Trusting e-card customers pays off for hospice
Howard Lake | 23 March 2010 | News
CHASE hospice care for children found last Christmas that, instead of charging up front for ecards, they could give them away, ask for donations afterwards, and achieve a profitable campaign. The campaign raised £11,000.
The charity worked with digital communications agency Nemisys which had argued that people can be just as trustworthy online as they are in person. For years Nemisys staff had noticed distinct differences between the way people behave on their commercial and charity web sites.
Nemisys Marketing Director John Duffy explained: “Even the best online shops have a high drop off rate throughout the checkout process. So we removed the checkout process, banking on most people being trustworthy. This makes the ecards easy to integrate in to any charity’s web site. We are hoping this proof will lead many others to adopt the approach.”
CHASE’s ecard shop is already stocked with Mother’s Day and Easter cards and the charity is hoping to continue its success with this model.
Ian Davies of CHASE hospice care for children said: “Obviously Christmas is the big time for ecards, but this system allows us to take advantage of all high days and holidays. Of course in what we do anniversaries and birthdays are also incredibly important to our supporters, who often choose to donate, or request donations in lieu of gifts, to mark these special occasions. We can publish as many cards as we want within the system, so we are continually adding to our stock.”
www.chasecare.org.uk/ecards
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.