Performance marketing is at the top of the marketing agenda, and for charity brands all too often direct to consumer equates to a marketing strategy that goes direct to digital channels. There is no question that digital offers significant benefits, the holy grail of very low entry cost and rapid scalability. Plan International, RSPCA and Cats Protection are amongst our charity clients that are running successful digital fundraising campaigns.

The challenge facing TV

There seems to be a feeling amongst charity marketers and fundraisers that TV is ‘past its sell-by date’ for traditional donor recruitment.

Beyond that, there is a wider negative backdrop too, with industry and media commentators focusing on the decline of linear TV viewing with the migration of audiences to SVOD and other online platforms.

As an agency heavily involved in the sector, we keep hearing the same refrain, that ‘the old DRTV regular donor recruitment model is broken’ and how charity advertisers across the sector are experiencing diminishing returns from DRTV.

How brands can meet this challenge

Yet despite these stereotypes and misconceptions, our research shows charity DRTV activity last year is more than double vs ten years ago and has grown steadily in each of the last five years:

1. Whilst 16-34 audiences of linear TV are migrating to VOD & online in huge numbers, the younger audience is less relevant for charity RG donor recruitment. The centre of gravity for regular donors very much remains ‘Dorothy Donor’ that is, older and mid to upmarket women. TV is actually becoming relatively more efficient for this core donor recruitment audience as their linear TV viewing is in growth.
2. Nielsen data endorses the key role of TV in driving charity fundraising growth. Due to the lack of transparency inherent in the medium, Nielsen data for digital is inaccurate; however, the directional trend is clear.
3. Finally, the DRTV programmes we manage for our own clients. Whilst across our charity clients we have diversified programmes into different fundraising products, response channels, payment channels, and media strategies, we also have many ‘traditional’ regular donor TV programmes that are performing as well as ever and often significantly better relative to other donor recruitment channels. Examples of large-scale JAA client RG donor recruitment DRTV programmes in growth include Cats Protection, The Donkey Sanctuary, Four Paws, Plan International, RSPCA, Sightsavers, and World Animal Protection.

The fact is that DRTV is still the major driver of scale and efficiency for paid media fundraising programmes. The formula for success is easy to define but not so easy to realise: specialist expertise and rigour.

Contrary to popular misconception DRTV should not been discounted as a recruitment channel, but it does need to be managed by an agency with specialist expertise