# Toys for Children email appeal achieves 73% open rate - Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2002/12/12/toys-children-email-appeal-achieves-73-open-rate/ - Published: 2002-12-12T00:00:00+00:00 - Author: Howard Lake Email marketing service Frontwire has shared details of a case study by a charity client. Toys for Children’s integrated email, web, streaming video and direct mail campaign generated a 73% open rate and ensured their fundraising event was a sell- out. The charity was only set up in 2001 and in its first year delivered toys to over 600 children in and around London in time for Christmas. This year the charity aimed to run a bigger event to attract more people to donate toys so that the charity cound distribute them to children throughout the UK. The charity therefore turned to email marketing to boost its promotional tools. The primary objectives of the campaign were to sell tickets for the event and secure donations from people who were unable to attend. ## Advertisement Using Frontwire’s Workspace tool, each Toys for Children committee member was asked to submit a list of contacts they would like personally to invite to the event. Workspace then distributed these invitations by email. The website management and the production, encoding and hosting of the streaming media clip were provided courtesy of digital broadcasting company FlyOnTheWall. To encourage a viral effect recipients were able to forward the email invitation from their inbox, and the same option was again offered on the website. All those who bought tickets online were sent a personlised ticket from Moonpig. Frontwire reports that “Contact lists submitted by the 17-strong committee members varied in size, but a total of 992 contacts were put forward. “Accounting for hard and soft bounces 911 emails made it to the inbox and the power of the peer-to-peer effect became apparent when a staggering 73% were opened, 19% of which generated traffic to the web site. “In all 240 tickets were sold and with extra donations, over £6,500 was raised that will be spent on buying approximately 400 toys. An additional 187 toys were given on the night smashing the Toys for Children target for 2002 of 500 toys.” * **[One third of UK population has bought goods online, says survey](https://fundraising.co.uk/2002/12/14/one-third-uk-population-has-bought-goods-online-says-survey/)**( 14 December 2002) * **[Successful online partnership between Mencap and AOL](https://fundraising.co.uk/2003/01/24/successful-online-partnership-between-mencap-and-aol/)**( 24 January 2003) * **[Gift Aid and covenant giving up 13% in two years](https://fundraising.co.uk/2003/04/01/gift-aid-and-covenant-giving-13-two-years/)**( 1 April 2003)