UNICEF’s most valued monthly donors are all unique in the types of programs they contribute to – some donate to relief and education, while some are more likely to respond to disasters and immunization drives. For years UNICEF was sending these core donors a generic quarterly newsletter. But research had shown that the newsletter was becoming outdated - donors wanted to know more about how their donations were being used.

UNICEF realized that showing donors specifically how their donations are helping and making them feel recognized is important in order to keep them engaged. With a limited budget we had to find a way to re-vamp the current newsletter, make the donors feel more involved and increase the average donation amount per donor.

Since UNICEF had a great donor database, we were able to mine exactly which programs donors contributed to and the average amount they generally contributed. This laid the foundation for us to create a fresh, new, personalized newsletter for each donor with specific articles relating to what they expressed interest in and what programs they donated to. After developing multiple articles and creating a complex content matrix, we had a total of 36 different newsletter combinations. These articles were dynamically pulled into the newsletter template based on a detailed segment key. For example, if a donor regularly contributed to education programs, their version of the newsletter would feature articles that were focused around how donations are improving the education system and consequently the lives of children in different parts of the world.

Not only were we able to customize the articles in each newsletter, but based on the donors’ previous contributions, we also customized coupon donation values. This allowed UNICEF to satisfy their donors’ needs for more information as well as increase the amount of money raised from previous years’ newsletters.