October NewsWaves 2018
Table of Contents
Twenty Years of Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation: RBFF Celebrates Platinum Anniversary
RBFF celebrated 20 years of recruiting, retaining and reactivating (R3) anglers and boaters through its marketing campaigns, partnerships, grants and more earlier this month.
On October 7, 1998, RBFF was founded and tasked with reversing the trend of waning angler and boater participation – a critical mission to ensure conservation funds for generations to come. Since its inception, RBFF has worked to educate consumers, bring them to the water to try fishing and boating, keep them active and work with state fish & wildlife agencies and the industry to bring lapsed participants back.
“In the years leading up to RBFF’s founding, fishing participation was down and critical conservation programs were suffering as a result,” said RBFF President and CEO Frank Peterson. “I feel we at RBFF have corrected-course. Fishing participation has increased nearly 20% over the last 10 years, due in part to our marketing efforts, partnerships and programs, and we are making strong progress toward our 60 in 60 goal.”
Critical to RBFF’s success has been the inclusion of emerging audiences in the foundation’s marketing, communications and programs. As the United States continues to grow more diverse each year, effectively engaging these audiences will prove more and more critical to our industry’s success. Encouragingly, RBFF’s work in this area is resonating. Female anglers accounted for 45% of new participants and Hispanic participation is at its highest level (4.2 million) since data on this segment was first collected.
Michigan Reactivates Women Anglers and Engages First Time Buyers
In 2017, Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MI DNR) set out to engage lapsed female anglers using funding from RBFF’s R3 Grants. This program earned over $42,000 in revenue! For more information please read the full case study.
MI DNR also sent various communications to retain first-time license buyers. While the program didn’t meet their 5% retention goal of first-time license buyers, there’s still a lot of valuable takeaways from the campaign available in the case study.
The complete list of case studies can viewed on the RBFF R3 webpage. If you have any questions, please contact Joanne Martonik at jmartonik@rbff.org.
Idaho Fish & Game Retaining Anglers, Earning Revenue
This past June, Idaho Fish & Game reached out to retain anglers who had purchased a three-year license in 2015, but had not yet purchased one in 2018.
With a simple postcard mailing, they were able to earn over $9,500 in revenue!
“We wanted to test a traditional direct mail program and see if this marketing tactic would still be effective in the age of ‘all things digital,’” said Alan J. Kahn, Idaho Fish & Game Bureau Chief – Communications & Marketing. "Although this was a small test and only sent to 782 individuals, the overall ROI percentage on the license sales alone, was quite impressive at 937%, including staff time. We will look to execute more of these types of programs in the future and build upon our success.”
Check out the overview for more information. For other state success stories, please visit the R3 webpage. If you have any questions, please contact Joanne Martonik at jmartonik@rbff.org.