Best use of the telephone

Howard Lake | 24 May 2013 | Blogs

For the campaign that demonstrates innovation linked to success in the use of the telephone in fundraising

The shortlisted entries are:

• Breakthrough Breast Cancer
• Cancer Research UK
• RNIB

Breakthrough Breast Cancer

Touch Look Check was Breakthrough’s first integrated health information and fundraising mass marketing campaign. Targets were to acquire 11,850 TLC guide requests and 711 DD donors. Breakthrough wanted to test mobile fundraising as a mass engagement channel and to engage the audience in Breakthrough’s work, while building support and converting enquirers to a monthly DD.

Creative asked women to text to request the Breakthrough TLC guide. Enquiries fed direct to the telephone supplier and follow up calls were made to fulfill the guide and ask if responders would like a monthly SMS breast check reminder. The callback then made the link between early breast cancer detection and the need to fund research. Responders were asked to support this work by DD.

The use of mobile meant the campaign could be targeted to a broader audience and less traditional demographic, and the same device could be used for call back.

Results were way over target, eliciting 29,510 guide requests and 1,802 new DD donors with an average gift of £76.02. This was innovative for Breakthrough because it delivered charitable and fundraising objectives in one campaign and diversified its approach.

Cancer Research UK

Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C) was a hugely successful national televised event brought from the US to the UK by CRUK and Channel 4. The event encouraged the public to Stand Up to Cancer by donating online, via telephone or SMS.

A fast-based telemarketing campaign followed the event, aiming to engage people who donated on the night with CRUK’s work, and asking them to set up a regular gift. This approach means the ask was made as quickly as possible, to as many people as possible and in the most supporter-centric way.

KPIs were to recruit 3,003 new regular givers, generating £683,000. Actual figures were £3.5m raised with more than 11,000 people setting up a CoG.

Thirty-six hours after the end of the show the data was ready to call after being cleaned against support base and being transferred to three telemarketing agencies. The script was tailored according to the story to which the supporter had responded, allowing truly personal, engaging conversations.

RNIB

The RNIB offered the opportunity to donate via a regular giving product to the 1.7m raffle database, of which 1.5m had never been offered an alternative product. The internal insight team used logistical regression techniques to create a selection model that identified 500,000 of the best prospects. The raffle they already play is telephone based, so they were known to be telephone-responsive. The conversation was longer than a raffle call,  thanked donors for their support, talked to them about a range of RNIB services and asked if they would consider making a regular donation.

The RNIB used three external agencies as well as its own in-house telephone team. Across the four agencies different scripts, case studies and ask-structures were tested, and when it became clear that some agencies were better at converting lapsed donors or recruiting more new donors, data was distributed accordingly.

To date 500,000 have been contacted with a response rate of just over 5%, securing over 20,000 regular givers with an average gift of £5.42 per month.

Cannibalisation of the raffle programme has been low with an initial reduction in raffle playing of 2% in the first raffle, returning to the original level by the second.

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.