SPSS - UK Customers

NSPCC

SPSS Inc. software discovers the key predictors of donor response

The situation

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has been protecting children from abuse for over 100 years. It is the only charity in the UK with statutory powers enabling it to safeguard children at risk.

As with all successful charities, it relies on donations from both the public and corporate enterprises. With the advent of cheaper computing and increasingly sophisticated database and analysis software, more and more charities are able to predict who will respond to their campaigns, thus saving them money in direct marketing promotions.

The challenge

In recent years, the NSPCC has been very successful in recruiting new donors into their £2 per month regular gift programme. However, traditional segmentation methods (eg, recency, frequency and value analysis) did not allow it to distinguish donors within this group because the majority gave £2 (the value) on a monthly basis, making their scores for frequency and recency the same. The NSPCC was looking for another method that would look at other internally held variables on the database so that it could segment this ever‑growing group of donors.

The solution

Tracey Claro, direct marketing development manager at the NSPCC, describes the situation: “In the past, we have used an external agency to carry out this type of analysis for us. However, we couldn’t justify spending a large sum of donated income on this project. We were aware of CHAID analysis software, and that this might be the best tool for our requirements.” The charity subsequently obtained evaluation copies of IBM SPSS Statistics Base and AnswerTree®.

The NSPCC ended up running their whole regular donor segmentation project using the one-month IBM SPSS Statistics Base evaluation program. “We found the software very intuitive to use, which meant we were able to really maximise the four weeks during which we had the evaluation copy. The software was so intuitive that the learning curve was remarkably short,” Ms Claro explains.

The success of adopting an SPSS Inc. data analysis solution, even for this short period of time, led the NSPCC to purchase IBM SPSS Statistics Base and AnswerTree as the building blocks of a data mining environment. They realised that if their database grew and more sophisticated analysis was required, they could get professional training from SPSS Inc. or upgrade to the company’s other SPSS data analysis technologies.

… a one‑off analysis … would have cost us twice as much as the SPSS Inc. option. Also, mailing donors at an appropriate frequency will reduce our costs by approximately 35 per cent. And we also expect to improve our retention rates.
Tracey Claro
Direct Marketing Development Manager
NSPCC

The results

The results of the donor segmentation exercise enabled the NSPCC to discover the key predictors of response to their donor mailings. That enabled them to save money by developing the most appropriate mailing programme to new donor segments, and by mailing the most responsive donors more frequently than donors who have a lower propensity to respond.

As well as the obvious cost savings, Ms Claro also noted that “This will help us to develop relationships with those donors who want to receive information from the NSPCC, and have a more involved role in the work of the society. The main outcome of this work will therefore enhance our return on investment by improving retention rates within this valuable group of donors.”

By taking sophisticated data analysis in-house, the NSPCC was able to have more control over its data segmentation exercises, and to implement direct marketing donor campaigns more efficiently. Ms Claro concludes: “We obtained a quote for getting this analysis from an external agency. For a one‑off analysis, this would have cost us twice as much as the SPSS Inc. option. Also, mailing donors at an appropriate frequency will reduce our costs by approximately 35 per cent. And we also expect to improve our retention rates”.

Interested in how SPSS Inc. software can predict donor response? Download the NSPCC PDF here.

*IBM SPSS Statistics Base, formerly called SPSS® Statistics Base, and AnswerTree® are part of SPSS Inc.’s Predictive Analytics Software portfolio.