Blog
03 July

Charities: Say More with Data-Driven Video

Adopting new technologies is no small feat. Let’s be realistic: as a charity marketer you have grand ambitions, but integrating these innovative new platforms and tools into your digital strategy can be problematic with often limited resources.

It has become evident that the charity sector can’t fall behind in terms of digital transformation, as companies vye for consumers attention at an ever-growing scale. At Cannes Lions 2019 (an annual creative marketing communications festival), Raja Rajamannar, CMO at Mastercard spoke about how we are “bombarded with over 5,000 markeing messages a day”, which just shows what charities are contending with, and how it’s becoming harder to reach donors.

Forget Me Not

A recent report indicated that nearly half (46%) of donors have forgotten who the last charity they supported was. A concerning figure considering charities depend on brand recognition and loyalty to ensure they can continue to run services and carry out research, with this all taking place on a backdrop of dwindling funding and access to grants.

This occurrence could be a result of a slow response to the development of a digital strategy. According to a research conducted by Skills Platform 52% of charities don’t have a digital strategy in place

An Appetite for Data

With an increasing number of emerging technologies revolutionising the way we work, and a growing number of channels at our disposal for communicating through, there are plenty of avenues for telling your story across channel but it does come with a problem: making the most of your data in a privacy centered way.

GDPR shook up the business world – especially in Europe – with companies across almost every sector questioning how they would move forward and ensure they complied with the new regulations.

It’s made many marketers rethink the way they collect data and market to their audience, especially that it has to be meaningful, and additionally have value. 

59% of charities surveyed by Skills Platform responded that they are actively trying to use data more effectively, which is key to creating the most relevant and inspiring content.

Include <<Personalisation>>

As discussed,  many charities have begun integrating data into their marketing. One of the most effective ways of implementing this is through the use of personalised data in email, using fields such as first name, city, donation amount (to name a few) into email. This basic level of personalisation has now become commonplace, so how do you take this a step further? 

Inspire with Video 

The first step is to use the most engaging form of content: video. 

Video allows brands to tell a much more rich and engaging story, more powerful than any image or copy alone, and so it comes as no surprise that video traffic is predicted to account for 82% of all IP traffic by 2022. 

This all adds up to video being essential for any charity that needs to connect deeply with their donors who have an emotional connection to their cause, and creating content that donors want to immerse themselves in. Video layered with personalised data takes this to the next level, creating highly meaningful and relevant experiences that builds brand recognition and helps drive more donations. 

But what if you don’t have much personalised data stored to accomplish this?

Enter Contextual Data

To be personalised doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be personal information. 

Real-time contextual data such as the weather, time of day, day-of-week, countdowns to upcoming charity events or a live updates on the amount raised so far can all be utilised to give communications context based on what’s going on around a specific person, resulting in highly relevant, timely and more personalised experiences for the viewer. This may seem daunting but this can all be automated using technology.  

Where Do I Start? 

One of the most successful ways we’ve seen data-driven personalised video work in the charity sector is to use data to show  supporters the impact they have had on your organisation, and the cause you all support. 

Spirable worked with the British Heart Foundation on personalised ‘Thank You’ videos for their supporters. The personalised videos helped the organisation engage with their audience in both a time and cost efficient manner. The results speak for themselves with 42% of supporters watching the entire video, and with over 10,000 videos being generated – this is something that would have been incredibly difficult to do without Spirable’s ability to scale.

Future Ready

Through embracing both personal and contextual data in creative ways across your digital channels  you can not only increase your brand recognition and increase donations but also automate content creation to build your digital strategy  – ultimately helping cut through the noise and be one of the most important and compelling messages a consumer hears that day. 

Begin Today

Making the transition into creating video content yourself can be a challenging prospect, but the Spirable platform allows you to create and distribute video at scale, resulting in not only time efficiencies but also cost savings, and greater control over your creative.

Register your interest here, and we will be in touch to discuss your bespoke needs.