Mobile messaging and payments provider OpenMarket has once again providing the mobile engagement platform and billing services for this year’s Big Egg Hunt charity event, sponsored by master chocolatier Lindt.
Full service fundraising agency Open Fundraising returns as the organiser of this year’s Big Egg Hunt, which has grown from a London-only event into a six-week tour of the UK. It kicked off in Covent Garden on February 12, and visited Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, before returning to London on March 22. All money raised goes to children’s charity Action for Children.
For all six weeks of the Lindt Big Egg Hunt, OpenMarket’s Mobile Engagement Platform powered an SMS-based daily prize draw to win a year’s supply of Lindt chocolate, which participants entered by sending a text message to a shortcode. Participants in all five cities searched for 101 hidden giant Easter eggs that featured some of the UK’s best loved children’s characters as well as unique designs by leading artists. Participants also looked for the Humpty Dumpty egg, which had the key information needed to enter the prize draw to win a year’s supply of Lindt chocolate.
To enter the competition, they had to text ‘LINDT’ to the number on the egg’s plinth, the SMS being charged at the entrant’s standard network rate.
Even though taking part in the competition was free, participants in the Big Egg Hunt had the option to donate £3 to Action for Children directly, without entering the prize draw, by texting the word “FOOD” to 70123.
“Despite the various other mobile technologies available, SMS is still the number one method for effective engagement with people on their mobile device,” said Paul de Gregorio, Head of Mobile at Open Fundraising. “The OpenMarket platform enables us to quickly and easily create and manage an interactive messaging and donation campaign, for people to engage within each of the five cities hosting the egg hunt. OpenMarket’s ability to support our expanded event across the UK is testament to the reliability, scalability and reach of their solutions.”
This year’s expanded egg hunt follows the success of last year’s London-based event, also powered by OpenMarket, which broke the Guinness World Record for the world’s biggest Easter egg hunt and generated tens of thousands of pounds in donations for charity.
Open Fundraising used the OpenMarket Mobile Engagement Platform to manage the Lindt Big Egg Hunt’s SMS-based prize draw and donations. The platform’s reliability, flexibility and ease-of-use, together with its intuitive and user-friendly web interface, meant that Open Fundraising could build, roll out and manage the Lindt Big Egg Hunt’s SMS prize draw and donation system in a fast and affordable way.
The OpenMarket Mobile Engagement Platform manages incoming messages and generates automatic responses, while also administering the daily automated prize draw entry process.
“SMS is ideal for engaging and interacting with large numbers of people, in a way that is intuitive, familiar and also affordable,” said Adrian Sarosi, Head of Sales and Marketing for OpenMarket in EMEA. “This year’s hunt is bigger than ever and we’re delighted that OpenFundraising and Action for Children continue to trust OpenMarket’s expertise to power this high profile charity event.”
