James Rosewell discusses mobile as a revenue stream and the difficulties surrounding websites and device detection.
James Rosewell discusses mobile as a revenue stream and the difficulties surrounding websites and device detection.
What is big data? Simply put, it refers to an extremely large set of information, and by association its growth and availability, and its implied subsequent usage. We have never previously lived in a world where we have such a potential to share information about ourselves and mine information about others; their thoughts and feelings, their buying and voting habits; their likes and dislikes; and the amount of time spent on each of these things.
We buy most of our groceries at the supermarket. Very few buy them online and those who do rarely use a smartphone. That changes in Portugal this week, where El Cortes Ingles launched a mobile grocery-shopping platform powered by Grability, a New York City-based tech company.
iAddress is a unique SMS/text function, developed by instaGiv – the charity mobile text specialist. iAddress changes the donor acquisition landscape by enabling charities to engage with and recruit supporters by text, complete with their postal address details to instantly grow their supporter bases.
The data collected via iAddress is fully owned by the charity and can be downloaded into prepared opted-in mailing lists at any time.
Fast and simple data capture means charities can reach out to new and different profile groups for supporter acquisition and immediately add new donors with postal addresses to their supporter database or CRM system. New donors recruited via text donations can be added to integrated fundraising programmes, for regular giving, donor communications and stewardship. iAddress has been successfully piloted for Macmillan Cancer Support and The Eve Appeal with impressive levels of response up to 70%.

With an easy to use data collection request added to a post-donation thank you response text, iAddress invites donors to text their name and postcode directly to the charity as part of the fundraising campaign or call to action. Latest automated address verification technology checks the postcode and confirms the address with the donor via a bounce-back text for 100% accuracy.
Iain Williams, director of instaGiv said: “As text communication becomes an increasingly agile and flexible route to supporter engagement and fundraising, iAddress enhances the channel’s potential for donor acquisition and ongoing relationships. By adding this function to text campaigns we’re enabling charities to do so much more than fundraising appeals for one-off donations. Creative and engaging campaigns raise funds and can now quickly and very simply grow your supporter base for ongoing communications via phone, text and post for fully integrated fundraising and donor stewardship programmes.”
Macmillan Cancer Support used iAddress to support a DRTV campaign launched at Christmas 2014. Text donations were followed up by a call centre but for donors who could not be reached by a phone call, Macmillan implemented an iAddress text that stimulated more than half of those donors to return accurate name and address information.
Macmillan’s Andrea Jones (pictured left), Individual Marketing Function manager – Acquisition Dialogue, managed the campaign. She said: “As part of the Macmillan Christmas Star Appeal we used iAddress to contact supporters who we previously hadn’t been able to speak with over the phone. It meant we were able to capture correct postal addresses and make sure that they received their Christmas Star on time. We experienced a response of over 50% and were able to add these individuals to our supporter database.”
The Eve Appeal ran a smaller and more targeted campaign and experienced a 70% response rate.
Professor Merlin Stone is calling for examples of how classic CRM data has been integrated with true digital data to produce good customer insight.