BRG Direct helps hospice with short-notice Christmas campaign
Howard Lake | 21 February 2003 | News
Direct marketing agency BRG Direct has helped East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH) mount a Christmas appeal at very short notice.
While it is sensible to plan direct marketing campaigns well in advance, some charities and agencies can still enjoy record results even if they do leave it rather late.
Determined to launch a Christmas appeal, EACH asked BRG Direct to undertake a complete direct mail campaign to 6,000 known donors and over 50,000 yet to be sourced prospects in just seven weeks.
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Despite the short notice, the appeal generated record donations for the organisation. Such was the level of response from the mailing that extra staff had to be brought in by EACH to deal with the number of donations received.
“We just couldn’t believe the levels of response that we were getting from the new cold lists that BRG Direct had sourced for us,” said head of fundraising at EACH, Trucie Henderson.
“When we called in BRG Direct in the middle of October, we realised time was tight and that the last thing we wanted to do was be in a situation where a Christmas mailing failed to reach the prospects in time.
“But thanks to the advice, support and expertise of BRG Direct, not only was our mailing produced, printed and ready for distribution but a prospect list of over 50,000 appropriate names and addresses was sourced, mail merged and de-duped,” she added.
When planning the campaign, EACH had budgeted to spend almost £38,000, and hoped to generate around £64,000 in donations. The charity was delighted with the actual results.
“The cold lists generated over £43,000 for us, which was over £20,000 more than we had anticipated. With over £36,000 being generated from our known donor list we raised well over £80,000.
“The cold lists generated an average donation of £15.24 which was well above what we had hoped for. One of the lists that BRG sourced for us generated an 11.69% response rate and another provided us with an average donation of £24.63, which we were absolutely delighted with.
As well as sending donations to EACH, a great many people also sent Christmas cards and presents for the children.
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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.