Good Cause Case Study: RNLI

The Challenge

In 2008 the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), the charity that saves lives at sea, was looking for new fundraising ideas and exploring different methods of communicating with their supporters. They were also interested in looking at innovative ways to generate money for the charity.

The Solution

mkodo was successfully running SMS marketing campaigns for commercial clients and seeing high volumes of customer engagement via this channel. mkodo’s Managing Director Stuart Godfree, a long-term supporter of RNLI, approached the charity with a suggestion to trial the use of premium rate SMS micro-donations for RNLI supporters. RNLI loved the idea and wanted to tie this into their launch alerts service which was at time being used to send messages to pagers when lifeboats launched.

mkodo built a microsite which was hosted on the RNLI website to enable customers to register for the service. Supporters were able to select which lifeboat stations they were interested in and set a limit on the number of texts received per week. The RNLI launch alerts API was integrated into mkodo’s platform and a premium rate SMS billing route enabled. When a lifeboat launched in an area that a supporter had signed up to, a 25p SMS was set up to be sent from mkodo’s mCloud platform to the supporter and the revenue generated sent to the RNLI.

The Results

RNLI’s SMS launch alerts service has now been running for over 10 years. Over this time the supporter base has grown and with a very low customer unsubscribe rate this generates a significant amount of revenue for the RNLI. Feedback for the service has been overwhelmingly positive with supporters particularly liking the fact that their texts not only help support the charity financially but also directly links their contribution to one of the RNLI’s key functions.

Quote

“We have found that the mobile channel via mkodo works well for a variety of awareness raising and supporter activities.” Communications Manager, RNLI

Sign up at:

https://rnli.org/what-we-do/lifeboats-and-stations/latest-lifeboat-launches/lifeboat-launch-alerts