The Solution

S&W believes that each of our clients, their missions, and their audiences are truly unique, and therefore their campaigns should be differentiated, exciting, and resonant. In an increasingly saturated content environment, S&W works to make sure that our campaigns are memorable and stand out. 

Based on that approach, we’ve implemented the following strategies for The Planetary Society: 

• Performing a new member experience assessment: This assessment was designed to assess TPS’ key strengths and to further enhance the pathway to membership. One key finding was the overall strength of TPS’ content—particularly its weekly newsletter, called The Downlink—which engages prospects and members in the latest space news in an exciting and memorable way. 

• Identifying opportunities with audiences, content, and offers: From our assessment, we found a) a well-cultivated and engaged prospect audience primed to become members, and b) an excellent content path to fold brand-new prospects into, so that they may eventually be primed for a membership ask themselves. We also found extremely strong membership join pages that placed an emphasis on approachable monthly payments for new members, with the benefit that they would easily and automatically renew and stay with The Planetary Society for years to come. 

• A strong partnership and a collaborative approach: S&W prides itself on truly working with its clients to meet and exceed the goals of our strategies. Together with The Planetary Society’s talented staff, we determine the audiences, channels, messaging and creative for each membership drive. We use our weekly meetings to have active discussions with TPS team members to make key decisions and adjust and enhance our campaigns on a consistent basis, ensuring that results are not just favorable, but long-lasting, steady, and enduring. 

• Resonant creative that showcases The Planetary Society: With its specialized and unique mission, our approach has been to truly showcase TPS and its community. In addition to expressing TPS’ tangible member benefits, our content approach for all TPS campaigns — especially its member drives — is to craft memorable copy and designs that promotes a sense of identity and belonging, showcases the Society’s community, and infuses science-based topics with emotive values-based messages. 

• Keeping member drives fresh with new voices, timely themes and public-facing goals: To ensure that each member drive is exciting and showcases TPS’ mission in action, we work with TPS to identify a new angle or theme for each campaign – such as this past spring’s total solar eclipse, exciting mission launches, and beyond. In addition, we work with TPS to elevate important and diverse voices from the space community – including public-facing space scientists, experts, and inspirational figures. Our team works to capture the spirit and aspirations of each voice, from Bill Nye and Sasha Sagan to Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager), combing through past interviews, statements, and videos to make content that is authentic and inspiring. Our public-facing goal is prevalent throughout each campaign, with a “rocket meter” that shows progress to goal.