Overview:

It’s never ideal when a campaign doesn’t go according to plan, but there are interventions possible and takeaways to be learned. In general, successful campaigns are focused on mission and impact and are sent on a regular interval to warm up their audience to contribute. Here we go through what to do when a campaign doesn't work.

What can we do when a campaign doesn’t do well? Sometimes the advice to “send campaigns more frequently” simply won’t cut it. How can we support publications that lack a loyal, engaged audience — or what types of interventions can we suggest? How can we help clients be set up for successful future campaigning? Can we help them take a step back and analyze how product strategy plays a part in the success of reader revenue campaigns?

Rule out technical issues

If the campaign was sent and it did not generate any contributions, first eliminate the possibility that there was a technical problem. To do that, open the campaign in your email provider and check that everything works properly, including but not limited to redirect links from CTA buttons, text, etc. If possible, open the campaign on mobile and in any other email providers to check other formats as well.

If the email itself looks fine, check the payment platform to see if contributions came in but didn’t sync with ActiveCampaign. Make a test contribution to ensure that payments are able to go through.

If there was a technical issue, follow up with readers right away, sending a new campaign with corrected information and links, as well as an update message — and an apology, if necessary.

Review the campaign for best practices

Once you’ve made sure that there are no technical issues, review the campaign itself to see if it complies with best practices:

  • Identify the campaign CTA to see if it’s a clear and direct ask
  • Click on the contribution CTAs to make sure they are redirecting to the correct landing page
  • Review the full email to see if there are any additional links — besides the contribution CTA — that might distract the reader from the CTA
  • Additionally, check that the publication logo in the email header is linked to the contribution landing page. This is often the most-clicked object in an email

Check the campaign performance report to review two key metrics: unsubscribe rate and open rate. Evaluate if the unsubscribe rate is higher than the overall average or higher than similar, past campaigns. 

Additionally, review the email campaign and website for a messaging mismatch: does the language on the support page match the campaign? Create a separate landing page for specific campaigns so that when readers click to contribute, they see the same themes and messaging across all platforms. Reduce the cognitive burden for readers and make it easy for them to know how and why to give.

Review engagement data

Taking a broader view of the email audience’s engagement data can also provide some clues, and help surface issues in deliverability or the product in general. 

Determine if the open rate is significantly lower than other email messages, especially the newsletter product. If open rates are low across the board, then readers are probably not engaged enough with the overall product and won’t support it. 

To address this, first rule out deliverability issues. Use Google Postmaster tools to review the domain and sender reputations. A poor reputation would send your campaigns straight to spam, meaning no one would see the campaign. Also check that domain authentication is set up, especially DMARC and DKIM. If there are issues here, consider implementing a list cleaning automation and spending time to rebuild your sender reputation. 

If there are no clear deliverability issues, engage in a more in-depth review of the newsletter products, and perhaps the overall content strategy.

Consider the frequency of campaigns

If this is one of the first reader revenue campaigns a publication has sent, look at the whole view of the publication and how it presents itself to readers. Does the campaign introduce the publication and its mission and value before making the ask?

Keep in mind that users on a website do not often convert the first time they hit a paywall — usually, users must encounter a paywall multiple times. This translates to email users too: many readers often need to see messaging more than once to become a financial supporter.

If this is not one of the first reader revenue campaigns a publication has sent, use this data to evaluate campaign cadence and frequency, to determine if the publication is perhaps sending similar campaigns too often. We know from the data that publications that are successful in their campaign are campaigning often, but they’re also differentiating their appeals and reviewing what works best. 

You can also analyze the type of ask in the campaign and plan to utilize a different format in the next campaign, e.g. if this campaign was a longform, soft ask, consider crafting a short, direct ask for the next campaign. Consider reaching users across different platforms with an aligned message so that readers are seeing the same reader revenue messaging across all platforms.

Leverage audience and content data

If the publication has audience survey data, use this data to plan for the next campaign. If the publication doesn’t have an audience survey in the welcome series or data from a past — but recent — survey, consider recommending that they set up an audience survey to understand interests and preferences. In either case, develop targeted questions to identify content interests, demographics and engagement triggers.

Leverage the publication’s impact as well: consider aligning a campaign with a current event and tie that event to the impact that the publication is making in the community. Focusing on impact can resonate better with people and increase their likelihood of supporting.

Finally, use data on the best performing stories to align a campaign with that content. The publication knows from the hard data that those stories are relevant and/or useful to readers, and an appeal around an interesting story may connect with readers.

Ask readers directly

If you’ve run a few campaigns and are not seeing the conversion performance you’d expect, you can always ask readers directly. One way to do this is to send a survey immediately after a campaign to those who opened the email but didn’t convert — and ask them directly why they chose not to support and what could change their decision. Use a mix of multiple choice and open-ended questions so you can leverage more insight. 

Try an A/B test

After an unsuccessful campaign, take the data and use it to try an A/B test in the next campaign. Test two different subject lines, experiment with two different CTAs, compare a long message with a short message or try a campaign with an image against a campaign without an image — just to name a few. As a reminder, test one element at a time so you get accurate results on what was successful. Then use that data in future campaigns.

Conclusion

It’s never ideal when a campaign doesn’t go according to plan, but there are interventions possible and takeaways to be learned. In general, successful campaigns are focused on mission and impact and are sent on a regular interval to warm up their audience to contribute.

About BlueLena

BlueLena is a strategy consulting and audience management platform founded in 2020 to support the sustainability of independent local media. By combining cutting-edge technology with expert-driven services, BlueLena helps over 250 news organizations across North America develop and manage subscription, membership, and donation models. Its unique shared-resource management approach provides publishers, regardless of size, with access to enterprise-level tools and personalized support, enabling them to focus on high-quality journalism while building loyal, revenue-generating audiences. 

BlueLena is majority employee-owned, and backed by investors including Automattic (the parent company of WordPress), Local Media Association, and Old Town Media.