Advertiser: ROYAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF BLIND PEOPLE (RNIB)
Agency: ELVIS
Category: Permanent Retail
Executive Creative Director: John Treacy (Elvis)
Senior Account Manager: Nicola Anderson (Elvis)
Copywriter: Lindsey Debeer (Elvis)
Developer: Hamzah Ghafoor (Elvis)
Art Director: Seth Jones (Elvis)
Outcome
As the first piece of work for RNIB by the entrant, it was cautiously tested after previous emails had failed to meet their objectives. Its primary objective was awareness, rather than donation. The email achieved an open rate of 14% - considerably higher than a previous cold email that was part of an integrated campaign, with radio and digital advertising. The click-through-rate was 22%. The average CTR for non-profit organisations is only 3.5%* (consistent with previous emails). The email was heralded as an example of industry best practice at the Institute of Fundraising National Convention last year. *Mailchimp Dec 2010
Execution
People see broken image links on a regular basis, and will instinctively click to download, without even registering the message. Only this time when they clicked ‘display images’, frustratingly, nothing happened. The image didn't 'display'. It was an incomplete picture; a real experience of not being able to see the world as it's supposed to be seen. Readers didn't need to imagine what life was like when you couldn't see the whole picture, because they were, albeit briefly, experiencing it now. By playing with the everyday annoyances of email, we were able to make a powerful point simply and provocatively.
Implementation
As a cold email, the first task was to avoid the delete key. To do this we aimed to make people curious and encourage them to open the email with a personalised subject heading: 'Ed, imagine if every email looked like this?'Once they opened the email, they were confronted with a familiar image - an email where the images had failed to download. By clicking on the central 'Click here’ link, people were then directed to a page on the RNIB website where they could learn more about the issues surrounding the blind and donate to the charity.
Client Brief Or Objective
With an average email CTR of 3.5%* for non-profit organisations and history of underperforming emails, our biggest challenge with this first piece of work for RNIB was to make an impact and raise awareness of sight problems.We wanted to create empathy with the feeling that partially sighted people experience in their everyday life with this cold email. Like frustrations experienced at not being able to get things done as simply as others. Our strategy was to stop people taking good eyesight for granted, then give them a genuine taste of what it’s like to have sight problems. (*Mailchimp, 2010)