Case Study - Direct Mail Acquisition
Great Returns for the Zoological Society of Milwaukee!
In 2024, the Zoological Society of Milwaukee (ZSM) partnered with Membership Consultants to do a deep dive on their membership program through a membership audit and strategic plan. One of the recommendations from our audit and plan was to utilize direct mail and emails as an acquisition source. Prior to their first new member acquisition campaign (utilizing direct mail and email), ZSM generally gained most new members through onsite sales, digital ads, or other more organic means. With this new effort, our goal was to increase their new member totals and bring back lapsed members, while testing the use of direct mail and email for acquisition.
Celebrating the animals at the Milwaukee County Zoo—whom ZSM supports—we created a fun, animal-focused campaign that invited people to visit the Zoo utilizing a Zoo Pass to get the best deal on admission and discounts throughout the Zoo. The Zoo also utilized a cooler bag as a free member gift for joining during this campaign.
These additional acquisition efforts resulted in great increase for ZSM’s membership program. Direct mail was sent in two mailings to 75,000 people each, and the emails were deployed a total of 12 times to about 56,000 contacts. The campaign results exceeded projections while resulting in …
A 2.3% response rate
4,103 new/rejoined members
A $195 average gift
More than $799,000 in membership revenue
$0.13 cost for each dollar raised
A $7.62 ROI for every dollar spent
And the proof of multi-channel marketing efforts is apparent in these results, as those that received both the mail and emails brought in almost 60% of the new or recaptured members at 2,450 members and revenues of $472,000. And those that only received the email brought in 662 members and $126,000 in revenues—a great subcategory to include in our efforts!
Additionally, the overall revenue of the program exceeded our projections by more than $200,000!