"Every year, the Singapore Red Cross runs an awareness campaign to find enough blood donors to meet the needs of 5 million people. The fact is that less than 2% of the population donate blood. With a growing population, supply does not meet demand. In addition, there is a huge disparity in specific blood type matches between supply collected and demand. Therefore our objectives are:
1. Promote blood donation to new and existing donors
2. Increase new donor recruitment
3. Activate donation for specific blood types whenever needed
4. Engage the youth as the next generation of donors
Planning & Execution
"Despite the support of existing blood donors, the growing demand year-on-year made finding new blood donors a critical part of the strategy, with Singapore youths identified as being key to recruiting the next generation of blood donors.
Insight into our primary target audience (youths) revealed that they are active on social media, smartphone users, and interested in activities that helped establish aspects of their identity through achievements or belonging to interest groups. Another insight was that the audience does use Facebook to crowdsource help or support for a variety of needs, and their networks respond positively and in a timely manner when the request is from a friend.
Keeping the insights, challenges and objectives in mind, we decided a mobile app with social media integration was the right solution. Widespread smartphone use by the youths, coupled with in-app push messaging and the ability to interact with social media platforms like Facebook made a mobile app the ideal platform for an always-on and engaging way to reach out to the youth and existing donors to activate them as needed, and enable them to help amplify the search for new donors.
Touch points:
- In-app notifications lets Red Cross send out Blood Alerts, push messages that act as micro campaigns to activate the Red Cross Connection users, turning them into a tactical network of volunteers to share the call for donors for specific blood types to their online friends. With the app, the Red Cross can activate its loyal users as needed, without straining the annual budget reserved for above-the-line campaigns.
- Mobile messaging brings Blood Alerts up front without the need to launch the app, gaining immediate attention compared to passive emails, which are easily overlooked.
- To increase youth engagement and loyalty, the app would also keep user profiles and record user activities, reflecting the number of times they have donated blood, or shared a Blood Alert on Facebook, as well as notifying them when they can donate blood again (once every 3 months). Since every donation can save up to 3 lives, this shareable record acknowledges the impact they make, driving continued use.
Effectiveness / Results
"The iOS and Android versions of the app were officially announced in January 2014. Both remain active today.
• 18 Blood Alerts sent in the first three months of 2014.
• 14,381 app users
• 41,500 followers
• 20,042 new donors found (approx 20% increase from existing donor base).
• 121,360 blood donations
As an innovation, the app has proven to be a valuable long-term solution for crowdsourcing blood donations without requiring the large media budgets of traditional awareness campaigns. With its initial success, other Red Cross organisations in other countries have expressed interest in adopting the app for their markets."