them deliver their mission. They are an Engaging Networks accredited partner and integrate seamlessly with our platform. You can find out more about Care2 at https://www.care2.com/
