Best use of e-media
Howard Lake | 16 June 2011 | Blogs
Best use of e-media
For the campaign that demonstrates the best use of either one single form of e-media fundraising or the successful application of a range of techniques.
The shortlisted entries in alphabetical order are
Crisis
Diabetes UK
Shelter
Crisis
Crisis Christmas Cracker
This appeal aimed to raise £650,000 for Crisis at Christmas 2010, recruit 80 companies, for 10,000 e-cards to be sent and achieve an RoI of 7:1. It was run in partnership with the FT and asked companies to donate to Crisis instead of sending Christmas cards. The concept for the card was a ‘Crisis Christmas Cracker’ which involved an A-list comedian popping out of a cracker delivered to the recipient’s inbox and telling the joke in video format. Comedians included Alan Car, Rufus Hound, Russell Kane, League of Gentlemen and Hattie Hayridge. This would not have been possible through any other media. The card raised £652,000 with an RoI of 8.7, saw a retention of 81% and two more companies than forecast joining in. Almost 21,500 e-cards were sent. This raised invaluable awareness at Christmas time.
Diabetes UK
Diabetes Challenge
The key feature of the Diabetes Challenge website is its integration with social media. This was chosen because of its ability to take fundraising news, whether as words, image or video, and make that news viral, meaning word of Diabetes UK fundraising activity travels fast and reaches large numbers of new audiences. Anyone interested in raising money for Diabetes UK is encouraged to set themselves,s a friend or family member a challenge, which can be absolutely anything. Supporters create their own online profile, set and accept challenges, receive donations and monitor their fundraising progress. These can all be shared on social networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace, Flickr and Facebook. In one year 642 challenges had been set up bringing in a combined income of £421,709. Core development costs were covered in six months.
Shelter
Shelter’s Christmas Online Campaign
This campaign consists of dynamic, interactive products to drive engaging content to the donate page. The direct marketing team created a campaign to drive online donations direct to the website and donations through online seasonal online products which drives engagement. Different online channels were used to drive traffic to the sites. The objectives were to increase donations by 30%, compared to the same period in 2009 and improve RoI by 10%. Festify is a Facebook app that downloads the supporter’s Facebook profile picture and allows them to add festive images. Santacam gives supporters a chance to make a child’s Christmas magical with a personalised video message from Santa. Ecards are also available. The campaign exceeded all expectations and saw a 49% increase in overall donations and an improvement in RoI by 33%. 81% of donors signed up to Gift Aid.
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.