Summary / objectives

The objective was to be able to invite both individual and corporate supporters to send Shelter Christmas ecards and donate the cost of printed greeting cards, offering a Shelter branded experience.

This was achieved by commissioning the DontSendMeACard team to:

• Configure donation amounts per card to the charity’s specification 

• Allow corporate supporters to add their logo and send via CSV 

• Facilitate higher volume ecard sends 

• Customise the recipient email template 

• Build ecard artwork in line with Shelter brand guidelines

Background

Shelter joined the ecard and donation platform in summer 2017, after agreeing upon additional custom requirements for their Christmas campaign.

About Shelter

Every year Shelter helps millions of people through advice, support and legal services. Your donation can help make sure no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own. 

About DontSendMeACard

DontSendMeACard helps charities raise funds with their innovative alternative to greeting cards. People can support your charity by sending e-cards on special occasions and donating the cost equivalent of greeting cards and stamps. Learn more about DontSendMACard here.

The work

Marketing: working closely with the charity to ensure appropriate marketing intelligence was provided, DontSendMeACard helped Shelter understand how their marketing campaign performed through different marketing channels.

Corporate page: Shelter were able to offer a corporate ecard page in addition to an individual page. This provided them with the ability to configure the donation amounts in relation to the ecard volume. Companies were then able to give and upload their own logo to be featured on the ecard, and send via CSV upload.

Artwork: a set of eight card designs were created following Shelter’s brand guidelines, two of which were ‘cinemagraph’ looped animated GIFs.

Email template: one of the custom requirements was to ensure that the recipients’ ecard email maintained the Shelter look and feel. As a result, the entire process offered the right balance of a charity offering, powered-by the DontSendMeACard system.

Special characteristics

By using a system that has been fully developed and refined, Shelter removed the hassle of maintaining and supporting a new system internally.

Using a proven technology also avoided the potential of a system failing at the crucial moment of fundraising and potentially disappointing supporters.

Results

Shelter's expected donation amount was almost doubled, receiving an increase of almost 90 per cent.

Shelter are continuing to work with DontSendMeACard after enjoying an ROI of 386 per cent from their first year.

‘It was a pleasure to work with DontSendMeACard.com for our Christmas e-cards campaign. The team are really friendly and helpful, which made launching our Christmas e-cards stress free. The e-cards tool also worked really well for our supporters and I'd recommend the tool to anyone.’

- Yasmin, Digital Product Manager, Shelter