Mercy Ships: campaign image

Organisation
Mercy Ships

Campaign theme
Fita, boy with facial tumour

The set-up
This mailing was dropped during Mercy Ships' major media campaign in Flanders at the end of 2018. The figurehead of the campaign was BV Cath Luyten. She boarded the Africa Mercy and testified about her experiences on talk shows on Flemish TV and radio. Our mailing capitalised on the massive media coverage of Luyten as an ambassador for Mercy Ships. In both the leaflet and the letter of the Dutch-language version of the mailing, we used photos of her visit to the hospital ship.

The impact of the media campaign - which was only conducted in Flanders - was clearly visible in the results. On the Dutch-speaking side, we recruited twice as many new donors as our French-speaking neighbours. The average donation was also significantly higher among Flemish donors.

That the mailing also did well in the French-language version (without a major media campaign or reference to Cath Luyten) is thanks to the strong copy of the letter as well as the nice, large calendar that donors received with the mailing.

Overall, this campaign scored very well. The overall response rate as well as the average donation was very high compared to the average result of Mercy Ships' 2018 recruitments. In fact, per new donor, the organisation made a profit!