# Comic Relief helped by someone else's viral e-mail - Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/1999/11/30/comic-relief-helped-someone-else039s-viral-email/ - Published: 1999-11-30T00:00:00+00:00 - Author: Howard Lake Comic Relief admitted that part of their success was due to a viral e-mail message– and it wasn’t one of theirs. Comic Relief have admitted that their stunning success raising £400,000 online in March this year was helped by someone else’s viral e- mail campaign. Sarah Heseltine told _Internet magazine_: “We conduct offline press and PR, yet the thing that generated the most interest was an e-mail started by someone else.” She added: “someone took content from the site and e-mailed round to a massive amount of people. We were getting calls about this e-mail and we were saying “What e-mail?” It shows what we could have achieved if we’d sent out that e-mail ourselves.” While there are alarming elements to such a campaign – no charity wants to be associated with spamming – it is good to see that a major online fundraising charity has now woken up to the significance of e-mail as a fundraising tool. E-mail can work effectively both as a direct communication tool to supporters and donors, and those very same supporters can be encouraged to spread the word legitimately by way of so-called viral e-mail. ## Advertisement [⌊Posthub advert. You create the campaign. We'll handle the postal journey. Get started at post-hub.co.uk.⌉](https://fundraising.co.uk/ads/posthub-20261007-300x250/) Perhaps the 2001 Comic Relief campaign will act on this lesson and employ e-mail more extensively. It will by then be the fourth Comic Relief campaign which will have used the Web. With any luck they will deploy e-mail, that other essential element of Internet fundraising, and move away from a focus solely on the Web. * **[Coming soon](https://fundraising.co.uk/1999/12/03/coming-soon/)** (3 December 1999) * **['Inconspicuous consumption' – charity shop research](https://fundraising.co.uk/1999/12/05/039inconspicuous-consumption039-charity-shop-research/)**( 5 December 1999) * **[Speculate and accumulate](https://fundraising.co.uk/1999/12/07/speculate-and-accumulate/)**( 7 December 1999)