St Elizabeth Hospice
Itineris took the time to ensure that our digital strategy was aligned with our target audiences on all levels and to understand our complex organisation. Not only do they exceeded our expectations, we really enjoy working with the whole team...although their insistence on providing biscuits each time we meet is not always helpful!
H Causer , Marketing & Communications Manager
Brief /Objectives
St Elizabeth Hospice improves the quality of life for people in East Suffolk who have an illness from which they will not recover. The marketing team was seeking to establish a digital marketing strategy to enhance and interlink with its wider marketing plan. The strategy's aim was to increase the number of people engaging with the work of the Hospice and to increase the quality of that engagement.
The brief was to develop a digital marketing strategy to allow the Hospice to develop innovative ways of engaging with their supporters, to facilitate the generation of vital funds and to increase the brand awareness of the charity, whilst providing a realistic snapshot of its work. The Hospice also uses digital media to ensure potential patients and their families understand the Hospice and its services and the new website needed to incorporate these aspects.
There was also specific requirements to recruit new supporters and volunteers by transmitting positive information about the Hospice through a new website, email marketing campaigns as well as the charity's existing social media channels.We needed to integrate our digital strategy with the Hospice's offline, PR and social media activities; providing a fully joined-up and effective marketing strategy.
Fulfilment
We created a full service digital strategy including a new website, email marketing, event microsites and auctions sites. Itineris established a new website for St Elizabeth Hospice www.stelizabethhospice.org.uk to enable the charity to create an opportunity for supporters to see the important work it does on a day-to-day basis.
The site's top-line features include online donation facilities, event management, an online shop, social media and streaming videos. The website saw a dramatic increase in the number of visitors, with an increase of 87% over the first 12 months. We also built two online auction websites, a work experience auction site and a deckchairs auction site that helped raise over £60,000 for the charity. These sites also provided the Hospice with a dedicated resource to build up a strong supporter base.
A part of the digital fundraising strategy was to also build an annual event management microsite for the Hospice's highly successful Midnight Walk event. The site not only promoted the event; it allowed the Hospice to manage over 2,000 supporters online. In addition, we also provided ongoing email marketing campaigns through little green plane, which are currently receiving open rates of up to 55%, and 49% for click-through rates compared to industry averages of 20.4% and 3.9% respectively.
This project has also just been shortlisted for a national CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) award 2011.