Major charities sign up for Mail Train Media mailings

Seventeen leading charities, whose causes span homelessness, healthcare and animal welfare, are set to mount pre-Christmas fundraising campaigns in association with inserts-based direct advertising medium, Mail Train Media.

The charities involved include Age UK, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, British Red Cross, Cats Protection, Dogs Trust, Emmaus, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Marie Curie, Mencap, RNLI, Salvation Army, Sense, SPANA, WaterAid, and the YMCA.

Mail Train Media is a personalised direct advertising solution from Scotts & Co, one of the UK’s biggest and most experienced mail order catalogue retailers.

According to market measurement firm Nielsen, Scotts now publishes and distributes more mail order catalogues than any other UK company. As a result, it now has what is believed to be the UK’s largest database of affluent ABC1 customers.

The charities are using Mail Train Media to adapt their marketing strategies to the way the Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumer behaviour and work patterns, enabling fundraisers to reach the increased numbers of people now working from home on a more permanent basis.

In the run-up to Christmas, Mail Train Media will enable the participating charities to engage directly with potential donors in their own homes, including millions of affluent, ABC1 individuals, aged over 55, who have already shown they are responsive to appeals via personally addressed direct mail.

The charities are able to reach this pre-qualified audience through targeted inserts in high-volume mailings for Scotts & Co’s biggest catalogue titles, including Scotts of Stow, Expert Verdict, Gift Discoveries, The Traditional Garden Supply Company, and Bloom.

Each personalised and GDPR-compliant mailing will place the fundraiser’s communication (as a printed leaflet) directly in the hands of up to 3 million individual Scotts & Co customers throughout the UK, at a cost of less than £30 per thousand mailings, claimed to be at least 80% lower than the cost of a charity’s own mailings.

Charity direct marketing expert Suzanne Lewis is backing the Mail Train Media service to bring top results for clients. The former Rapp director of list broking and advisor to the Chartered Institute of Fundraising is now founding director of Arc Data, which helps charities to navigate the world of data and direct marketing.

She said: “Many charities and agencies have recognised that in the post-pandemic world it is not enough to just publicise their appeal. Using direct advertising to reach potential donors in a personalised way in their own homes has become more important than ever.

“Ideally, fundraisers need to present their case direct to an audience that is proven to be highly responsive to appeals via direct mail and physical inserts. In my experience, the first-party data captured from Scotts & Co’s close relationship with its millions of catalogue customers enables Mail Train Media to find cost efficient solutions. It is able to deliver a target audience that is specific to each individual charity client.”