Robbins - Special Olympics

Special Olympics, Incorporated

About Special Olympics
Special Olympics is an international organization dedicated to empowering individuals with intellectual disabilities to become physically fit, productive and respected members of society through sports training and competition. Special Olympics offers children and adults with intellectual disabilities year-round training and competition in 26 Olympic-type summer and winter sports.

Special Olympics currently has over 60,000 donors who contribute $100 or more through the mail each year.

Project
The Winners Circle Campaign, Prospect & Renewal - 3 Individual Mailings.

Situation Analysis
As part of their multi-faceted national direct marketing program, the Winners Circle was a high dollar giving club for Special Olympics $100+ donors. Originally introduced in 1996 as a single campaign, this program had grown to a 3 part mailing series, contributing to a growing pool of $100+ donors.

Objectives
The objective was to take this fairly mature high dollar program to the next level by building a stronger relationship with the donors.

Obstacles
The biggest obstacle was the program’s success - and improving upon it!

Strategy
The overall strategy was two fold:

Refreshing the current program by ‘warming’ up the graphics, simplifying the letter and introducing new benefits.
Better recognition of donors through branding of the program

Implementation
The Special Olympics Major Donor club was branded by developing a unique, though programmatically synergistic, name and logo, i.e., Winners Circle. The initial offering was sent in a Closed-Face Monarch package, which included a two-page personalized Letter, Reply Slip, Reply Envelope and an Insert, which illustrated the recognition benefits by level.

Benefits were tangible and began at $100 and included items such as a Personalized Certificate, a Special Olympics video and a Special Olympics calendar. Each level was named appropriately Bronze, Silver and Gold.

Subsequent campaigns (since 2003) have included Handwritten Carrier Envelopes with a Personalized Note and Reply Slip and a simple but highly personalized Reminder.

In 2003, new graphics and colors were used to ‘put a face’ to the cause and make the overall appearance less institutional and more distinctive. In addition, new benefits were created to freshen the offer.

In 2004, ‘branding’ of the renewal program was tested - the Winners Circle logo was lasered on all mail pieces of a pool of active Winners Circle members. The objective of this was to improve overall retention of the Winners Circle members.

Results
Branding of the renewal program was tested for the first seven appeals of 2004. Our expectation would be that this approach would have minimal impact on the renewal mailing performance but would improve retention of donors in the Winners Circle program. We were pleasantly surprised to see that this approach lifted response rate an average of 2.3%/mailing. As a result the strategy was rolled out in July of 2004.

However, the real purpose behind the test was to improve retention of Winners Circle members. The branding test resulted in 22% more active Winners Circle members renewing their support in the September 2004 mailing. This increase translates into what could be an additional 7,000 more retained donors and $250,000 from this critical Winners Circle audience.