Letter marathon - messages that get through

Amnesty International is one of the best-known non-profit organizations in the world. They have been active in the fight against human rights violations since 1961. Their campaigns are known around the globe and enjoy great popularity. This includes the letter marathon, in which the organization uses analogue and digital letters and millions of participants every year to campaign for individual fates affected by human rights violations.

When we were commissioned, Amnesty International Germany had already defined the two goals they wanted to achieve as an organization with the help of the letter marathon: Generate new leads and turn participants into donors through targeted follow-up communication. To achieve these goals, you need messages that resonate. We therefore developed communication measures to reach the relevant target group at the right time via the right channel.

In addition, we were faced with the challenge of developing unique and daring content. It had to arouse curiosity and generate clicks. At the same time, it was important not to deviate too much from Amnesty's wording and to observe the internal restrictions. Due to the size of the project team and its flat hierarchies, this was not always easy.

The first step was to determine the status quo of existing measures. We needed to know: What is already being done to attract more participants - i.e. new leads - to the letter marathon? And how are they subsequently retained? The result was surprising. To date, the German section had hardly taken any measures to support the campaign. With 202,086 letters sent and 61,934 online signatures, the 2018 letter marathon was already a great success - without any additional online marketing.

A huge potential target group was still waiting. Amnesty International Germany had also largely dispensed with follow-up communication up to this point. After successful participation, the marathon writers only received a very simple thank-you email. We therefore had to develop a concept that covered the various lifecycle stages – i.e. that promoted the campaign and engaged and converted participants through targeted communication. This involved the lifecycle stages „new“, „interested“ and „developing“, whereby the two stages „new“ and „interested“ were combined during the conception phase.

New/Interested: In order to reach new and, above all, more young people and teachers, as Amnesty wanted, they should be made aware of the campaign via social media and the Google Display network and encouraged to participate.

Development capability: After participation, participants should be retained and converted – through follow-up communication tailored to the target group.  

It was important for the success of the project to respond flexibly to the complex and individual requirements of the Amnesty project team. Thanks to our experience, we were able to provide a plan B if necessary - because the satisfaction and individual needs of our customers are important to us.

In order to inspire new people, especially young people with an interest in human rights, to take part in the letter marathon, the campaign was advertised in advance via a paid story on Facebook and Instagram. The aim was to use ads with paradoxical statements to arouse curiosity and raise awareness of the campaign. The ads ran until the start of the campaign on December 1, 2019, after which the target group was encouraged to take part in the letter marathon through ads on Facebook, Instagram and the Google Display Network.

ActiveCampaign was used to send the emails for follow-up communication for the participants with development skills. An automated journey through the topics of „thank you“, „courage“ and „success“ was intended to convert the participants into donors. The lead-to-donor journey began with three emails and a landing page. While the first two emails contained a call to action as standard, this was only visible in the third email for those who had not yet donated. Integrated engagement scoring was used to measure the behavior of the contacts and the journey was continued according to the interaction.

All contacts who had not yet donated after the third email were transferred to a Facebook Custom Audience. This target group received sponsored posts with a targeted donation CTA. Those who showed a high level of interest in the emails and their content through many email opens and clicks, but could not yet be converted to donors even after targeted retargeting on Facebook, were then transferred to Amnesty's telemarketing.

Reaching potential target groups

Young people in particular were the target group for this year's letter marathon. In order to reach this group with all their needs, we developed various measures around social media

More attention through Facebook ads

During the campaign period, examples of the letter marathon were repeatedly presented. The paradoxical statements generated curiosity and attention.

Exclusive gimmick for participants 

As a thank you, all participants were given the opportunity to use an exclusive frame for their Facebook profile picture. The benefit? Participants can fly the flag and show their community that they are committed to a great campaign. In addition, we were able to ensure a higher visibility of the letter marathon on Facebook.

Increase loyalty through customized communication measures

Through a tailor-made journey, the participants should be bound to the organization step by step and converted to donors at the end of the journey. Depending on the engagement score, this ended with a Facebook Custom Audience and handover to telemarketing.

Thinking outside the box - uncovering and activating untapped potential 

When developing suitable communication measures, we noticed that Amnesty International Germany had not yet made use of the opportunity to launch fundraising campaigns on Facebook. Together with Amnesty International's managing director, we fought our way through the war of notes and implemented this.

Optimize monitoring and reporting

Last year, we only collected information on the number of signatures. Together with Amnesty International, we optimized the monitoring and reporting, which was still in its infancy at the time. To obtain an initial valid result, we therefore carried out a matching between donors and the contacts who had gone through the Journey. In addition, a better analysis of the website traffic and the data from Facebook, Instagram and the ads from the Google Display Network was carried out.

Üvia social media and the Google Display Network, more than half a million people were reached and the number of online participants increased by 62.23% compared to the previous year. Four times as many people visited the website as in the previous year. Over 10,000 euros in donations were collected online and via the Facebook fundraiser.

The realization that courage pays off is also positive. Amnesty International agreed to try something unprecedented as part of the project. We succeeded in using tracking to create a valid database for the coming year. The implementation of Facebook fundraising was also uncharted territory for Amnesty International and was not fully supported at first. But Amnesty showed courage, dared to try something new and, with the implementation of Facebook fundraising, created another pillar of ongoing fundraising campaigns. Breaking new ground also paid off in terms of wording and internal restrictions. The second email with the topic „courage“ had the highest interaction rate with a click rate of almost 21%.