E-mail Campaigns of the Year: Trust for Public Land and People for the American Way

“The campaign proved to be extremely successful,” CCAH’s Lon Chapman wrote, “raising $165,798.64 from e-mail alone. The appeal accounted for an impressive 76 percent of total online income during the two months the campaign was active.”

In total, PFAW raised $227,807.55 online from the time the first e-mail launched to the last — June 10 to Aug. 10, 2011. This was 197 percent higher than revenue raised during the summer months of 2010 and an increase of 216 percent over 2009 he said, adding, “Surprisingly, PFAW’s file did not experience fatigue at all, with an overall unsubscribe rate of a low 0.09 percent, which is normal.”

Despite the amount of copy involved in the e-mails — or perhaps because of it — this campaign was straightforward and hard-hitting, and proved to be a winner for PFAW.

SILVER AWARD
Alzheimer’s Association of Orange County
Income-Triggered E-mail Campaign for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s
Submitted by TurnKey Promotions

The Numbers
Number of Recipients: 3,324 (ITEC)
Response Rate: 410 percent
Total Cost: $3,000 (ITEC)
Income Generated: $102,337
Average Gift: $58
Cost to Raise a Dollar: $0.03

The purpose of the walk is, of course, to raise money. And beyond that, the purpose of the campaign was to bypass the direct-to-donor ask strategy and turn event participants into fundraising machines. “The goal was to motivate the fundraisers to higher fundraising levels and increase donation activity,” wrote TurnKey’s Tracy Hale.

Many events use the grassroots, peer-to-peer fundraising model. But key to the success of the event was the income-triggered e-mail campaign (ITEC) within the fundraising strategy, which used specially crafted and timed e-mail messages to motivate event participants to raise more money and offered recipients a mission-appropriate gift as incentive to raise more funds.

According to Hale, the event “realized a daily donation activity increase of more than 370 percent, and its daily donation dollar amount increased more than 410 percent.