E-mail Campaign of the Year: Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure

Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure

2010 Global Race for the Cure

Submitted by Event 360

✔ The Numbers

Recipients: More than 1 million impressions

Response rate: 33 percent open rate

Total cost: N/A

Income generated: $3.5 million

Average gift: $61.57

Measuring analytics for e-mail campaigns can be tricky (and something we plan to address more carefully on entry forms going forward). For example, it's not likely that this winning campaign cost nothing, zero, zip, nada to execute. But our judges felt that the results and superior execution of the campaign by Event 360 on behalf of Komen were award-worthy nonetheless.

The goal of this e-mail-only effort was to motivate race participants to solicit donations and remind them that although they personally had no fundraising minimum — the race is, ultimately, a fundraising vehicle. In the 12 weeks prior to the 2010 race, the campaign went out to everyone participating in any capacity: runners, walkers, Sleep In for the Cure participants, kids and volunteers.

According to Event 360's Therese Grohman, the segmentation and personalization of the messages are what helped to boost overall fundraising from all sources by 8.43 percent from the 2009 effort. Overall, the 2010 race saw more registrants and better individual fundraising results.

E-mails in the campaign were personalized according to things like level of fundraising — Power Fundraiser (those who raised $275 or more), Low-Balance Fundraiser (those who raised between $1 and $274) and Zero-Balance Fundraiser (those who had not yet begun to fundraise) — participation levels (team captains and volunteers, for example); and even attitude (determined by answers to questions regarding willingness to fundraise) and behavior (interaction with the website).

Said Gold Awards judge Paul Bobnak: "Awesome income totals and an open rate that speaks to the terrific brand of the organization."

— Margaret Battistelli Gardner, editor-in-chief of FundRaising Success