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Red Cross Begins Resoliciting e-Donors via e-Mail
According to a Dec. 4, 2000 article in dmnews.com, the American Red Cross has hired direct response ad agency Huntsinger & Jeffer, Richmond, VA, to manage the permission e-marketing program. Its goals are to "build personal relationships with donors, increase chapter support and increase contributions for Red Cross programs nationwide." Only 7500 previous donors will be reached in the first wave, and that apparently didn't include this reporter, who made an online contribution at www.redcross.org in the past year, in order to test its donation processing software and learn from its resolicitation efforts. The online donation was performed flawlessly, but to date there has been no resolicitation via e-mail. (Since I'm already on their direct mail files, I can't tell if they added my online donation information to that record, or just ignored me completely). While resolicitation of donors is the only way most charities generate serious income, reaching out to previous online donors or prospects has been almost nonexistent among most nonprofits with web sites. Most simply thank the donor via e-mail, to confirm the gift, then add the name and address to their direct mail "house" file. Mary Kay Phelps, senior director of direct marketing at the Red Cross, is quoted in the article as saying that the first e-mail included a newsletter that focused on holiday safety tips, with a layout that was simple and unobtrusive. "It really was meant to be a thank you for their past donations," Phelps said. Olivia Smith, Huntsinger & Jeffer's account director for the Red Cross campaign, is correctly worried about the quality of the e-mail information, since most of the 7500 e-donors are like me: those who haven't been contacted since their gift, who may have changed e-mail addresses, and who may have in fact lost interest in the Red Cross. If their results are similar to those of my clients, between one third and one half of all addresses will be undeliverable after that length of time. According to the article, Phelps said the Red Cross is using technology from MessageMedia as the e-mail engine and is outsourcing some of the technology involved to other companies. I have asked a colleague at the Red Cross' web site to keep us informed of results and discoveries. | |
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