by Wikus Engelbrecht
26. January 2011 23:33
Susan G. Komen for the Cure won a prestigious Marketing Sherpa 2011 Email Award for their 2010 Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure email campaign.
Towards the end of last year we called out MarketingSherpa’s 2011 email awards. A GraphicMailer, a large US based non-profit organisation, won one of the awards!
We’ve summarised the report on their campaign below, but you can download the full report here.
Who they are
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation is one of the largest global organisations leading the fight against breast cancer. Susan Komen fought against breast cancer herself and after her death her sister, Nancy G. Brinker, founded the organisation to honour a promise to her sister to fight the battle against breast cancer. Since starting the foundation in 1982 they’ve raised and invested roughly 1.5 billion US dollars in their cause.
Their San Francisco office uses GraphicMail for their email marketing needs.
Their winning campaign
Every year they have a Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure. Participants who sign up pay a small registration fee after which they raise funds for the cause. There is no minimum amount of funds they need to raise. The email campaign was to encourage participants in their fundraising efforts and remind them of the difference they make.
They used the data at their disposal from previous years' fundraising campaigns to personalise and segment the email campaign. Participants were segmented according to their teams, their attitude (determined by questions asked on the registration form), how much money they had raised to date and how they interact with the foundation’s website. Based on this segmentation and analysis, they sorted the participants into different email lists.
There were a number of very targeted mailers sent out: To people who had raised less than $275; to participants who had raised more than $275 and to participants who had not yet started their fundraising. Participants who had not made use of the online Participant Center also received additional content in their emails encouraging them to do so. They also sent a completely different email to team captains assisting with motivational tools with which to boost their teams fundraising efforts.
As you can see, the campaign's success was due to careful analysis and segmentation.
The impact
Even with less participants than previous years the foundation was able to raise more money. Impressive! Their personalized, targeted campaign inspired their loyal supporters to raise even more money than usual.
Congrats Susan G. Komen foundation! We love how you’ve made your email marketing work for your cause.
*MarketingSherpa published a gallery of the 17 winners and their campaigns, with details on why each campaign won and what strategies were implemented. It’s perfect to get ideas for your own campaigns! Download it here.
To find out more about GraphicMail’s non-profit edition and how you can benefit from partnering with us, take a look here.
