Introduction:
UK charities are facing unprecedented demands in engaging with supporters; a lifeline to continuing vital, often lifesaving work. Funded entirely by donations and gifts, Cancer Support UK is one of the country’s leading providers of support services to people living with cancer and works with Citipost Mail to deliver communications to its supporters through our unique Digi-Mail secure mail portal service.
Our client: Cancer Support UK
Working across the United Kingdom, Cancer Support UK provides practical and emotional support to people living with all kinds of cancer, both during and after the treatment period.
The charity’s Cancer Coach programme is a structured peer support and resilience course, developed by a range of experts and delivered by telephone to people nearing the end of cancer treatment, or who have finished physical treatment. The six-week programmes are run by trained volunteers who have experienced cancer themselves, to offer much-needed encouragement, resilience skills and the emotional support which is fundamental to recovery.
Cancer Support UK also provides free-of-charge Cancer Kits which include a range of practical items for adults and children currently experiencing cancer. They have been designed by people who have had cancer themselves, to provide practical personal items to aid sleep and comfort that people will find genuinely useful during their treatment. Kids’ kits include everything from cosy socks to bubbles and games to keep busy during treatment and recovery.
The Challenge:
Cancer Support UK wants to ensure all its supporters are individually thanked and have a personal touch from the charity to ensure the continuity of their support. These letters were manually printed in the office, folded and inserted in envelopes, then franked. This process used significant resources of time and money, taking essential members of the support team away from their vital work with the recipients of the charity’s support and using substantial stationery and print resource.
The Solution:
Switching to Digi-Mail required no specialist equipment or training and instantly removed any need for Cancer Support UK to pre-purchase postage, headed paper, envelopes and other stationery items, whilst also immediately removing the staffing cost of production and delivering significant savings on postage.
Using Digi-Mail’s on-demand mail service, any of the Cancer Support UK office team can complete a mail merge from any desktop, and release branded, personalised letters with no more than a drag and drop of the file to the Digi-Mail platform. The secure system means supporter’s data can be managed in-house and remain compliant with GDPR regulations.
With a user-friendly portal and seamless integration, Digi-Mail delivered a simpler, cheaper, faster solution which has led to an increase in the print quality of communications, significant financial savings and a huge increase in time available to be devoted to other tasks within the charity.
What the customer says:
“As a charity, we are always looking for ways to work in the most time and cost-effective way. Digi-Mail has been transformational, enabling us to thank our supporters in a timely manner and save essential funds that can be pumped back into core service delivery. We are a small team and Digi-Mail has streamlined the process of thanking donors to such an extent that a job which has, in the past, taken us many days to complete can be taken care of at the touch of a button. Set up was easy and we’ve had great support from the Citipost Mail team.”
