success stories

Objective

Animal welfare charity the RSPCA used the PureResponse email delivery system to test the effectiveness of its email campaigns.

Background

The RSPCA's efforts to develop their online supporter database have historically been conducted via the promotion of a number of RSPCA campaigns. These include campaigns that call for a ban on battery cages, for controls on fireworks, improvements in the welfare of chickens bred for meat, and the anti-hunting campaign. The RSPCA has provided their online supporters with a variety of means to get involved with campaigns. These include signing online petitions, emailing supermarkets and the ability for supporters to send the RSPCA details of problems experienced by pets because of firework noise.

Challenges

The RSPCA wanted to conduct tests to see if HTML would be more impactful/effective than plain text emails. The charity therefore required an email delivery system that could cope with delivering both plain text and HTML alternatives, as well as being able to provide detailed reports about the behaviour of supporters.

Conclusions

PureResponse was able to fulfil all of the requirements of the RSPCA:

• The Report function allowed the RSPCA to effectively manage and update their lists, recording invalid sends, bounce backs and unopened emails.
• The Report function allowed the RSPCA to view (in real time) any action taken on the receipt of an email, for example any links/attachments clicked on/opened and any potential viral connotations, i.e. if emails were passed on to friends or colleagues.
• Emails could be delivered in any graphical format required i.e. HTML or plain text.
  

Justine Pannett, Project Manager at the RSPCA says

"We needed to find out about the effectiveness of our campaign emails in terms of their format, frequency and content. The PureResponse system makes targeting and email list management a very simple process. We have also found the reporting facility very easy to use and were able to monitor 'at-a-glance' how well each campaign strand was doing."