ChildFund’s Birthday Bounce-back campaign targets child sponsors who make a regular monthly donation to sponsor a child living in poverty. While sponsorship money is allocated to the child’s community for development projects, a one-on-one relationship exists between child and sponsor. They can exchange letters and sponsors receive regular updates about their child’s development.

The personal nature of the relationship means sponsor loyalty increases when letters are exchanged and when the sponsor makes additional donations.

Birthdays provide an opportunity to prompt sponsors to write to their sponsored child, increasing engagement and stickiness while providing opportunities to raise additional unrestricted income.

In 2010, significant strategic and tactical changes were made to the ChildFund birthday bounce-back mailings. The mailing was moved from a monthly to a biannual campaign, which allowed for increased sophistication in terms of targeting and segmentation, including high-levels of personalisation and targeted donation asks.  The response rate was more than double the target set and donations were nearly five times more than expected.