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Canadian Blood Services – Operation LifeBlood

How do you address the concerns of individuals who have contemplated giving blood and encourage them to become life-long blood donors?

The Situation

When Canadian Blood Services (CBS) identified that a large percentage of the general public wanted to give blood but weren’t following through and donating, the organization called on Delvinia to design a strategy to increase donations among this group, referred to as intenders.

The charitable organization wanted to leverage the online channel to recruit individuals, engage them in a dialogue and bridge the gap between intent and donation.

The Solution

While most charitable organizations ask people to make a financial donation, CBS asks people to give of themselves.

Through research and insight, we realized there were a lot of misconceptions about giving blood. We determined the best strategy was to create a personal, community-based communication program with those who had declared their intent to donate, building on their good intentions and encouraging them to follow through.

To bridge that gap, we created Operation LifeBlood, an online donor registry centred on a communication strategy that was designed to help alleviate intenders’ concerns and educate them about the donation process. The program initially ran as a 12-month pilot project in London, Ontario before being rolled out to other regions.

Through a series of emails sent to intenders, we addressed common questions and barriers to donating and included multiple calls to action.

When the Operation LifeBlood was rolled out across the country, we added a social CRM program to the project by creating a dedicated community website with enhanced features that gave donors and intenders the opportunity to share stories and engage in discussions within an open forum.

The Results

The program achieved a conversion rate of 16 percent, exceeding the client’s original target of 10 percent.

Other key email metrics included:

  • Less than one per cent unsubscribe rate
  • 53 per cent open rate (on average)
  • 17 per cent clickthrough rate (on average)

The regional roll-out had higher conversion rates than the pilot program, which was largely attributed to the community-based features that allowed intenders to influence other intenders to donate blood.