Shelter’s Christmas campaign: How it fared

IT | Gareth Jones | 17 May 2011

Last week’s Institute of Fundraising Technology Conference included a presentation from James Barker of Shelter, who spilled the beans on some of the charity’s work online. Gareth Jones reports.

Barker, who is senior direct marketing executive at Shelter, spoke about the charity’s Christmas digital campaign last year as well as some of its work online more generally. Here are just a few highlights I’ve picked out.

The Christmas campaign

Shelter created several online products – namely Housebling, Santacam, Festify, as well as continuing to allow using to send branded e-cards.
According to Barker, the light-hearted Facebook app Festify (pictured) “surprised a lot of people” as it showed that Facebook can be used to fundraise.
Three-fifths of visits to Housebling came on the day Stephen Fry tweeted about it, causing the site crashed. “It came out of nowhere, we weren’t expecting it”, says James.

Results

A 49 per cent increase in online donations in Christmas 2009 compared to 2010
Increased Facebook referrals to donate page by 269 per cent
A 43 per cent increase in donations from Google AdWords
Improved ROI
Over 50 per cent of the online donations come at Christmas
E-card revenue hit £26,000, compared to £7,000 three years ago

Other online tactics

Shelter uses Facebook advertising and has found it successful, though its initial tactic of targeting the advertising to users who ‘liked’ other charities was not successful (and in fact only served to generate negative press publicity!). He also warned that Facebook requires advertisers to spend at least £4,000 a month, and that this transaction has to be paid for by credit card, which can be inconvenient.
Elsewhere, paid search is Shelter’s biggest means of directed people to its donation page and online products. As Barker puts it: “Paid Search helps charities direct supporters to the right place on their site and increase online donations.”
Barker also feels that banner ads are also a good way of raising awareness although he admits that it can be difficult to track their success.

Directory: Shelter
Who's Who: Gareth Jones

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.