How Informed Delivery® turned a dog named Petunia into an omni-channel campaign experience that donors could not ignore.
The Oregon Humane Society (OHS) is the largest humane society in the Northwest. They rescue, heal, and adopt more than 11,000 pets each year. They never place a time limit on how long cats, dogs, and other pets stay at their shelter. The animals stay as long as needed to find a loving home. OHS relies solely on donations to support their adoption, education, and animal rescue programs. This is the story of how OHS used an omni-channel strategy to drive campaign results, including 67% email open rate and $236,000+ for shelter and medical care for pets in need.
5 Campaign Goals:
- Deliver compelling content that inspires action.
- Make it easy to digest.
- Crease emotional impact.
- Integrate direct mail and digital marketing efforts.
- Motivate donors to give.
Digital, Direct Mail, or Both?
Historically, many rescue organizations were not known for being digitally savvy. OHS set out to change that by integrating digital into their marketing strategy. However, they still recognized the strong relevance of direct mail to their donor campaigns. The challenge was how to link the two together.
Bridging the Online-Offline Gap
OHS began the search to find a way to bridge online and offline channels to boost their donations—their financial lifeline for much-needed shelter and medical supplies to care for the animals. After meeting with a USPS Representative, they were excited to learn how they could create an interactive, digitally integrated direct mail campaign using Informed Delivery®.
Meeting Donors on Their Own Terms
OHS wanted to meet their donors where they are by allowing them to interact with the campaign in whatever way they chose, whether it was reading a letter or a blog post. Informed Delivery® was an innovative way to help them meet that goal.
Fostering Donor Action Across the Journey
Every year, OHS sends an annual holiday donation appeal to 100,000+ of their previous and potential donors. Recognizing that the customer journey has become more complex in today’s digital, always-on world, OHS considered the different needs and mind-sets that donors will have at different stages during their journey to giving.
The Strategy:
- Create a mail piece highlighting the story to compel donors to take action.
- Align the emotional story of Petunia and Rich with Donors
- Use Informed Delivery® to synchronize their digital and physical mail campaigns.
What is Informed Delivery®?
1) Consumer signs up for Informed Delivery
2) USPS images mail during processing
3) USPS matches images to delivery points and applies campaigns
4) User received notifications via email, dashboard, or mobile app
5) User received physical mail piece
How Did It Make a Difference?
Informed Delivery was a game changer for OHS. How? It connected their physical mail and digital strategies, enabling them to coordinate multiple impressions from a single mail piece. OHS also added a Ride-Along image and target URL in their interactive campaign to direct users to digital experiences and reinforce the donation message again with the physical mail piece.
Coordinated Touch Points
Social media posts were made across multiple platforms, linking back to the blog post. By linking channels, OHS was able to drive donor action from interest to education to donation.
Adopting a New Plan
With the success of the 2018 holiday appeal and their inaugural Informed Delivery® campaign, OHS is excited to include Informed Delivery as a part of all their development and marketing efforts moving forward.
Teaching an Old Campaign New Tricks
By connecting online and offline channels for greater impact with Informed Delivery®, Petunia and Rich’s story touched the hearts of donors and inspired them to give back in a way that is life changing for the animals.
Campaign Results
What makes Informed Delivery® so valuable is that it provides marketers with key data to evaluate the success of current campaigns and optimize future ones. From this data, OHS was able to monitor and measure their:
- Number of Donations Made: 2,049
- Email Open Rate: 67% (That's 3X higher compared to an average email open rate of 20.81%)
- Campaign Lift: 7.7% more dollars raised vs. the previous year's campaign, which did not include Informed Delivery®
- Dollars Raised: $236,000+
- Click-Through Rate: 2X higher (The average click-through rate on the Ride-Along image was 0.373% (vs. 0.179%)
The Story of Petunia and Rich
Surrendered when her family could no longer afford her care, Petunia had severe allergies that caused her to lose half her fur. Through donations, Petunia received treatment and her health was restored. Meanwhile, Rich was looking for a companion for his elderly Siberian husky, Sam, who was lonely after losing his best canine friend. As Rich scrolled through the adoptable dogs on the OHS website, Petunia’s soulful smile drew him in. He brought Sam to meet Petunia, and that’s when the magic happened. They formed an immediate bond and became the best of friends.
How OHS Made it Happen
1) The first step was working with the USPS to dig into OHS data and understand how many of their previous donors were current Informed Delivery® users. Over 10% of their total donor base was already signed up and received the daily email in their inbox.
2) Next, they partnered closely with one of our associated companies to help them execute their orchestrated campaign.
3) Then, they created an integrated experience with their holiday appeal campaign, whether their donors were Informed Delivery users or not.
How It Worked
All Recipients were sent a physical mail piece that included an augmented reality experience to drive people to an online video appeal. Then they received a follow-up email that drove them to the coordinated blog post and included a link to the OHS online donation form. Finally, recipients received a follow-up email that drove them to the coordinated blog post and included a link to the OHS online donation form.
Testimonial
"The beauty of Informed Delivery® is that it ties together our digital and physical marketing for greater impact. When one of our donors received the USPS® Informed Delivery email notification, they were able to click on a link in the digital Ride-Along image to read the story right away. Then later that day, they received the actual physical piece in the mailbox, and saw the story across social feeds. It’s a great way to coordinate channels and raise awareness through every medium possible."
— Ross Imbler, Annual Giving Manager at Oregon Humane Society
