Comic Relief tidies up its e-mail supporters list
Howard Lake | 6 February 2003 | News
Comic Relief has e-mailed its past supporters, asking if they are still willing to receive e-mail messages from the charity.
In the run-up to this year’s Comic Relief event, the charity is cleansing and updating its e-mail supporter list.
An e-mail sent out today asks: “we just want to double check that you would still like an inside view of this coming Red Nose Day, which takes place on Friday 14 March 2003.”
Advertisement
The charity explains: “If you do, we’ll make sure we keep you in touch with all the latest information, offers and Red Nose celebrity news.”
The message adds that all communications include a facility with which to unsubscribe.
Comic Relief then points out that “if we don’t hear from you we’ll assume that you don’t want to hear from us so we won’t send you anything else. Promise!”
To make it easy to opt in and stay subscribed, the e-mail alert gives two easy opt-in links, one for teachers and one for everyone else.
Such a cleansing process is essential both in terms of good practice and data protection adherence. It is particularly important for a charity such as Comic Relief which gears up for its fundraising activities unusually infrequently, every two years.
Even if your charity communicates via email more frequently than this, it makes senses to use such data cleansing alerts from time to time, particularly in cases where you have gathered email addresses but not used them quickly, within a week or two.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.