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Canadian Blood Services – Social Media & Content Strategy

How can social media help a national non-profit with the recruitment and retention of donors?

The Canadian population is aging, which presents a series of challenges for Canadian Blood Services (CBS), a not-for-profit, charitable organization dedicated to managing the blood supply system for Canadians. First and foremost, health care activity will increase—and so will the demand for blood. Meanwhile, a large segment of the most loyal, older donors have begun moving from donating to using the blood system, yet younger, more ethnically diverse, urban populations are not replacing them as donors, as many lack a tradition of donating blood.

Insight

By leveraging proprietary AskingCanadians™ data about Canadian’s social media usage, integrated into Environics Analytics PRIZMC2 social values and attitudes segmentation system, Delvinia identified four segments of blood donors.

  • New Loyals – comfortable suburban and small-town families with schoolchildren. Values data showed they are rational decision-makers and utilitarian; family is important but social responsibility is not. Social media data indicated that they are moderately involved in social media and use it to stay current with people and events.
  • New Lapsers – young multicultural households in big cities and suburbs. Values data found they seek spirituality, science is important, social responsibility scores low, yet they want to feel part of a group. They are active online, often posting videos, and participating in communities.
  • Lapsers – young urban singles and couples. They are strong on social responsibility, don’t defer to authority but see a positive role for government, and are highly active in social media—keeping an online journal and reading blogs.
  • Established Loyals – older, blue-collar couples in small towns. They are risk-averse with a strong sense of community, concerned about their legacy as proud Canadians, but they are not active in social media.

Strategy

Based on the segmentation analysis, Delvinia quickly identified the New Lapsers, Lapsers, and New Loyals as ripe for targeting via social media, whereas Established Loyals were too inactive in the social space. As well, based on the psychographic profiles of these groups, Delvinia devised a content strategy focused on the goal of donor retention.
For the New Lapsers, the message needed to appeal to their desire to be accepted within a community while for the New Loyals, it focused on their desire to protect their family. Lapsers were identified as potential advocates based on the strong sense of social responsibility, so the campaign designed for them took on more of a reacquisition focus and the messaging focused on the donor’s willingness to support a cause.

Action

This project, completed within a short timeframe, demonstrates just how efficiently companies can connect social media behaviour with data-based customer information. For most of these CBS donor groups, the potential for success comes down to crafting a lifestyle and values based message to encourage social responsibility through their preferred social media channel—say, the 140 characters of a Twitter message—at different times in the donor journey.
In this way, Delvinia provided a new marketing direction for CBS to help it increase the number of blood donors across Canada and ensure a viable blood supply.