Spotlight on Integrated Marketing Award Winner: CARE
	Posted by Mike Johnston at Nov 01, 2012 07:03 AM CDT

The past two weeks, I highlighted two case studies of winners of the Integrated Marketing Advisory Board’s 2012 Integrated Marketing Awards -- TVO and Ontario SPCA. Today, I’m excited to spotlight the third and final winner, CARE.

CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, won in the category of The Donor for demonstrating how an integrated marketing campaign or program had an impact on donor satisfaction and the donor experience. The organization used coordinated mail and email invitations and follow-ups to extend their annual donor conference call to an audience beyond their traditional direct mail donors.

Here is an overview of the program:

The Challenge
Donors engage with CARE in many ways -- by making a gift, signing a petition, interacting via social media, etc. By engaging donors in multiple ways, CARE is able to increase donor retention and, ultimately, revenue. In the past, CARE’s annual donor conference call has been limited to their high value donors, positioning it as a thank you for their extraordinary support. This year, CARE determined that the donor conference call was an under-used opportunity to further engage supporters across channels.

The Campaign
CARE hosts an annual donor conference call with their President, Dr. Helene Gayle, and an audience of high value donors. Invitations are sent in the mail, with call-in instructions provided. The purpose of this call is stewardship -- an opportunity for donors to interact personally with Dr. Gayle and CARE.

This year, CARE broadened the conference call audience, extending the invitation to a select group of online donors and non-donors. Qualifying supporters received an email invitation with the conference call details as well as a reminder the day before. For the call itself, donors heard first-hand from Dr. Gayle and other members of the CARE team as they described their work and efforts in a particular area. At the end, donors were encouraged to ask questions about the topic at hand, or about any of CARE’s work. Following the call, donors received an email and mailed follow-up thanking them for attending and, for those that did not attend, providing a brief recap of what was discussed.

The Results
As a stewardship opportunity, it is difficult to measure the exact impact of the conference call. However, overall, the call was perceived as highly favorable -- both by the internal staff at CARE and by those supporters that dialed in for the call. Call attendance was 75% higher than it had been in the past and was split relatively evenly between donors and non-donors.