Charity’s mailshot rethink leads to savings and strong response rates

An air ambulance charity has achieved strong response rates to its mailshots at a fraction of the cost following an overhaul of its postal marketing activity, according to latest evaluation.

East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA) has begun using cheaper partially addressed mailshots, rather than the less effective anonymous mailouts and more costly fully addressed direct mail.

This has cut costs by 30% while at the same time achieving a tenfold increased in response rates over unaddressed door drop activity.

While the response rate of door drop activity is 0.25% the charity achieved a response rate with its partially addressed mailshots that are on a par with fully addressed direct mailings.

The rethink of its postal marketing was for its raffle and lottery fundraisers and involved support from agency DBS Data.

“We ran our first partially address mailings for a lottery door drop campaign, as well as our winter 2020 raffle,” said acting head of direct marketing and supporter insight at EAAA, Simon Judd,

“The raffle achieved a response rate of 2.65%, which is similar to fully addressed activity. It was clear that we should continue to pursue this new approach.”

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