FUNDRAISING IMPACT THROUGH CREATIVITY

Team

Kyle Cermeulen

Garth Stirling

The Salvation Army

The Salvation

Army’s Christmas Wishes

Finalist

Janine Kewming

Theresa Falloon

The Salvation Army has a loyal and generous community of supporters. The existing acquisition approach was predominantly using print (direct mail packs, self-mailer inserts, and coin based ‘buddy builders’), supported by traditional media channels such as TVC and print media. While this had delivered results, growth was slowing down and they needed to acquire new high-quality donors that would deliver a return on investment.

For Christmas 2021, they changed their approach to the campaign completely, putting digital-first creative at the heart of the campaign and shifting the message to donors. With the support of ntegrity agency, they created the “Christmas Wishes” digital campaign to improve their digital store and leverage it as a place where people could buy gifts for those in need.

Based on a printed Christmas gifts catalogue that was produced for existing supporters, this offered a tangible and transparent impact measure for new donors and aligned to consumer purchasing behaviour at Christmas.

The “Christmas Wishes” campaign was tested against the standard appeal campaign on digital to see which creative worked best. The results for the campaign were incredible with a 50% increase in new donors acquired YoY, a 74% increase in donations from new donors YoY. And a 16% increase in average gift from new donors YoY. Digital has become the key acquisition channel.