Flimp Case Study: NonProfit Fundraising

Video Email Brochures for Fundraising Event and Cause Marketing

Client: Give Us Your Poor - Helping the Homeless

About Give Us Your Poor

Give Us Your Poor (GUYP) is a Boston based nonprofit organization dedicated to ending homelessness by raising awareness of the issue and fundraising with the help of celebrity musicians and artists such as Natalie Merchant and Bruce Springsteen.

Marketing Objective

GUYP raises money and awareness for the homeless by working with celebrity musicians and artists to create and sell CD's and put on live concerts. The organization wanted an effective, low cost way to generate buzz and sell tickets for their Concert for Boston's Homeless using available video clips of the featured performers including Natalie Merchant, Buffalo Tom, Mario Frangoulis and Mighty Sam McClain.

The FLIMP Campaign

Using FLIMP and existing video content, Kingfish Media created interactive flash videosites video brochures for GUYP featuring each of Concert performers. The flimps were designed to raise awareness for both GUYP and the Concert for Boston's Homeless. The videosites video brochures were created using the FLIMP drag and drop WYSIWYG and required no programming. Four separate flimp videosites were sent out to GUYP's email database of donors and friends in the weeks leading up to the concert. Following distribution, GUYP was able to instantly collect viewer engagement, response and viral data. The flimp videosites video brochures were also embedded into the GUYP website using FLIMP web distribution tools.

Campaign Results

"We have great video content for telling our story, but trying to distribute and track an interactive video message using email or More Information: Give Us Your Poor: The Campaign to End Homelessness www.giveusyourpoor.org from our website is difficult and provides very limited data," said John McGah, Director of Give Us Your Poor. "We decided to use FLIMP to create and track viral video email campaigns that would elicit the "ooh and aah" factor to help our message stand out among the barrage of emails people receive every day. FLIMP enabled us to push out video music clips of featured artists to promote the concert and our brand quickly and easily, helping us make that emotional connection with the audience," says McGah. "Flimp got more attention from our audience than any other type of marketing we have used in the past and was an effective way to sell tickets and CD's and to get donations, given our limited staff." Four flimp videosite video brochure campaigns were sent separately by email one week apart to GUYP's opt-in email list. In total, 9,900 video emails were received and 4362 emails were opened for an email open rate of 44.0%. From the email opens, a total of 4115 people viewed the videosites (94.3% of email opens) and 3999 viewers successfully watched the video messages, representing a viewer engagement rate of 97.2%. Of those viewers, 583 or 14.6% watched the video to completion. Across the campaign, the average video duration was just under than 6 minutes. A total of 858 people or 21.4% of viewers clicked a response link and 241 people, or 6.0% of viewers forwarded to a friend. The average viewing time per person was 3 minutes 56 seconds and the combined viewing time

Give Us Your Poor Flimp Videosite Video Brochure Campaign. Viewer Engagement and Response Data

Using FLIMP, four separate flash videosite video brochure email marketing campaigns were created, launched and tracked by viewer email address to promote the Give Us Your Poor concert.

FLIMP® Case Study: Non-Profit Fundraising

Video Email Marketing Campaign

Client: Hands On Disaster Response

About Hands on Disaster Response

Providing an outlet for volunteer services and relief funds, Hands on Disaster Response (HODR) was founded by businessman David Campbell as a response to global disaster. Since its establishment in 2006, HODR has engaged in a total of eleven deployments around the globe, enabling volunteers to travel to the disaster site to help rebuild homes and stabilize the environment.

Marketing Objective

As a non-profit that offers free housing and food to volunteers, HODR depends upon donor funding for their projects. Prior to their first Flimp campaign, HODR had just started soliciting donations from their database with an HTML newsletter. Since the newsletter generated a click-through rate of only 10 percent, HODR began searching for ways to deepen audience engagement

".Flimping will be a way for us to respond to a natural disaster by distributing audiovisual content with timely messaging that will enable people to be informed and donate time or resources to a real-time disaster."

with the dual goal of increased donations and extending their reach to other prospective donors. HODR felt that that using Flimp® rich media marketing would offer an opportunity to share the importance the organization's mission and to show the progress the group was making around the world.

The FLIMP Campaign

HODR selected Flimp to replace their HTML newsletter because of the ability to use video and interactive rich media messaging video brochures for the email campaign. "There really isn't another way to email a video message," said HODR Development Coordinator Andrew Kerr. "While you can use video sharing sites such as YouTube, those sites only offer video hosting. If you want to be able to use your video in a direct marketing capacity and also obtain performance metrics by email address, video sharing sites are not a viable option." Beyond the ease of use in creating and distributing a rich media message with Flimp, HODR was attracted to the platform's viewer and campaign reporting features. "The tracking statistics provided by the Flimp reporting were an essential part of our campaign," Kerr said.

HODR initially created a video marketing campaign focused on soliciting donations and recruiting volunteers. Based on the success of the first campaign, HODR is evolving to create Flimp digital collateral video brochures for three specific organizational initiatives:

1. Announcing New Programs
2. Volunteer Testimonials
3. Monthly Donation Campaigns.

"Since we can use the video messaging and tracking, we can easily create Flimps that test what messaging resonates with an audience. Once we determine the audiovisual content and messaging that generates the best response, we can use that messaging as the basis for future Flimp campaigns," said Andrew Kerr. While the first campaign was sent to HODR's entire database, a forthcoming campaign will consist of three different Flimp videosites being sent to targeted segments of HODR's database. Additionally, HODR embedded a Flimp within their homepage, http://hodr.org, and used it for social networking.

Flimp Video Email Campaign Results

The first Hands on Disaster Relief Flimp campaign received an enormous amount of positive feedback. While a standard HODR email generated a 10 percent click-through rate, the Flimp's click through rate exceeded 40 percent. "With Flimp, four times as many people saw our message," Andrew Kerr said. Over 56 percent of the viewers watched the video to completion, with the average viewer watching the 1 minute, 49 second video for a total of 2 minutes, 30 seconds. The Flimp campaign generated over 21 hours of viewing time. "Recipients said they liked the Flimp format better than a typical e-newsletter," Kerr said. 9 percent of viewers forwarded the Flimp virally to friends and colleagues. Most importantly, the first Flimp campaign generated $700 dollars in recurring monthly donations to HODR, which translates to nearly $9,000 in new annual revenue. Andrew Kerr noted that "Flimps are extremely simple to create. We intend to create a Flimp in response to a natural disaster. We feel that Flimping will be a way for us to respond to a natural disaster by distributing audiovisual content with timely messaging that will enable people to be informed and donate time or resources to a real-time disaster. We have over a half-dozen ideas for using new Flimp content."

Hands On Disaster Response. Viewer Engagement and Reponse Data.

Flimp Case Study: Event Marketing/Fundraising

Video Email Brochures for Women's Initiative Fundraising Event

Client: United Way - United Way Women's Initiative

Rich Media Marketing About United Way

In October 2009, United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley hosted the 14th Annual Women's Leadership Fundraising Breakfast for executive women in the greater Boston area to raise money and awareness for Today's Girls. Tomorrows Leaders (TGTL), an initiative that provides funding to gender specific girls programming for girls between the ages of 7 and 18. Since 1996 date, TGTL invested over $10 million in community based programs and has provided more than 250,000 girls with innovative programs and opportunities to meet the unique needs of girls for positive development by pairing girls with mentors, and providing them with technical and leadership skills, and educating them about healthy lifestyles.

United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley is advancing the common good in our region by providing help today in ways that strengthen tomorrow. Our work ensures that children are ready to learn when they enter school, stay engaged in learning and graduate able to compete, and are nurtured by families that have the financial stability to support both their basic needs and future success. No other single organization has the scope, expertise and influence to bring together hundreds of human services agencies, government, businesses, private foundations and dedicated volunteers around a common vision of creating maximum impact and achieving long-lasting results.

Event Marketing Objectives

According to Pamela Norley, Executive Vice President of Fidelity Investments and Co- Chair of the 14th Annual Women's Leadership Breakfast event, "Our goals for the event were to achieve a capacity attendance of approximately 950 women and to increase the amount of money raised from the event in 2008. Given the challenging economy and intense competition for executive's time and donations from other organizations, we knew we would have to think outside the box and differentiate our marketing efforts to achieve our goals."

The Co-chairs of the event recommended that the United Way use the Flimp video marketing technology and video production and creative services to develop and execute a compelling video email marketing message for the invitation that would generate excitement and distinguish the Women's Leadership Breakfast event from other fundraising events. "Senior executive women that we were trying to reach for our event frequently get invited to these kinds of fundraising events," Norley said. "So the question became how do we set ourselves apart in a way that really will engage and draw in our audience on an emotional level? How do we create a much more engaging marketing message and invitation?"

For Alicia Canady, the United Way Program Director, using online video and the Flimp video marketing platform to achieve higher viewer engagement rates made perfect sense. "Our number one goal was to increase traction among the email invitation recipients," Canady said. "We wanted to have viewers hang out and click around, to give us feedback and interact with the message and video content. We needed an efficient, low cost way to produce a video message and deliver it by email together with multimedia content to invitees which could provide a quick and easy way to register for the event." Canady was particularly impressed with the Flimp tracking and reporting capabilities. "The flimp viewer reporting was astounding. It showed us how long and in what ways each viewer was engaging with the video invitation by email address, and who was forwarding the message and how those recipients were interacting. With the flimp tracking capabilities, we could immediately gather detailed data about the viewers that could help us increase registrations and attendance."

To save money, the organizers of the 2009 event decided to eliminate print brochures and direct mail and focus their primary marketing efforts on developing the interactive video email marketing campaign using Flimp together with Constant Contact email. In prior years, the United Way used a combination of print mail and static email to promote the annual Women's Leadership Breakfast event. In addition to lowering marketing costs, there was a desire to eliminate the environmental impact of using printed materials.

The Flimp Video Email Brochure Campaign

Flimp Media produced two videos for the email invitation and post event thank you that included personal messages from Co-Chair Krissy Davis, a Deloitte Partner and Angie Rodriguez, a program participant and beneficiary, who also told her personal story at the event. The invitation video also included a brief profile of keynote speaker Carla Harris, a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley. The cost of producing the two videos for the campaign was under $1000. Using the video and branded graphics provided by the United Way, Flimp Media then created a branded flash video landing page or videosite video brochure for the event using the Flimp technology. The landing page featured a short description of the event, and event details, and interactive links to forward the invitation to others, to get directions, to read speaker profiles, get additional event details, and to register for the event. The video email invitation was delivered to United Way's event database of 4600 friends and past donors using Constant Contact, one of 30 email service providers integrated with the Flimp video marketing platform. Following the event, a Thank-you flimp video email message was sent to attendees designed to generate additional support and to thank everyone for their generosity and support.

Marketing and Fundraising Results

"The flimp video email campaign was a phenomenal success" said Pam Norley, Co-Chair of the Women's Leadership Breakfast event. "We had a record attendance at the annual breakfast and were able to raise over $400,000 on the day of the event, nearly twice the amount raised in 2008. In addition the costs were low and flimp technology was easy to use. Given the competition for our audience's time and support, we were extremely impressed with the results".

The video email invitation was sent to an email database of 4,600, prompting 1311 RSVP's and producing 965 attendees. "It was a full house, we were happy with the turnout," Canady said. "Everyone was thrilled with the turnout and the support. Considering the down economy and high unemployment, we did very well. This was one of the most successful events in our history.

The successful fundraising results also came with a lower price tag. "We saved over $9,000 in print and mailing costs" Canady said. "Going 100% digital and using video was a real win for us," she said. "It became almost prehistoric to think about using direct mail again. Using print in the past made the RSVP process very disconnected. Having the video invitations emailed was a great way to streamline our marketing efforts while lowering our costs." The savings were particularly important for United Way's donors. "When donors come to fundraisers, they want to see their contributions spent helping people, not wasted on expensive marketing brochures and mailings." Canady said. "Using Flimp we were able to achieve great results without high marketing costs, which made everyone very happy."

Having all of the event information available online also cut down on the amount of United Way staff time spent explaining details to would-be attendees. "I did not get a lot of emails or questions about the event," Canady said. "That was one of the goals, to lay everything out and be able to give people all the information that they needed to register and donate online."

Canady plans to use the Flimp platform again in the future, and has even suggested that the United Way use it as more than just a direct marketing tool. "Flimps could be used throughout the organization," Canady said, "especially in social media marketing."

Video Email Campaign Statistics

The Women's Leadership breakfast video email invitation was sent out to 4,600 recipients and generated 1,521 views, an engagement rate of 33%. Of the engaged viewers, 1063 or 70% responded to the video message by clicking on an RSVP or information link, and 27 viewers received the invitation via the Forward to a Friend button. The average time spent by each viewer on the flimp landing page brochure was 2 minutes 42 seconds, which compares to an average of only 8 seconds spent on the typical HTML email message according to industry research. In total, flimp recipients spent 67 hours, 54 minutes engaged with the United Way video invitation.