The Salvation Army turned to a mobile-optimized email campaign to reach on-the-go consumers, with 55.3 percent of recipients clicking directly to the donation form.

The charity wanted to reach busy holiday consumers and allow them to participate and donate regardless of how they were receiving the communication. The Salvation Army tapped Web2Mobile?s Email2Mobile and Artez Interactive for the donation portion of the campaign.

?Based on previous campaigns, we have found that up to 20 to 30 percent of customers receiving email marketing messages were on mobile devices,? said Deborah Hall, managing director of Web2Mobile, Toronto, Ontario.

?The strategy behind this campaign was to create a mobile-optimized version of the email so users would have the option to view the content tailored to their device platform,? she said.

?The Salvation Army would be able to measure the click-throughs to the donation page and able to access the real-time analytics of device type [and] impressions from the mobile version of the email.?

Web2Mobile develops tools that convert PC Web content to mobile friendly content. 

The company?s Email2Mobile product lets marketers create mobile versions of emails to target customers on mobile devices.

Artez Interactive provides online fundraising systems for more than 300 charities in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia.

Beating the rush
Typically, pre-Christmas is the most crowded time of the year for charitable appeals.

The Salvation Army found that the online channel for both appeals and donations is more cost-effective than many other traditional methods.

The challenge that Web2Mobile addressed for the Salvation Army was that an appeal viewed on a mobile phone may not display properly and the recipient may not be able to read it.

Even if viewable, the consumer must be provided with the ability to complete a donation transaction while in the moment.

Web2Mobile said that its product solved the challenge by optimizing the appeal so that it could be read on the mobile phone. Also, the Artez platform gave the donor the capability to complete the transaction immediately.

Of the mobile opens, 51 percent came from consumers using Apple?s iPhone and 50 percent came from consumers with Research In Motion?s BlackBerry smartphones.

The most popular BlackBerry device used was the 8830 model, with 30 percent of views.

Mobile appeal
Of the four links in the mobile email, three were articles and one was a direct donation link.

The donation link was most popular, with 55.3 percent of consumers clicking directly to the donation form.

?At Artez Interactive, we [had] noticed a trend emerging very rapidly in 2008,? said Philip King, president and CEO of Artez Interactive, Toronto, Ontario. ?Towards the end of the year, approximately 7 percent of donation attempts were made using mobile phones. 

?Our theory is that consumers, when presented with an appeal to donate, want to complete the transaction on whatever device they are viewing it,? he said.

?We need to appeal to users when and where they are receiving these opportunities to donate.?