Capabilities
Non-profit organizations need more than a one-size-fits-all solution to help fully realize their unique vision and calling. Masterworks is an agile partner, navigating change with confidence to address today's marketing, fundraising, and engagement challenges and to seize tomorrow's opportunities.
Our full-service agency elevates direct-response marketing and fundraising through dynamic innovation that helps organizations grow and thrive.
Masterworks partners with non-profit organizations as a true extension of their team in order to help accomplish their mission. Our Full-Service model brings together our team of experts — from strategists to analysts, creative directors to proofreaders, production managers to project managers, and more. We come alongside an organization to understand their work, their goals, and their needs, and we develop and execute plans to fulfill those goals.
Digital Media
Recognizing the evolving digital landscape, we spearhead a digital-first approach for audience development, new donor acquisition, and cultivation. Leveraging our proprietary ad network, we offer creative solutions across contemporary platforms, including display, social, video, and native, fostering effective engagement and growth in the digital space.
Our Always On® digital media approach has been game-changing for digital fundraising. Many of our clients are now acquiring more than half or more of their new donors online. Too often, digital media is used as a support channel, when it should be a backbone of awareness generation, new donor acquisition, and donor cultivation and upgrade. Always On® is a 24/7/365 digital media program constantly optimized to attract and engage prospects, active donors, and lapsed donors to deepen their support of your organization through financial contributions. We consistently test and modify your best content and offers, then optimize to match the right message to the right audience at the right time on the right platform.
We consider digital media to include all of the commonly used contemporary platforms, including:
Fundraising Through Consistency
Display is the original form of online advertising. With the distinct benefit of showing up just about anywhere you go online, Display banners are great for generating and maintaining brand awareness. But they are also highly effective for cart abandonment campaigns, creating additional opportunities to convert people who didn’t complete their transaction. By targeting your audience wherever they go online, Display ads create consistency with your campaign, heighten awareness, and lead to conversion.
Fundraising in Community
Social can encompass all social media platforms that have an ad network, but Facebook (including Instagram) remains the 800-pound gorilla. Facebook has a wide variety of creative ways to attract, engage, and convert people using stories, links, videos, images, and slideshows. Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms like Pinterest and TikTok are useful not only for direct response marketing (conversion), but also for peer-to-peer fundraising, brand engagement, community building, and demonstrating credibility (social proof).
Fundraising Through Content
With more users watching more videos in a variety of different ways, video ads present fundraisers with prime opportunities for data collection, brand exposure, enhanced targeting, and conversion through high-impact content. This includes Connected TV (CTV) opportunities to reach people streaming on their televisions.
Fundraising in Context
You’ve probably seen a Native ad today without realizing it. This platform places an organization’s stories into the Recommended Content section of a publisher’s website as if it were part of that publisher’s content. This platform’s specialty is driving an enormous amount of interested people to your website at a low cost so they can be retargeted later.
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Direct Mail
With expertise in strategy, segmentation, print production, and creative, we excel in crafting direct mail campaigns that drive durable donor engagement. As the dynamics of direct mail evolve and the ways constituents engage change, we adapt by optimizing, streamlining, and enhancing direct mail programs for increased efficiency and effectiveness.
Masterworks has over 30 years of direct mail fundraising experience, and we are experts in strategy, segmentation, print production, and creative which leads to effective acquisition and cultivation campaigns. Not only that, as the economics of direct mail change over time, and the channels by which constituents are engaging with your organization have changed, we have continued to evolve as well - continuing to optimize, streamline, and make direct mail programs more efficient and effective.
Since our inception, Masterworks has delivered high-quality direct mail on behalf of our clients. We manage the entire process from planning to execution within our robust network of printing and logistics partners. In addition to these strategic partnerships, we have a full in-house team of print buyers and production specialists who oversee all production jobs. Our mail shops are carefully vetted, required to follow strict protocols, and provided with detailed production specs. Our capabilities include both digital and litho printing, access to specialty equipment, and in-house data processing. Our QA/QC process is finely tuned, and our error rate is lower than the industry average (less than 2%).
Masterworks mails tens of millions of pieces of mail for clients each year. This enables us to negotiate deep volume discounts and secure priority scheduling status. Masterworks leverages a network of logistics providers to ensure the best commingle/freight costs and on-time delivery, with accurate mail tracking. We proactively make recommendations on formats, materials, and postage methods when we believe it can save money or improve your results. And because of our solid vendor relationships, we can address issues or potential problems quickly and fairly. We are committed to providing the industry’s best production quality and most reliable mail delivery, at the most competitive price.
In the realm of outreach, email stands as a pivotal and affordable tool that requires its own tailored strategies and tactics. Our adept team is able to handle every aspect of the email process, from crafting compelling content to designing visually engaging templates and deploying automations seamlessly.
Masterworks will write, design, develop, and deploy emails of all kinds. To cut through the noise and get results, Masterworks has developed a playbook of optimized email templates designed to work alone and together to increase an organization’s relational touchpoints with constituents and convert them from a donor to a donor for life. Our approach to email cultivation is a combination of automations triggered by user behavior, email series that deepen engagement with the brand, and campaign emails designed to increase giving.
With inboxes as crowded as they are, we recommend a robust email schedule where you are engaging current donors with opportunities to donate frequently.
We have the capability and capacity to execute as many emails are needed for your program. We develop custom emails day in and day out for a wide range of organizations, offers, and efforts. Our creative team is committed to crafting every email in a way that is specifically tailored to your Mission’s brand, messaging, and preference.
Masterworks is comfortable and proficient in nearly every contemporary Email Service Provider (ESP). We will quickly adapt to the templates, list management, and deploy functions of your current ESP. We have a team of email developers that has deep experience in email HTML as well as code for all accompanying landing pages, donation pages, homepage banners, and onsite promotions.
Strategy & Forecasting
At the core of our approach is the creation of holistic strategies and comprehensive in-year and long-term plans tailored to the specific goals of organizations. Drawing on years of experience, we collaborate closely with organizations to introduce innovative solutions that address their most significant challenges, fostering a strategic partnership aimed at achieving sustained growth.
The ways we help organizations raise money and strengthen their ministries continue to change and rapidly advance. We have embraced the idea that everything we do needs to be in a constant state of innovation, whether the tried and true tactics of direct response or the bleeding edge of digital and Artificial Intelligence. It is in our DNA to always push the envelope to multiply impact. Many ministries have come to us wanting to go bigger, better, faster, and further. We have taken it as a challenge and mandate to partner with them in their growth.
One of the hallmarks of Masterworks is our commitment to innovation and best practices. Every agency will talk about their commitment to innovation. However, Masterworks established a Strategic Innovation department many years ago. We don’t just look outside our walls for best practices; we create them. For example, we established our digital marketing program 18 years ago — long before other agencies were investing in what has now become an essential component of any fundraising program.
We continue to invest in technology, which is evident in our advancement of machine learning to drive technology informed audience selection, creative, offers, and more. New technology spans every department in our agency. We are committed to continuous learning, thinking smarter, and becoming increasingly strategic as we provide clients with the best results possible.
The most important metric we use to determine the health of a direct response program is long-term ROI. One of your largest line items is what you spend on new donor acquisition. For that reason, it’s critically important that you allocate your acquisition budget based on long-term ROI (5 years) as opposed to basing your decision on first gift metrics. While first gift metrics like response rate, average gift, and ROI are important, they won’t tell you how well your investment is doing over time.
One of the reasons over half of new donors for our mission clients are being acquired online is because we know that digitally acquired donors have 2 ½ to 3 times the long-term value compared to direct mail acquired donors. This is reflected in our new donor acquisition strategies.
For any given impact, like a direct mail appeal, we evaluate results by looking at things like response rate, average gift, gross revenue, net income, net yield per thousand mailed (NYPM), and ROI.
Every year, our team provides our mission clients with a robust set of benchmarks that cover different KPIs. These include revenue growth, retention by life cycle, second-gift conversion of new donors, active donor growth, new donor growth, growth in new digital donors and the percentage of revenue from high-value donors.
We also provide our full-service MRI clients with a demographical review of their file annually that covers items like the age and gender of active donors and our missions with a geographical review of their data, such as donor value by zip codes and active donor penetration.
We believe that every healthy and growing ministry needs a recurring donor program. The good news is that we have experience with dozens and dozens of organizations converting general donors to recurring donors. We’ve learned over the years that it’s not enough to provide donors with the opportunity to give monthly. Ideally, you should build out your recurring donor program so that it creates a real experience for the donor. We use sophisticated segmentation and modeling to determine which general donors are likely to convert. Using this modeling, we can provide the right donors with the recurring donor offer while protecting upfront ROI by providing other donors with the single gift ask. We also build our digital media plans with dedicated spend toward recurring donor conversion — boosting the long-term value of newly acquired online donors by getting them into a sustainer relationship immediately.
We then track performance — retention, gift frequency, additional giving — in our Donor Management Scorecard, which utilizes a sustainer life cycle. This allows us to track the percentage of donors converting into the sustainer program by life cycle to ensure it’s on track with the plan.
Data & Analytics
Our agency empowers nonprofits to leverage data and analytics, gaining valuable insights to maximize impact in ministry and fundraising. From capturing and processing terabytes of data to visualizing and dissecting trends and opportunities, Masterworks' dedicated data team is committed to the science of data and its crucial role in the success we deliver for our clients.
Epiphany
Epiphany is our proprietary data platform that enables Masterworks and our clients to have a 360-degree view of a donor’s online and offline activity — transactional and behavioral. Epiphany’s reporting and analytics capabilities are accessible directly by our clients via secure login, including donor life cycle trends, revenue reports, digital media performance, and donor profiling.
Donor Management Scorecard
The Donor Management Scorecard (DMS) is our file health analysis tool, and the life cycle framework established in this tool captures the progression of donor relationships from acquisition to retention, as well as lapsing and reactivation. The quantitative analysis provided through this tool captures trends in the most critical performance metrics like second year and multi year retention. The DMS provides the team with a donor file performance assessment and year-to-date progress reports on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The DMS not only shows five-year trends, but it can also be used on a quarterly basis to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies and tactics. The DMS is available for download at any time from Epiphany and is updated monthly at the close of our clients’ monthly books. We also review the KPIs as part of our recurring results meetings.
Your DMS life cycle file composition and giving trends are used to predict future annual performance within our revenue forecasting tool, the Dynamic Yearly Projector (DYP). With this tool, we are able to anticipate how things like acquisition volume, channel and value, retention and reactivation, giving frequency, and average gift amounts all influence future revenue and help support long-term planning decisions.
Data Product Offerings:
Masterworks Response Index (MRI) is a cutting-edge donor audience selection model, created to select those most likely to respond and highest value donors in your direct mail and telemarketing campaigns. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning with data from your donor giving history, MRI empowers your organization to make informed decisions that drive meaningful impact and exceptional returns.
Key Benefits:
- Enhanced Net Income Performance: MRI can enhance your campaigns' net income performance among active donors. By identifying those most likely to give, you optimize your outreach efforts, making each communication count.
- New Donor Second Gift Conversion: Converting first-time donors into loyal supporters is a challenge every organization faces. MRI's advanced predictive modeling aids in pinpointing the optimal mailings and calls for second gift conversion, fostering deeper relationships from the outset.
- Lapsed Donor Reactivation: MRI doesn't just help you regain lapsed donors — it does so with precision. Utilizing a defined cost per reactivation and payback objective, MRI ensures your resources are utilized effectively, delivering results that align with your goals.
- Efficiency and Retention: The ultimate goal of MRI is to streamline your outreach while boosting your return on investment (ROI). By predicting the donors most likely to respond and contribute significantly, MRI enables efficient resource allocation and heightened ROI. Simultaneously, our model safeguards donor retention, striking the balance between growth and relationship preservation.
Translate what your data is telling you! The Donor Management Scorecard (DMS) equips you with a comprehensive donor giving report, providing an in-depth understanding of your organization's performance.
With the DMS, you'll gain:
- 1.Two Years of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Delve into a comprehensive overview of KPIs for two complete fiscal years, understanding historical performance to shape your organization's growth trajectory.
- 2.Fiscal Year to Date (FYTD) Analysis: Stay current with ongoing performance trends. The DMS offers a snapshot of FYTD KPIs for two complete fiscal years, enabling agile strategy adjustments.
- 3.Five-Year Audience Lifecycle Breakdown: Acquire a holistic view of KPIs across distinct audience lifecycles over five years. This long-term perspective aids in identifying patterns and planning for sustained success.
- 4.Audience Lifecycle and Segment Performance: Gain insights into performance by audience lifecycle and segments, enabling precise strategy tailoring.
We clean and update your address data using the best sources like NCOA, PCOA, and PCOA+. Clean data means better results — higher mail deliverability and improved data for smarter campaigns.
With a Data Hygiene project, you will get:
- Clean Address Data: Our advanced tech and top sources keep your data accurate and updated.
- Enhanced Deliverability: Reach more donors with cleaner data, ensuring your message gets through.
- Smarter Insights: Match your data for better modeling and strategic decisions.
Masterworks Demographic Appends enrich your donor data with essential insights, helping you target, market, and fundraise smarter. Masterworks Demographic Appends offer more than just data — they provide a window into the characteristics that define your donors. By appending this information, you gain the ability to answer vital targeting questions, including:
- What is the gender distribution within your donor file?
- How does age play a role in your donor base?
- What is the wealth profile of your donors?
- How can you tailor your messaging to resonate with different demographics?
- Which segments of your donors might be more likely to respond to certain campaigns?
Masterworks brings you the best sources for pinpointing email addresses in your contact list. Email appends open doors to effective communication and social media matching. With our Email Appends, you gain access to the most reliable information, ensuring your communications hit the mark every time.
What You’ll Get:
- Digital Reach: Speak to your audience where they're active — online. Email appends let you connect through the preferred channel today.
- Broadened Strategies: Connect mailing addresses to emails for a wider online presence. Reach out through emails and digital platforms alike.
- Efficiency Boost: Save time and resources while nurturing relationships using the digital landscape.
Client Partners
Masterworks Portfolio Companies
Advertising is an infinite endeavor. It’s not about winning; it’s about continuing to play. And while staying memorable isn’t a game that can be won—it can be lost by not playing at all.
We specialize at the intersection of digital media and engaged Christian audiences — our highly targeted media solutions empower you to amplify your brand’s awareness, foster meaningful engagement, and experience growth from Christian audiences in any digital media channel.
The Infinite Network
Our Christian ad network — featuring 150+ publishers includingBible Gateway, Christianity Today,and Biblia — provides unparalleled reach and engagement with
a Christian audience.
Always On
Our comprehensive digital media product, Always On, provides a full-funnel approach across multiple channels to amplify awareness, increase engagement, and grow core KPIs.
Culture-bending Creative
Our creative team excels at understanding your brand
and crafting resonant ads that foster trust and relevance with your core target audience.
Epiphany Analytics
Our real-time media analytics engine, Epiphany, empowers you to better understand your audiences based on their behaviors and take action to better engage with them.
Campaign Management
We can launch your campaign across any digital media platform and optimize it for your specific goals including Paid Search, Programmatic Display, Connected TV, Influencers, Sponsored Content, Podcasts, Social, and more.
¡Alcanza a los Cristianosen Español!
Reach the fastest-growing Christian audience in their native language through our Spanish network.
In today’s rapidly-changing world, Christ-led brands face more unique challenges in staying Relevant & Resonant than ever before.
We specialize in market disruption through brand building and R&D for Christ-led brands who want to effectively rally passionate audiences and disrupt this world for the sake of the next — God’s Kingdom come.
Disruptive R&D
We help Christ-led brands become the poster-children causes & categories by finding new and relevant markets
to disrupt and develop fresh and resonant subbrands and products to rally passionate audiences toward.
Our R&D team includes expert interviewers, focus group facilitators, data scientists, subject-matter experts, program evaluators, on-trend designers, and product developers who help you see the intersections between experiences, demographics, motivations,
and brand influences, and how that relates to relevant audience behaviors and what will truly resonate with them.
And then we pray a lot, make the things, market the things, and watch the Spirit move.
Distinctive Branding
We believe that true Relevance
& Resonance happens through creating brands & experiences that distinctively builds God’s Kingdom, and leaves room for
the Holy Spirit to point audiences back to way of Jesus. In a nutshell, we build brands that work hard to outmarket the competition, but never outmarket God.
Our brand team leverages specialized brand & marketplace research, appreciative inquiry, brand strategy, architecture, and a lot of prayer, to revitalize your brand among your core audiences and discover how to show up and engage the next generation.
And of course, we do stunning verbal and visual identity development in addition to brand leadership training, implementation, coaching, guardianship, and brand experience development.
Donors get bored of the same old experiences with organizations. And bored donors leave.
SUBLIMITY helps busy leaders create, launch and scale bold new experiences that reenchant their audiences.
We specialize in Reenchantment. Does “reenchant” sound too grand? Well, your audience must be reenchanted, if you really want to grow.
Experience is the strategy that always wins.
We help you create remarkable experiences that audiences old and new will always love, no matter the political climate or trend du jour.
Know your people.
C.S. Lewis wrote “you can’t study men, you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing.”
Eight years and counting, knowing your audience members as whole people remains SUBLIMITY’s key to co-creating remarkable experiences your donors, volunteers and advocates love.
Human-centered everything.
While we do all the heavy lifting, our highly-disciplined, human-centered process involves your team and audience members in the co-creation of evocative films, interactive stories, subscriber programs, “vinyl strategies” and other defining moments. These unique journeys fire the imagination, cause unprecedented action and drive real growth for the long term.
Your executive producers.
It’s time to bring your new tell-your-friends-worthy experience to life. We do that by serving as your end-to-end executive producers, ensuring that the new experience launches true to vision, and with the audience’s fingerprints all over it, ready to soar into the months and years ahead.
Create and send nonprofit mail directly from the web.
NovaMail revolutionizes the world of nonprofit direct mail, making it effortless for organizations to create and send impactful mailings. We provide the tools and resources you need to streamline your direct mail program, ensuring cost-effective campaigns that reach your audience effectively.
Value-Driven
Novamail offers cost-effective pricing where you only pay for what you mail, ensuring great value for your marketing campaigns.
Production Efficiency
Novamail streamlines production, ensuring fast campaign execution, and enhances mailing list accuracy with NCOA and CASS address correction.
Proven Creative
You can explore creative options with a proven format catalog, new packages to keep your creative fresh, smart blocks for data accuracy, and pro-tips for optimal results.
Ease of Use
What you see is what you mail. Novamail offers a user-friendly design interface, easy content customization, and efficient data import for a hassle-free experience.