Video Services Case Study

The Blue Cross

About The Charity

The Blue Cross is Britain's pet charity, providing practical support, information and advice for pet and horse owners.

About The Video Campaign

The Blue Cross wanted to make the most of one of their fundraising videos that had been aired on national television. It told the stories of neglected and abused household pets that had been helped by The Blue Cross.

Their plan was to make the video available on their website and to turn It into an easy-to-view link that could be sent to their 55,000-strong subscriber base. Their requirements were as follows:

• As this was the first time that the charity had streamed content from their website or sent it to a database, they needed to be sure they used the right provider.
• They needed the film to be broadcast quality in order to maximise its impact and ensure viewers would engage with the content.
• As donation information was given at the end of the video, they needed the audience to watch the video all the way through.
• The results needed to be trackable and provide information on when the video was viewed by recipients, so that the charity could decide whether streaming future fundraising videos would be a good investment.
• The video needed to be in a form that was viewable by all internet users, not just those with a particular media player, in order to maximise the number of viewings.

What CTT Did

In partnership with Vividas, CTT helped install and implement Vividas’ streaming technology to deliver the video on the website and by email in the same full-screen broadcast quality as television.

Vividas’ technology is unique as it does not require the viewer to have any software on their machine in order to view a video. In addition, it does not require high bandwidth. This gave the video clip unlimited reach as it could be viewed by all internet users.

The Impact Of The Video Campaign

The results of this campaign were very exciting. One week after the email link had been sent to The Blue Cross’ 55,000 subscriber base and gone live on the website, 2,680 people had viewed the video in its entirety and reached the donation page at the end.

The Blue Cross experienced a 5% average response rate to the video, which is much higher than the usual response rate from other forms of advertising. In addition, the clip made an impression on recipients and was forwarded 1,352 times.

Tony Samuel, Director of Marketing and Fundraising at The Blue Cross, said:

“Putting one of our fundraising videos online is a new approach for The Blue Cross and provides a fantastic channel for demonstrating the work we do. We get a large number of visitors to our site and because we are entirely funded by donations we need to make these hits as productive a revenue stream as possible. It was therefore important that the video had just as high an impact online as its television version. Vividas’ ability to provide us with a full-screen version definitely achieves this.”

www.bluecross.org.uk