Stephen Thomas: Marketing for a Better World

Background

The Canadian Diabetes Association is a strong nationwide network of volunteers, employees, healthcare professionals, researchers, partners and supporters. They are driven by a mandate to promote healthy living, help people with diabetes live healthier lives, and fund research for a cure.

The Challenge

In early April 2009, the Canadian Diabetes Association issued a Request for Proposal for a marketing partner to help them maximize revenues to avoid a serious financial shortfall by the end of their fiscal year, August 31^st, 2009. The mandate also included building e-philanthropy capacity for future years.

The ST Response

Strategy:

Stephen Thomas Ltd (ST) conceived, developed and executed a strategic, branded and integrated campaign to mobilize the friends of the Canadian Diabetes Association around the need to raise funds urgently. And we did it, from scratch, in less than 40 days. We named it the "Diabetes Summer Surge" and followed a simple philosophy to generate a successful and inspiring outcome:

"When you're in trouble, you go to your friends."

The core of the approach was to focus on the FRIENDS of the Canadian Diabetes Association - rather than new donor acquisition. Friends fell into 2 distinct categories - direct mail donors and others for whom we had email addresses.

Experience told us we'd have little success reaching traditional direct mail donors only online. It was also important to reach out with mail beyond the mostly younger audience of volunteers, staff, members and others. So, with an inspiring message and an integrated approach to reaching each group where they were most likely to respond, we took advantage of a small window of opportunity to maximize response within the extremely short timeframe.

Execution:

There were two components to the Diabetes Summer Surge campaign -

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising: 90,000 Friends of Canadian Diabetes Association were asked to hold their own virtual, "Diabetes Summer Surge Challenge" or social event. ST created a Diabetes Summer Surge logo that was showcased on the microsite (also created and launched by ST) where visitors could access information, sign-up and manage their event online. We launched an email, social media and an internal staff campaign to get the word out and drive traffic to the campaign microsite. An earned media campaign also supported the overall initiative.

Direct Mail: A "Health Alert"-themed mail package was designed by ST, stressing the fact that we are living through a diabetes epidemic and expressing the need to find a cure. A follow-up package was mailed one month later. Emails were sent to those direct mail donors for whom we had email addresses, to generate a lift in response.

RESULTS:

In just three short months, the Diabetes Summer Surge campaign raised more than $620,000. Open rates, click through rates and website traffic stats generally exceeded expectations and industry benchmarks.

Online events raised more than $800 each, and on average received 11 donations per event. More than 1000 people joined the fan page on Facebook inspiring the social media site to write a case study on the success of the Diabetes Summer Surge Fan Page. The Diabetes Summer Surge campaign will be repeated in 2010.

For more information please contact Taslim Somani or Adair Altimas-Keith.