AICR

‘Your Story’ legacy campaign

The challenge
The Association for International Cancer Research funds research into the building blocks of cancer across the globe. Despite a great research proposition, they have relatively low legacy income.

Part of the reason for this was their approach to marketing in the past – high volume, low engagement direct marketing driven by raffles, lotteries and incentives. Great for cashflow, but not necessarily long-term engagement.

There was a giant, homogenous haystack of donors. We needed to find a few individuals in it that we could open a personal, appropriate conversation about legacies with.

Our approach
We worked with AICR to devise a three stage strategy. This kicked off with the designing of a propensity model scored against their database, looking at, for instance, age, past motivations for donation and levels of giving.

Then we asked these 80,000 people for something they’d never been asked for before – their story. We did this through an incredibly personal (and true) letter from AICR’s head of fundraising about her own cancer story and reasons for joining the charity. The stories, poems, scrawls and essays we received made for powerful, if not easy, reading. It was the start of a dialogue based on emotional engagement rather than short-term giving.

The result was a powerful piece of communication – a book of cancer stories which was mailed to the same file with a letter asking them to consider leaving a legacy.

What's good about it?

As a result of this campaign AICR has begun conversations with many new prospects. They’ve received 118 legacy pledges so far, which could result in around £2 million of legacy income. And fund a lot of life-saving research, which will give more cancer stories happy endings one day.