Next came a direct mail drop on Dec. 8 to 2,361 members, followed by a Jan. 5 e-mail blast to 1,666 members who hadn’t yet renewed. Tiller says as of press time, 725 members had re-upped, which was ahead of schedule for the organization that runs three-month-long renewal membership campaigns.
McMurrey says the January renewal drive marks another milestone—sending renewal requests two months ahead of the expiration date. Such campaigns historically would begin a month before the anniversary date, via direct mail.
“It’s 100 percent more than what we had [in previous campaigns], because we’ve never done that electronic communication at the beginning,” Tiller says. “Since we hit them up electronically for, virtually, a very, very low cost, and they came back electronically to us … we did not have to engage the paper campaign with them … We didn’t have to follow up with those two or three paper letters, along with the applications that went inside of them, along with the postage and everything else that went with it.”
“And, by the way, we didn’t offer any incentive to them,” McMurrey says.
E-mail Marketing that Works
