handshake's Social/Cause Industry Experience

Experience: Charities, Health & Human Services, Community Development Corporations, Community Development Financial Institutions, Environmental, Economic Development Programs, Unions, Visitor & Convention Bureaus

Specialties:

• Behavioral targets development and profiles
• Opportunities identification for development, social, or socio-economic impact and expansion
• Strategies, resources, tools and support needed to go after these opportunities
• Performance measurement and deliverables to help social/cause marketers sustain efficiencies and success
• Economic development applications that identify which specific types/brands of businesses are needed to bolster the local economy and reduce spillage to other markets

Results:

• Consumer targets much more specific to the actual message content, objectives, and critical missions of the organizations
• Dramatically improved results from many types of cause/social/economic initiatives, campaigns, and appeals.

Social/Cause Industry Case Studies

Case Study #1: Donations increase

Situation: A non-profit organization had difficulty sustaining and increasing donation levels

• Solution & Results: By segmeting letters or appeals to donors (using the same database, and without increasing mail volumes), handshake helped the organization increase donations by more than 75%.

Case Study #2: Support initiative to attract grocery store development for city of Detroit

Situation: handshake was asked to participate in the Detroit Fresh Food Initiative, established because the people in Detroit do not have access to a single grocery chain outlet. High disease growth rates and climbing health care costs are likely to be directly related to the lack of healthy foods access.

• Solution & Results: in support of the initiative, handshake provided and presented key findings regarding the market demand in Detroit for grocery store development:
  • The city is comprised of only 12 out of a total 66 possible household segments
  • Profiles of these households show:
    • They would eat healthier foods if they had access (healthy-minded aspirations, attitudes, and opinions)
    • They don't like to travel far to shop
    • They only eat fast food/unhealthy foods because they have no other options and are otherwise not likely to eat fast food
    • If grocery were present, they would purchase healthy foods and high margin products
    • They are extremely ad receptive, media involved, and responsive to coupon offers

Case Study #3: Support USDA/CA Dept. of Health "Champions for Change" program

Situation: The goal of the "Champions for Change" campaign, federally funded via the food stamp program, was to increase healthy eating habits among low-income households. handshake was contracted to provide behavioral targets, profiles, campaign input, direct mail lists, measurement, and optimization services.

• Campaign Details:
  • Client: California Department of Health & Human Services
  • Marketing targets requirements: Households in 185%+ poverty level census tracts
  • Tactics: grassroots, mass media, and direct mail. DM package included healthy eating tips and recipes from real Moms to real Moms, DVD, and business reply card (BRC)
• Results:
  • 1% program opt-in rate (BRCs)
  • High correlation between local organization presence and BRC response
  • Direct mail field research results: Measurable pre/post lift in recipients' "self efficacy and normative beliefs" (i.e., change in attitudes) and some (lesser) pre/post lift in "response efficacy"
    • Rare to achieve pre/post lift from one campaign tactic
  • Direct mail was 98% of total campaign responses but less than 10% of the total campaign spend
  • handshake presented key learning points from the campaign, including the following observations, as well as recommendations for future efforts:
    • Households that skewed toward unhealthy eating habits responded higher than healthy
    • Hispanics responded at significantly higher rates than other groups
    • Asian and African American groups performed below average, possibly due to most materials being bilingual

Case Study #4: Marketing to "the unbanked"

Situation: handshake presented a session on "how to compete against predatory and fringe lenders" at the Opportunity Finance Network conference session for CDFI/CDC attendees. Community development financial institutions and community development corporations were attendees of the marketing seminar.

• Key findings: among the market research/analysis provided by handshake at the conference:
  • 10 million households are "unbanked" and prone to fringe/predatory leanders.
    • These households are 794% more likely to look up pawn brokers in the Yellow Pages
  • There are 65,000 fringe/predatory lender locations in the U.S., versus around 1,000 CDFI/CDC locations
  • Households within the "unbanked" key are:
    • aspiring to get ahead and have successful lives, as revealed by their psychographic profiles
    • heavily involved with financial information media (e.g., Bloomberg, Forbes)
    • ad believers and highly susceptible to gimmicks/scams
  • Estimated yearly loss per household to fringe/predatory lending: $2K - $4K
  • Main barriers to overcome: products available, resources, brick & mortar, education
  • Take rates of traditional banking services are "off the charts", however, if offered

Case Study #5: lower cost of acquisition for recycling company

Situation: An appliance recycling program had a high cost per "recycle" order (cost of acquisition tripled as did the spend vs. previous campaigns), so handshake conducted an in-depth historical performance analysis that layered behavioral targets, tactics, expenditures, and markets into one "cost per order" picture.

• Campaign Details:
  • Tactics included broadcast TV and newsprint
  • Offer: $35 cash credit on utility bill when you recycle your old refrigerator
  • Market areas: limited to utility company footprints
  • Target: likely to have recently purchased a refrigerator or "in market" to purchase a new refrigerator; ad-receptive, environmentally-concerned, and smart with their money
• Key findings: handshake's historical performance analysis found that the main reasons for the higher cost per order were:
  • Demo was assumed to be ages 25-54, while the behavioral target skewed much older, 44+
    • This older skew was consistent with household-level profile of actual order records
    • Resulted in inefficiencies for all types of creative decisions/media spends
  • New tactic, broadcast TV, was heavily invested
    • Resulted in significant spill/waste into markets not serviced by utility companies
  • Newsprint mostly smaller community
    • Deeper buys resulted in over-saturation
    • Increased newsprint spend was not lined up with target concentrations/service areas
  • Long periods of "dark time"
    • Resulted in higher cost of acquisition due to having to rebuild momentum
• Key findings were accompanied by recommendations to improve results for future efforts.

See the case studies menu below for examples for other industries, our clients list for companies that have achieved similar results with handshake, or contact us at 516-625-5500 to get started.