The Royal Horticultural Society

What Build-A-Bear taught me about storytelling

Areal example of the power of print and personalisation in action can be seen in our work with the Royal Horticultural Society, the UK’s leading garden charity.

The RHS discovered renewals were lowest among members in their first two years of membership. So our aim was to target those members via an innovative direct-mail campaign to encourage them to make use of their member benefits, especially garden visits, as there's a strong correlation between garden visits and membership renewal.

Our campaign took place in autumn. We used five of the RHS's key gardens, along with customer data, to deliver a highly personalised piece of physical mail, which was tailored to each member.

We wanted to encourage those members to visit Glow, the RHS's botanically inspired light installations, between December and January. By increasing garden visits, we aimed to also increase member renewals in this critical period of their membership life.

We utilised print-on-demand to build a booklet driven by the profile of the member. If they had a history of attending a certain garden, the range of images included in their booklet were tailored to suit. attending a certain garden, the range ilored garden visits to Glow. Crucially, as a this campaign

We produced 75,000 beautiful 12-page landscape booklets and posted them in October, ready for the Glow installations.

The campaign was a great success, with RHS reporting an increase in garden visits to Glow. Crucially, as a result, member renewals following this campaign increased in comparison to previous years and drove member retention for the RHS.

With retention at the top of the agenda throughout the member sector, this campaign showed how personalisation drives connection with members, and how that connection can encourage them to remain members. It also demonstrated how physical communications can have physical benefits: the RHS reported an increase in visits to its gardens throughout the UK.