Case Study – Email Marketing as a Fundraising Tool

ADÜ Nord Uses the Benefits of CleverReach

Email marketing is a proven driver of sales and ROI. But newsletter marketing is not just for businesses and brands. Organizations that need to reach out to supporters to ask for donations can also use this tool. ADÜ Nord - the Association of Associated Interpreters and Translators in Northern Germany - has shown that it is possible to reach professional colleagues and like-minded third parties without prior communication campaigns if direct communication is used effectively.

Starting Point - the Objectives of ADÜ Nord

On January 1, 2023 the Court Interpreters Act (GDolmG), a new federal law regulating the swearing in of court interpreters, came into force. Even before the adoption of the GDolmG, the ADÜ Nord had a critical look at the law and its conceptual shortcomings. The ADÜ decided to organize a constitutional complaint against the GDolmG when concrete evidence of the law's unconstitutionality became available. The aim is not only to prevent disproportionate infringements on the fundamental rights of professional interpreters, but more generally to abolish a law that is in no way suited to ensuring good language mediation in the administration of justice. As this is a matter of fundamental importance for the entire profession of language mediators, the ADÜ Nord has from the outset relied on the solidarity of the greatest possible number of professionals to finance the process. A broad-based fundraising campaign was needed. In practice, this could only be achieved by sending a nationwide newsletter to all sworn and officially registered interpreters and translators in Germany.

In order to reach all addressees reliably and regularly, ADÜ Nord opted for newsletter marketing with the email marketing provider CleverReach.

The challenge

Raising Awareness and Reaching Fundraising Goals

€45,000 had to be raised within months for the planned constitutional complaint. The challenge of this campaign was to regularly reach all 25,000 recipients on the association's email list, inform them of the problems with the Court Interpreters Act, and motivate them to make a donation.

Most sworn interpreters and translators in Germany are listed on the ADÜ Nord email list. These are the professionals that may be found in the Federal and State Court Interpreting Data Bank (justiz-dolmetscher.de).

The solution

Fundraising Goal Solutions

The contact information of the recipients was prepared and entered into the CleverReach tool in order to carry out the fundraising campaign. This included verifying personal information such as first name, last name and preferred address.

ADÜ Nord decided to send out a biweekly newsletter on Wednesdays with up-to-date information, emphasizing the urgency of the planned court case. The following week, a follow-up with an alternative subject line was designed to mobilize the previous non-openers to increase the chances of motivating as many colleagues as possible to donate.

For advertising reasons, the current chairman of ADÜ Nord, Jörg Schmidt, became the face of the campaign. The authentic and approachable design of the emails and the possibility to contact Jörg Schmidt directly ensured a very personal approach and created trust in the campaign and the ADÜ Nord.

The result

Urgency, Impact & Reach of the Campaign Goal

The goal of €45,000 was reached after only three months. This exceeded all expectations. The email campaign contacted the vast majority of sworn language mediators in Germany and informed them about the impending court interpreter law.

Out of thousands of recipients, several hundred colleagues were motivated to make donations, some of them substantial, to finance the planned constitutional complaint. In regular online meetings, interested parties were also able to exchange information with other colleagues on how they were affected by the Court Interpreters Act and on appropriate countermeasures. With an email list of 17,000 addressees, ADÜ Nord was able to establish a far-reaching communication network that can still be used after the fundraising campaign for association communication with a significant number of colleagues in Germany.

Jörg Schmidt, the current 1st Chairman of ADÜ Nord, explained:

„On the recommendation of our marketing agency BOHMerang, we chose the tool provider CleverReach to carry out a large email campaign in an efficient and GDPR-compliant manner. We are very pleased to have reached our fundraising goal so quickly and will continue to use this communication channel for the network.“

An outlook

The regularity of sending out emails has created a loyal readership for the ADÜ Nord newsletter. By developing and maintaining an active email list, it is now possible to continue to send regular news from the association to newsletter recipients and to introduce new association topics to the addressees.

Email marketing has proven to be a quick and easy communication channel that allows ADÜ Nord to stay in touch with thousands of recipients and send important emails. In the future, this will be particularly important not only for the association's professional policy work, but also for member acquisition.

Summary of Collaboration

At the beginning of the agreed communication measures, the quick setup and easy handling of the newsletter tool enabled an immediate start of the fundraising campaign. The ability to segment and track the activity of individual recipients made it all the more valuable to reach a completely unprepared audience.

Jörg Schmidt summarizes:

„The highly targeted and well-timed approach to the directly affected professionals did not fail to have an impact, as several hundred of the thousands of recipients were actually motivated to make donations, some of which were substantial.“

As a result of these measures, a large group of professional colleagues became aware of the critical situation under professional law and were mobilized to support the constitutional complaint project. As  Schmidt points out, the association work of the ADÜ Nord also received additional attention:

„A particular added value that could be achieved with the CleverReach tool in a very structured and efficient newsletter campaign was that a whole new group of colleagues could be opened up as interested and potential members.“

Industry: Association

About ADÜ Nord

ADÜ Nord e.V. is a professional association of language mediators based in Hamburg, Germany. Its members are mainly interpreters and translators with a wide range of professional specializations. ADÜ Nord has about 250 members and represents the professional interests of its members in politics, administration and society. In addition, it offers its members many valuable services such as professional consulting (legal, tax and CAT tool consulting), further education and professional events (workshops). Members can promote themselves through their Google-indexed entries in the member database and build a very valuable network of colleagues among the members.