Monday 12 April 2010

Door-to-door?

I love Skype.

From video conference calls to one-line greetings, it offers great flexibility in keeping in touch.

This morning a friend Skyped the following one-line question...

"Tell me why I would or wouldn't spend some money on door-to-door"

I had just a couple of minutes so I fired off a quick reply. Between new job, new baby and new house, my blogging capacity is still limited so I thought I'd share it with you here - as I wrote it...

"Would: what you see is what you get (to use a photography analogy), i.e. you get the donors you pay for, guaranteed. And the lapse rates are well understood so you can play with Excel to good effect to produce a forecast.

Wouldn't: it has gone to the dogs, i.e. D2D used to be a route to good quality, low attrition donors, a) because it was new and b) because some providers still used a two-stage approach where a leaflet would be left so the donor could take time to make the decision. That yielded lower volume but very high quality.

So, would I or wouldn't I? D2D is now in F2F territory with regards to attrition and I don't think I could justify the low ROI. That said of course, if other acquisition channels aren't working, the pay-by-results nature of D2D may push the swingometer back."

Do you agree?

What would you have said?