Ever since 2015, Cats Protection has come top of all the charities that measure their supporters’ loyalty with About Loyalty. This was the case in 2015 when they were one of the charities to take part in the initial pilot, and this has remained the case every year we have run the research since.
“Yeah, yeah – it’s cat lovers giving to a cat charity” I hear you say. And there’s some truth in this. Cats Protection knows its audience love cats and they deliver on this in their communications.
But if this is all it’s down to then why should Cats Protections Loyalty have increased every year? That’s what Lee Derrick from Cats Protection spoke about at Loyalty Day.
There were two themes that stood out to me about an organisation that is absolutely passionate about growing its supporters’ loyalty.
The first of these was the importance of having a robust measure of loyalty and using this measure to drill down and develop targeted plans for growing it. Lee highlighted that satisfaction was their lowest score, so they focussed there. And he showed us how it was lowest amongst those donors who have been with them for longer and those who are more wealthy which informed their targeting.
But, like Hayley from M&S, Lee talked about how important the culture of the organisation is. Cats Protection is a large charity by any measure, but Lee talked about how important it is to maintain a ‘small-charity mentality’ and how this is critical in being close to supporters and understanding what they think. “There’s still a passion in the charity for giving supporters what they want.”.
We know from working with Cats Protection that this is the tip of the iceberg. Cats Protection has a huge focus on data and insight, which is at the heart of decision making. They are working closely with their adoption centres to create coordinated supporter journeys. They are developing new products that meet new supporter needs. And so much more.
What Lee is most happy about is the fact that Cats Protection has stayed at the top of the table at the same time as going through massive growth in both the numbers of supporters and value. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised… we have seen in all our research how growing loyalty is a predictor of growing value. Cats Protection is the purrfect (see what I did there) example of this.
It is no fluke that they are at the top of the loyalty league table. The challenge is there for every other charity to try and catch them!
You can watch Lee’s talk here.
If you’d like to know more about how About Loyalty can help you measure the loyalty of your supporters, change the culture of your organisation to put supporters at the heart of your communications or to create supporter strategies and experiences that keep supporters coming back, give us a call today.
Roger: 07929 208 848
Richard: 07703 483 220