The Hub

Balancing the Scales

The friction prevalent in this marketplace often sidelines marginal offers/packages, which consequently impacts small list owners and small nonprofit organizations or campaigns striving to benefit from low-risk, revenue-share based prospecting programs. There’s also an observed lack of transparency in the market, where  brokers provide creative to list owners at varying rates, sometimes charging inflated brokerage fees without disclosing this to the list owners or fundraising agencies.

We asked ourselves: if we could streamline the process, boost transparency, and automate substantial parts of the process, could  we reduce costs for some clients, while simultaneously increasing the yield for list owners? These  improvements would balance the scales, enabling the best candidates and programs to reap the utmost fundraising benefits in this fragmented market. And  it would serve donors by maximizing the amount of money that reaches the fundraising client.

So, what does this automation involve, and why is it beneficial?

While developing our management platform, we concentrated on eliminating the need for staff to complete repetitive tasks. Our rationale was simple: use our technology to reduce costs, boost efficiency, and benefit our clients. This is the driving force behind the integration of automated reporting and real-time performance indicators in our systems. By having immediate access to key data, we can rapidly make decisions based on comparing results  among numerous fundraising packages. List owners, who are obligated to maximize yield, require this information to make effective rollout decisions. If an agency or client cannot furnish this data promptly, they risk being surpassed by fundraising packages where such information is readily available. This is one method of creating an equitable environment.

Another critical feature is the automated  swapping of tracking links. Each list, each offer, and often each singular deployment necessitates a unique tracking code for proper revenue allocation and functional reporting. When dealing with HTML or SMS/MMS creative, manually replacing links can quickly lead to errors and consume valuable staff time – a task that can be effortlessly automated. Our system not only automates this step but also verifies the functionality of the links to  ensure they contain the correct tracking code, reducing error rates.

We also recognized the burden on agency staff tasked with managing testing and approvals for a package deployed across various lists handled by different brokers. It’s time-consuming to test each link, check the copy for changes, and review all other components prior to approving a deployment. However, if our system is generating the package with the links, we reasoned that we could employ our systems to check the copy for changes, verify the presence and validity of the correct links and tracking codes, and ensure overall sender compliance before even presenting the test to the final approver. We developed a dashboard that delegated approvers can use to review and approve packages before list owners dispatch them, significantly streamlining the workflow and reducing errors.