Connecting with communities by optimizing new and existing initiatives driven by real time insights

The Customer

Red Nose Day is a fundraising campaign run by the non-profit organization Comic Relief Inc. Red Nose Day brings people together to have fun and raise money to assist in ending child poverty around the world. Globally, Red Nose Day has raised over $1 billion since its launch in the UK in 1988.

Each year, Red Nose Day raises awareness and funds through the sale of red noses and other merchandise across the US. The organization promotes fundraising across businesses and educational institutions with the culmination of an annual Red Nose Day event broadcasted as a major television special on NBC.

The Challenge

Red Nose Day was first introduced in the United States in 2015. At the time, only a small handful of Americans had heard of the organization. The Red Nose Day team decided to take a business approach to grow awareness and impact fundraising.

Red Nose Day is built like a small startup business, utilizing entrepreneurial efforts and a small team to optimize their promotional efforts in order to increase awareness and fundraising year-on-year. Red Nose Day relies on quantifiable efforts in order to determine which promotional avenues produce the greatest outcome for their organization. With a small team dedicated to creating a finite growth strategy, Red Nose Day needed an effective tool that would help to quantify their community’s opinions and optimize strategy based on feedback from the dedicated Red Nose Day community.

Red Nose Day culminates with one main fundraising day each year, however, the success of that day depends on the dedicated efforts of the Red Nose Day team year-round. With one day holding so much importance for the organization, it was important to Red Nose Day to find a way to engage with their community and test potential marketing campaigns and fundraising strategies throughout the year.

The Solution

Red Nose Day uses Segmanta’s survey creating, distribution and analysis capabilities to remain connected with the charity’s community, collect their feedback and immediately optimize according to what they learn from surveys.

“Segmanta has allowed us to test and measure everything from new messaging concepts to interest in potential fundraising initiatives and feedback on past efforts”

Red Nose Day is able to collect feedback from all of their donor and fundraising sources without the need to hire research experts, external consultants or utilize expensive IT resources. Using advanced survey logic, Red Nose Day was able to utilize a single survey to display relevant questions to respondents based on their relationship with the organization.

The Benefits

In 2015, when Red Nose Day launched, only a handful of Americans had heard of Red Nose Day, and those who had heard of it were often unclear on their mission. Today, more than half of all Americans have heard of the charity and almost three-quarters of those people fully understand the charity’s mission.

“Segmanta has provided us with the ability to test every strategic message, campaign or initiative before launch and optimize existing initiatives based off of feedback from our varying donors. The best part is that we have been able to do all of this optimization without the need to employ external researchers or agencies to assist in the research and decision-making process”

This exponential growth was possible due to Red Nose Day’s senior management decision to take a real business approach to the charity. By collecting continuous feedback, making decisions based off of real donor input and placing highly effective campaigns as decided by pre-launch tests, Red Nose Day is able to employ marketing and optimization principles throughout the year.