[November 21, 2009] Canadian Cancer Society Wins Innovator Award at Convio Client Summit Tweet Nov 20, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- The Canadian Cancer Society, Ontario Division, a provincial division of the national community-based organization of volunteers, whose mission is the eradication of cancer and the enhancement of the quality of life of people living with cancer, was presented with an Innovator Award in the Email Communications category for their communications to promote the organization's 2009 Relay For Life events. Relay For Life, a 12-hour overnight event held across Canada, is an opportunity to get together with family and friends and celebrate cancer survivors, remember loved ones lost to cancer, and fight back in hope of finding a cure for this terrible disease. To promote the 2009 Relay For Life campaigns, the Canadian Cancer Society said it used Convio functionality to send email for recruiting past Relay For Life participants, converting past donors into participants, and increasing overall participation, fundraising, and retention of the current year's participants. All award winners were recognized at a ceremony at the Convio Summit, the company's annual conference. "We were really encouraged to win an Innovator Award, especially because this was the first year we used Convio for email, event registration and peer-to-peer fundraising with Relay," said Mike Kirkpatrick, Director, Marketing, Canadian Cancer Society, Ontario Division. "Having these three pieces integrated was key to our email communications success. We were able to segment our list and create personalized emails based on an individual's role and fundraising activity with the event." According to the Canadian Cancer Society, the email marketing plan ensured consistent messaging across more than 100 Relay For Life events. The emails, which consisted of nine recruitment messages and 13 engagement messages, were sent on a predetermined schedule based on each individual event's date. Emails focused on recruitment utilized personalized content and segmentation to target previous participant messaging, whereas engagement messages included conditionalized fundraising tips for registered participants. The emails were also used to introduce and help promote a new revenue channel - the Boundless Fundraising application for Facebook that utilizes Convio APIs to allow participants to fundraise for an event on their Facebook pages. Email open rates reached as high as 45 percent, and nearly five percent of event registrants were sourced from recruitment emails. Nine other nonprofits received Innovator Awards and were recognized in categories including Advocacy, Best Use of Open, Constituent Empowerment, CRM Visionary with Common Ground, Online Fundraising, Overall Use of Convio, Special Events and Best Website. All Convio clients were eligible to submit for the awards. "We worked collaboratively with Canadian Cancer Society to develop the strategy, content, and messaging for this year's Relay For Life campaign," explained Jonathan Drennan, Senior Consultant for Charity Dynamics. "It's exciting that our combined efforts led to these email results, and helped us to achieve our goal of recruiting past participants and keeping current year's participants highly engaged with the online fundraising tools." More Information: http://www.convio.com/2009innovators ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]