Best use of the telephone
Howard Lake | 23 May 2008 | Blogs
For the campaign that demonstrates innovation linked to success in the use of telephone fundraising. This can be in any stage or aspect of the fundraising process including donor recruitment, donor development, stewardship or research.
The three shortlisted entries, in alphabetical order, are as follows:
Barnardo’s
Rolling reactivation programme
Barnardo’s wanted to find methods of quickly and effectively reactivating lapsed supporters and maximising value while their interest and engagement remained high. The target with agency Pell & Bales was to raise £25,657 in one year, achieve a response rate of 18 per cent and an average gift of £60.
The campaign was flexible enough to call lapsed supporters within five weeks of lapsing, and it started from the principle of listening to supporters, communicating with them and gaining their support in a way that suits their life stage. Callers received extensive training, enabling them to talk to people in an informed and compelling way.
The test programme delivered significantly above target and it has now been rolled out to all recently lapsed supporters. It achieved a response/reactivation rate of 35.95 per cent with an average gift of £75.56.
Breakthrough Breast Cancer
Telephone donor recruitment from cold data
This campaign aimed to recruit 250 new regular givers with a minimum average value of £70 from 3,600 telephone calls. Ethical was involved in setting the strategy, sourcing data, recruiting donors and fulfilment of the welcome confirmation letter. Data was sourced from telephone lifestyle surveys, meaning that potential donors are telephone responsive.
A total of 302 donors were signed up with a value of £72 and a further 29 signed up in the reminder call or by returning their forms, which led to a positive RoI in year 1 – exceeding expected RoI by 40 per cent.
Fundraisers were given specific training by Ethicall and Breakthrough Breast Cancer and constant coaching, support and monitoring were given by the Ethicall team.
British Red Cross
Bangladesh Cyclone Emergency Telephone Appeal to Regular Givers
This was the first time the Red Cross has used an emergency telephone appeal specifically to active regular givers who were originally recruited by F2F on the street or door-to-door. The campaign was a direct appeal for donations and aimed to approach 1,000 regular givers which would rise to 3,000 provided the activity generated an RoI of at least £2:1. The cyclone hit just after the Red Cross’s Christmas mailing had gone out which meant it had to find some other way of raising the money without jeopardising its biggest mailing of the year.
The campaign lasted just two days with scripts written, data extracted and calling begun within just hours. Results exceeded expectations and proved that phone appeals to those who don’t respond to mail-based appeals have the potential to be another source of income for the Red Cross during emergencies. An RoI of £2.9:1 was achieved from 994 gifts averaging £45.94 – a total of over £45k.
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.