aimm launches a new UK call to action for society lotteries

26Sept 2017, Farnham.

The Association for Interactive Media and Micropayments (aimm), launched a major new call to action initiative for society lotteries on 22nd September 2017.  This exciting new channel could transform results for society lotteries if it performs anything like it has for charities.

Society lotteries are lotteries and raffles run for charitable benefit, licensed through the Gambling Commission or via local authority licenses. These lotteries and raffles provide a vital income source for charities.

Text short codes, which are 5 digit number starting with a 70 prefix, have been used with phenomenal success by charities over the last three years.  Short codes generate over £115m in donations per annum.  In many cases texting to a short code has become the most popular call to action for donors due to ease and simplicity. They have shown to generate incremental funds rather than cannibalisation from other, more mature, methods to donate such as online or by phone to a call centre. It also attracts a new, often younger, audience.

aimm has been working across its members to develop a similar facility for society lotteries. It works in the following way:  The society lottery manager or charity uses an advertising campaign to draw attention to its lottery with the call to action being text a word (such as WIN) to a short number starting 72 (e.g. 72123).  The advertising will include the price of the entry and the lottery terms.  A consumer sees the campaign and texts their entry using their mobile phone to gain entry into a lottery or raffle.  The lottery manager or charity uses its procedures to check the consumer is over 16 and then the cost of entry is charged to the consumer’s mobile phone bill.  It’s simple, quick and immediate. An efficient communication channel is now established with the consumer for follow up in-service messages and winner information.

With the near 100% penetration of text capable phones in the UK every British consumer over 16 can participate in a society lottery or raffle.  No other engagement and payment product has this penetration.

The launch conference was kindly hosted by Cancer Research UK and sponsored by Dynamic Mobile Billing (both of whom are aimm members), whose sponsorship enabled complimentary tickets to be given to those charities and lottery managers who wished to join us. It was extremely well attended by external lottery managers (ELM’s) and charities with excellent presentations from charity Oxfam, campaign enabler Cymba, Charity Funding and Promoter (CFP), Global’s Make some Noise, regulator Phone-paid Services Authority, payment intermediary Dynamic Mobile Billing (DMB) and mobile network operator EE.

Kevin Dawson, CEO of DMB said “It was great to talk to an audience who were clearly so excited about this new opportunity.  Based on our successful experiences in operating mobile payment lotteries in others markets across the globe, I am totally confident the UK market will be as successful for society lotteries as it has been for charities and giving campaigns, so DMB hope to work with the markets key players and share our experiences to deliver a mutually rewarding commercial partnership. The UK is getting more and more familiar with short code based services. It is positive for the whole ‘charge to mobile’ industry, opening up a new market for everyone up and down the value chain whilst being great for consumers who want to participate. It’s a win-win-win.”

The event showed that there were differing levels of understanding across the society lottery managers about how the text based call to action and mobile payment mechanism could be made to work. It is clear there is a need for enhanced education across this market.  aimm will be working closely with the Gambling Commission and the PSA on behalf of members to ensure that all regulatory requirements are covered.

Overall it is great to see a growth opportunity where the potential is being recognised. There is enormous enthusiasm across the board.  One lottery manager stated “This initiative has been the most exciting development in this industry since the postage stamp!” It is likely society lotteries will be trialling the new short code range before Christmas.

 

Society Lottery Conference a success

The UK mobile operators in conjunction with aimm have created a new shortcode range specifically for society lotteries, taking advantage of the VAT exempt status, to provide society lottery managers and charities who run their own lotteries and raffles with an excellent marketing tool that appeals to the 98% enabled UK population.

On Friday 22nd September we ran our first Society Lottery Conference in London at the premises of Cancer Research UK.

Offered to charities and society lotteries this event  looked at the new 72xxx short-code range and how it could be implement within their business’. With a range of industry specialist speakers, the day focused on  increasing understanding and knowledge of the benefits of using short codes, and the opportunities that could be created from this new range, all supported by case studies and regulatory guidance.

The greatest call to action for any marketing campaign is getting mobile consumers to text a message to a short 5 digit number known as a short code. Charities using short code donations have found this call to action to generate over £140million per annum without cannibalising their other donation channels.

With a full house, and great feedback, this this event was well received, and is such an important and popular topic that it is likely that we may run this again in the future.

We would like to thank all our speakers: Oxfam, Global Radio, EE, Dynamic Mobile Billing, EE, Cymba and PSA. To learn more about our speakers see their bio’s here: aimm Society Lottery Speaker bios 22September2017

We would like to thank our sponsor Dynamic Mobile Billing who’s support helped make this conference possible.

 

 

Text-to-donate raises over £9.5 million in one day for Comic Relief’s 2017 appeal

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile payments company Fonix has announced that it processed over £9.5m worth of text donations, on live night for the Red Nose Day fundraiser.

The live show took place on 24th March, and the £9.5m processed surpassed the 2015 total and helped contribute to the £19.5m total raised on the night.

This year saw the public dig deep to raise money for those in need across the world. Via text-to-donate, donations were gathered with on-screen promotions in £10 and for the first time, £20 amounts.

 On the night, the £20 price point alone generated a huge £5.4 million in mobile donations, out of the total £9.5 million raised via mobile – this was 57% of the total amount raised by mobile.

 

Campaign Manager at Comic Relief, Jules Thorne said:

 “Red Nose Day was a record-breaker for us; we saw an increase of almost £4 million of mobile donations from the 2015 campaign. We couldn’t have achieved this without Fonix’s expertise and our excellent collaborative approach to running the £20 price point.

 “Fonix understands the importance of making donations as simple and effortless as possible, which is why there was such a fantastic result for mobile donations on live night – people love being able to donate from their mobile devices.

 “Most importantly, it’s so encouraging that people are clearly willing to give more to charity – the £20 price point raised almost £1.3 million more than the £10 donation option.”

Rob Weisz, CEO of Fonix commented:

“ It’s great to be supporting Comic Relief in powering mobile donations for the third year in a row.  

 “The staggering amount raised really demonstrates the power of mobile in combination with emotive content. There was a peak in the campaign where our platform processed over 18,000 donations, all in the space of a minute. It’s a real credit to our great team who really went above and beyond in the months running up to event and on site at the BBC.”

Fonix wins at Drum MOMA Awards

 

 

 

 

Fonix have won at the Drum MOMA Awards, in the Not-For Profit/Charity Mobile Strategy/Campaign category.

In 2016, Fonix delivered a UK first by providing Children in Need with a £20 mobile text donation solution for their campaign.

To read the full story click HERE.

Charity Text Seminar a Success!

Charity Text Donation Seminar a Success

AIME and PhonepayPlus jointly ran a free one day Charity Text Donation Seminar in London on Friday 19th February. This was well attended by many small charities who came to learn more about how to use text donations to improve their fundraising, make sure that their marketing campaigns are compliant, learn the importance of increasing donations by Gift Aid and to ensure the audit standards are good.

As well as regulatory updates from PhonepayPlus, there were highly informative presentations from Telefonica, OpenMarket, Instagiv, Cymba, Vir2, Open Fundraising, Fonix and BBC Children in Need.

With positive feedback from the attendees it has been suggested that this event is run on an annual basis to ensure the spread of the successful intelligence sharing. A link to the presentations for the day is here.

You can also read about the event on PhonepayPlus’ blog here.

Feedback from the day:

I attend the Charity Seminar last week and I just wanted to say thank you for such a well-organised, informative day. It was really useful and I hope there will be a similar seminar next year! Samaritans

Thank you for organising Friday. It felt like a good session, let’s do it again soon. Open Fundraising

Great event. Informative, relevant and enjoyable. Can’t ask for more! OpenMarket

Well done on organising such a great day. RSM2000

 This event was so informative and useful, and should definitely be an annual event! Parkinsons UK