How The Brain Tumour Charity used Dataro to uncover 100 new legacy prospects

A parallel audience test improved contact rates and produced 100 new prospects (including 24 enquirers, 10 intenders, 48 considerers and 18 pledgers) that The Charity's standard selection wouldn't have included otherwise.

Legacy calling targeted warm supporters with existing and potential legacy intent signals

The Brain Tumour Charity is the UK's leading brain tumour charity, dedicated to funding research, raising awareness and supporting everyone affected by a brain tumour.

For this year's legacy fundraising, the Individual Giving team ran a telemarketing campaign aimed at warm supporters, including those who had previously enquired about a free Will service or a gift in Will. The outreach continued the conversation and targeted awareness of legacy donations.

"We like to think of legacies as an always-on campaign versus a one-time ask," explained Tamsin Tyson, Senior Individual Giving Officer.

Using Dataro to uncover additional legacy prospects

The Charity already had a strong data segmentation process in Marketing Cloud, led by a segmentation expert on the team. The Individual Giving team onboarded Dataro to strengthen what the team was already doing by setting up a parallel list to find gaps in the existing approach and identify groups The Charity's standard lists might otherwise miss.

"We already had strong segmentation, but we used Dataro to test and find potential legacy prospects our segmenting may have missed," she said.

To build the audience, the team pulled Dataro's legacy prospects with phone numbers and then applied its own exclusions on top (major donors, young ambassadors and people who had recently used The Charity's support services). The Charity partnered with a fundraising agency to call both lists: 1,482 Dataro contacts and 1,500 Brain Tumour Charity contacts.

Dataro improved contact rates and uncovered 18 new legacy pledges

The clearest win from the test was reachability. The Dataro audience achieved a 37.38% contact rate, compared with 25.9% for The Charity's standard records. For telemarketing campaigns, a better contact rate means avoiding more non-responsive numbers.

"If we can target our list better, we can provide only the contacts who are more likely to respond positively to legacy contact. That way, with fewer calls we can still reach the same number of people and make better use of spend," Tamsin explained.

The Charity's own standard segment performed better on positive legacy outcomes (contacts who asked for more information, said they'd consider leaving or have left a gift in their Will), at 21.93% versus 18.05% for Dataro.

Even so, the Dataro-only segment produced 100 new positive call outcomes (including 24 enquirers, 10 intenders, 48 considerers and 18 pledgers) from prospects that The Charity wouldn't have otherwise contacted. At an average legacy gift of £24,000, those 18 uncovered Pledgers (Dataro-identified donors who reported leaving a gift in their Will) point to an estimated £432,000 in future value, although the final amount will only be known if and when estates are settled.

Looking ahead: stewardship and continued testing

The new Dataro-identified legacy contacts have been added to The Charity's legacy stewardship journey to nurture the 100 positive call outcomes towards a successful legacy gift.

The Charity used the same split approach in its Summer Appeal reminder to continue its year of testing before making a data-driven decision on how to standardise future campaign list-building.