Awards Preview – Most Effective Mobile Charity Campaign/Solution

With the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony taking place in London in just over three weeks’ time, on 28 November, we continue our daily preview with a look at the finalists in the Most Effective Mobile Charity Campaign category.

 

Friends of the Earth and OpenFundraising – The Bees Need You

This campaign, to save Britain’s bees, followed a tried and tested two-stage supporter recruitment method – a PSMS donation leading to a Direct Debit commitment over the phone. Friends of the Earth worked with mobile fundraising specialists Open Fundraising and telephone fundraising agency Listen to create and execute the campaign. 

Campaign were to recruit new regular givers by Direct Debit in the most cost effective way possible. It also sought to promote Friends of the Earth to an audience that would not typically become a Friends of the Earth donor, and to generate a large SMS prospect pool that could be converted to financial and nonfinancial supporters of Friends of the Earth. 

The campaign fused PSMS out-of-home advertising and telemarketing to recruit PSMS donors that would be called and asked for a Direct Debit. Commuter trains were selected as the lead media for the campaign as they offered access to an audience who have jobs, money and, most importantly, time on their hands. The campaign was a massive success, beating all of its targets and recruiting thousands of new supporters for Friends of the Earth. 

 

OpenMarket – DEC Syria Crisis Appeal

DEC launched its Syria Crisis Appeal in March of this year to raise money to help the estimated 5m people affected or left homeless by two years of internal conflict in Syria. The Appeal uses OpenMarket’s Mobile Engagement Platform for mobile fundraising, using Premium SMS. OpenMarket also provides a unique, SMS-powered Gift Aid registration tool to boost value of donations.

The OpenMarket platform connects with current and potential donors to DEC via SMS, and also processes incoming donations made using Premium SMS. DEC also uses OpenMarket to engage with donors on an on-going basis, with opt-in SMS appeal updates and invitations to make further donations. Results from the campaign have been impressive from the start. At the time of entry, the campaign had raised almost £203,000 in mobile donations since launch in March.

 

OpenMarket /Open Fundraising – Open Fundraising’s Mobilise Platform 

Mobilise is an innovative and easy-to-use platform for regular giving mobile donations via Premium SMS. It’s built on OpenMarket’s robust gateways, and allows the rapid creation and deployment of SMS-based donation services. The platform enables donors to control their gifts and the charities they donate to, while also connecting charities with a younger audience. Charities that have been early adopters of mobile fundraising have seen a dramatic increase in donations from the 16 – 24 age group, and donations via SMS continue to grow significantly faster than other donation mechanism. 

The subscription service allows a supporter to give a regular monthly payment to charity via PSMS. Each month a supporter receives a ‘Warning’ message, stating that a donation will be taken. 24 hours later a Premium SMS is received. Supporters have the option to skip a monthly donation by replying ‘Skip’ to the Warning message. They can also stop all donations at any time by texting ‘Stop; to a shortcode. 

The Mobilise platform has processed over £1m of donations in the year to date, with a further £700,000. There are currently 15 charities using the platform, including UNICEF, RSPCA, Shelter and Merlin.

 

Sociercise Virtual Charity Races

Sociercise Virtual Charity Races allow organizations to host an athletic fundraising event that takes place in the cloud. Participants can join the race from any location and run or walk anytime, anywhere, and as often as they want during a multi-day racing period. Money is raised through peer-to-peer pledges for each mile that an individual participant completes during the racing period. Miles accumulate following each workout, so runners can take part  several times during a single event. Donors can enter a minimum or maximum donation, or a  pledge-per-mile on the participants personal running page.  

The platform uses a free iPhone app to track runners distances, and the Sociercise website to register for the event and collect pledges. The app also serves as a full-featured running app with access to real time peer-to-peer racing, goal setting, and social network integration.  

 

The Marketing Arm – The Skyhook Challenge

This campaign aimed to raise awareness of the drug Tasigna, whose maker, Novartis, claims is a better option that other treatments for Philadelphia Positive Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML), a rare blood cancer, To do so, Tasigna leveraged its Hall of Fame legend and patient, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as its branded spokesperson, and created the Skyhook Challenge. This featured a timed mobile and online trivia game along with a media event, experiential activation, digital advertising, and charity components.

The live kick-off event took place on 9 April 2013 during a Lakers game in California and featured Kareem and members of the CML community. During halftime, fans were asked to text KAJ to a short code to play the trivia game and score points. The trivia game featured 20 questions that could be played on mobile or desktop. The game homepage featured a countdown clock and total points in real time.

 The goal was for fans to “virtually” break Kareem’s record of 38,387 points with Novartis donating $1 for every point generated up to $38,387. Kareem’s scoring record was broken in only 421 minutes, and the challenge went viral with over 170,000 points scored. The mobile game had a total of 11,422 visits and 125,589 page views.  

 

Velti – Comic Relief 2013

Velti powered all SMS mobile donations for Comic Relief 2013, enabling users to donate £1, £5 or £10 through via SMS. This was promoted across 20+ TV and Radio programmes. The campaign requires Velti’s technology and teams to handle the highest and ‘peakiest’ volumes of SMS traffic. Its platform process donations across all UK operators, providing 10o per cent out-payments of the donation value. The mobile donation mechanics run across BBC Radio and TV programming over a 5-month period. 

Velti has to ensure that every user that has a mobile phone can donate and that its platforms connect to all the mobile network operators and associated mobile virtual network operators. Velti’s overriding objective is to ensure 100 per cent availability and reliability. This was successfully achieved, and over £11m was raised through the SMS channel, out of an overall total of £75m.

The Awards Ceremony takes place at the London Film Museum on the evening of 28 November. There are just four tables still remaining. A table of 10 costs £2,250. Individual seats cost £250. You can book your seat at the awards here. Or call Lisa Slavin on +44 (0) 207 183 5285 or email lisa.slavin@mobilemarketingmagazine.com