The e-mail campaign was a part of a multichannel effort that included print and broadcast to raise money for breast cancer and to increase participation in fundraising events. This year, the e-mail related response increased by 30 percent, on a per dollar basis, compared to last year.

"E-mail works well when integrated into a multichannel strategy as we did with the Breast Cancer 3-Day event," said Al Gadbut, CEO of AcquireWeb, Foster City, CA. "We saw an increase in participation in the walks."

Radarworks, Seattle, designed the overall strategy, scheduling, marketing channel budget, message and creative for all of the marketing channels including DRTV, radio, billboards, newspaper, direct mail, lead generation, search and e-mail. Eclipse DM, New York, handled the purchase of online media including lead generation and e-mail. AcquireWeb Inc. executed the e-mail strategy for this project.

Based on a series of demographic and geographic criteria AcquireWeb developed a program to meet the goals of the event and help drive participation at all twelve national sites where "Walks" took place.

Prior to the first marketing message, a permission message was sent to introduce the event to the recipient and inform constituents that they would be receiving a few marketing messages over the next few weeks.

AcquireWeb then mailed offers to the same population four times, every other week, over the next eight weeks. The effectiveness was measured every other week by the match-back analysis between the marketed and control files and the file of "Walk" registrants and individuals who request information.