2021 Silver Best Use of Unaddressed Print

Agency: Edit

Client: RSPCA

Campaign Name: R - Really, S - Successful, P - Print, C - Christmas, A - Appeal

Campaign Overview

Generating cash donors and funds in place of face-to-face fundraising stopped due to the pandemic was critical.

Strategy

An effectively integrated multi-channel campaign was devised including TV and direct response print activity.

Analysing donor data at a household and sector level helped RSPCA understand the personas it wanted to acquire.

AdDynamix was used to understand competitor activity, and TGI to recognise why people would donate. Core audience segments were mapped into JICMAIL to identify channels most effective for reaching prospects.

To ensure compliance with data laws, the team cherry-picked addresses close to the Scottish border to exclude - to avoid impact on activity from the SSPC and omit existing donors who would receive warm communications. To avoid cannibalising the campaign, all DD postcodes from the Partially Addressed Mail (PAM) campaign were excluded in order to find purely new and unique prospects for the RSPCA.

To make the campaign cost-efficient, the organisation worked with creative and print agencies to find consistencies.

This served as an even baseline to monitor media performance without the addition of other testing variables skewing results. It also meant no additional photoshoots were required - reducing the carbon footprint of the campaign

Creativity

Creative was tailored to the audience and delivery method and data available for personalisation. Donation values were increased to reflect the affluence of the audience based on donor insight.

A traditional letter and envelope mailpack was identified as the most responsive format for the initial campaign. Proven to work repeatedly well for charities, a BRE was included for people to donate via post, along with a call centre number.

To understand performance, creative and format were consistent across channels. This also kept costs down and lowered the digital and carbon footprint of the campaign. Production was carbon offset, with 13,717m2 of critically threatened tropical forest protected through RSPCA’s donation to the World Land Trust, and minimising wastage with data cleansing.

Repeated creative analysis was carried out to ensure responsiveness. Using 3M VAS eye-tracking to analyse the creative, feedback was given to the agency to deliver work that aligned with the brand but was also finely tuned for direct response. Given the importance of gaining contactable donors, RSPCA used the tracking to make sure relevant sections of the donation form were clear and easy for the donor to respond to.

Results

This was the best Christmas campaign for RSPCA ever. It recruited 3,611 donors via DD and PAM - 83% new to the RSPCA - providing the charity with valuable contactable donors via legitimate interest. Some 55% of DD donors opted into Gift Aid, the highest of all channels.

PAM drove response rate of 0.34% and door-drop 0.15%, outperforming forecasts and previous results. The results drove an increase in all target audience segments, including secondary audiences due to the larger scale gained via DD and PAM where media budget was stretched further due to lower costs.

A total of £97,272 was raised: the equivalent of 3,891 health checks for rescued dogs or equipping 1,945 inspectors’ van with an animal first-aid kit, pet carrier and animal-catching set.

Thanks to using donor insights and precision targeting average donation value came in at £276, higher than two of the three ask levels.

RSPCA now has a newfound confidence in print channels and has delivered two further successful campaigns in 2021. In just two months, the charity raised an additional £43,000 in revenue thanks to print acquisition campaigns.

The Team

Edit - Sarah Burns, Head of Media Solutions - Ben Briggs, Media Director - Matt Cann, Campaign Delivery Director

RSPCA - Karen Pierre, Marketing Manager, Donor Recruitment - Hannah Boakes, Senior Marketing Executive - George Stoneman, Marketing Executive

Contributors

PMWeb, DBS Data, Arthur and Whistl