Samaritans to reactivate donors with a Christmas thank you mailing
Howard Lake | 10 November 2010 | News
Samaritans, the charity that supports people in emotional distress and at risk of suicide, is launching a Christmas direct mail campaign to thank its supporters, and tell them what the charity has managed to achieve with their help.
The approach, which is also designed to reactivate lapsed donors, has been devised by direct-to-digital agency TDA.
The campaign features a personalised letter from Catherine Johnstone, CEO of Samaritans, and focuses on the impact that each donor’s support is making on the charity’s work, including training more volunteers and launching a new free-to-call helpline number.
The mailing pack also includes a real example of a heartfelt thank-you letter which has been sent to the charity as a result of the help it has given someone.
As well as a Christmas card, the mailing contains some Christmas paper chains, which supporters can use to write their own personal festive message to the charity’s volunteers. Samaritans’ branches across the UK and Ireland will use these to decorate their offices for Christmas, with the aim of showing volunteers that supporters are thinking of them and the valuable work they do.
“At a time when our service is more important than ever, we want our supporters to know exactly how their donations are helping us,” said Lorna Roberston Reed, Head of Individual Giving at Samaritans. “We want to thank each and every supporter and encourage them to carry on helping us. It is because of them that Samaritans can continue to offer 24 hour confidential, non-judgemental support to people in emotional distress.”
The campaign starts this week, and will be followed up with a reminder mailing on 6 December. The second mailing will focus on messages from a Samaritans volunteer about their experiences of helping people in emotional distress over the Christmas period and reinforcing their CEO’s message of support.
www.samaritans.org
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.