Best use of the telephone
Howard Lake | 30 June 2011 | Blogs
For the campaign that demonstrates innovation linked to success in the use of the telephone in fundraising.
The shortlisted entries, in alphabetical order are:
British Red Cross
Guide Dogs for the Blind Association
Wood Green Animal Shelters
British Red Cross
Pakistan Floods Emergency Telephone Appeal (August 2010)
When the horrific floods hit Pakistan in July 2010, the British Red Cross was in the middle of a mail appeal with upgrade, conversion and reactivation activity which meant it needed to find new audiences that hadn’t already recently been contacted. The decision was to recontact people who had been asked for an upgrade/reactivation within the last six months, but who were not part of current activity. Scripts were rapidly drafted and GoGen’s entire London call centre was dedicated to the campaign for the first week. This meant the charity could maximise the number of people contacted while the emergency was still in the press. Telephone was relevant because it meant reaching donors within hours rather than days of the disaster. Continuous updates on operations meant operators could convey a real-time sense of how the Red Cross was responding to the emergency. The personal nature of a telephone call also gave an opportunity to thank donors for their support, answer questions and raise awareness of disaster-response work. BBC and Sky cameras reported live from the call centre about the wider DEC appeal. The income target was initially £48k net from 10,000 contacts. In the end, results far exceeded this with £210,047 raised from 23,661 contacts. This showed that the most committed donors can be approached for an emergency ask over and above their regular monthly gift and established telemarketing as a viable emergency fundraising technique.
Guide Dogs for the Blind Association
Cold List Sponsor a Puppy Recruitment Campaign
After successful tests in 2009 Guide Dogs scaled up this acquisition activity to recruit 6,500 brand new regular givers with an average annual value of £79 to strengthen the Sponsor a Puppy scheme. Ethicall were involved in setting strategy, sourcing all data and recruiting donors. Data was sourced from telephone and internet lifestyle surveys using a sponsored question approach. Lifestyle survey responders are potential donors are causal responsive and therefore highly targeted and every record comes with a callable number. Those who refused the Sponsor a Puppy proposition could be asked for other forms of regular giving or for one-off donations, maximising all ask opportunities. Telephone is also a very interactive way to introduce a new donor to a charity. In the end 7,364 new regular givers were recruited with an average annual value of £81.75. Additionally 386 people elected to give regularly outside the Sponsor a Puppy programme and 262 supporters gave a one-off credit card donation averaging £27.93. Total income generated by the campaign including Gift Aid was £755,014, giving a near positive Year 1 RoI: almost unheard of in cold recruitment.
Wood Green Animal Shelters
Hungry Mouths SMS & Cash-to-Committed campaign
Wood Green had never tried SMS before and this campaign aimed to data-capture new supporters and call to convert to committed giving. It also set out to reinforce the Hungry Mouths Christmas appeal imagery through the ‘see it, see it and see it again’ method.
The campaign was publicised for four weeks in posters on trains between Peterborough (near Wood Green’s Godmanchester shelter) and London’s King’s Cross. These asked people to donate £3 by texting the word FEED to a shortcode. Posters were also displayed at all three shelters and the text-to-donate banner was included on each animal’s kennel card. SMS means the donor can give instantly and without involvement. The downside for the charity is that the only information captured is the phone number. Donors were called a few days after their donation, enabling Wood Green to engage with them. The campaign was a test to see if Wood Green could engage with a different audience to the usual supporters. Over three months 652 text donations were made, with an impressive 276 donations received over the first 11 days of the train poster campaign. Nineteen per cent of contacts made by Ethicall agreed to sign up to a monthly gift at an average of £73.45 per year.
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.