Kamal Al-Shugaa from Yemen Sana'a, Student in Malaysia , Subject Case Study: Oxfam

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MBA
E-COMMERCE
Assignment (1) – Case Study: Oxfam
SUPERVISOR : MDM MAGES

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DONE BY
STUDENT NAME:

Kamal mohammed al-shugg

Case Study: Oxfam

For more than 60 years, Oxfam has worked through and with its donors, staff, project partners and project participants to overcome poverty and injustice around the world. Early in World War
II, Greece was occupied by German Nazis. Allied forces created a naval blockade around
Greece to prevent further German expansion; however, the blockade created severe shortages of food and medicine among Greek civilian communities. In 1942, a number of Famine Relief
Committees were established in Great Britain to ship emergency supplies through the Allied blockade. Although most of these committees ceased operations after the war ended, the
Oxford Committee for Famine Relief saw a continuing need and enlarge its operations to provide aid throughout post-war Europe, and in later years, the rest of the world. The Committee eventually became known by its abbreviated telegraph address, Oxfam, and the name was formally adopted in 1965.

Oxfam's success and growth was due to many dedicated volunteers and donors who continued and expanded their financial support to the organization. In the 1960s, Oxfam began to generate significant revenue from its retail stores. These shops, located throughout Great Britain, accept donations of goods and handcrafted items from overseas for resale. Today, those stores number more than 800 and are staffed by more than 20,000 volunteers.

Oxfam often deals with humanitarian disasters that are beyond the scope of its resources. In these cases, the organization provides aid by mobilizing an international lobbying staff that has contacts with key agencies based in other countries, governments in the affected area, and the United Nations.

In 1996, Oxfam opened a Web site to provide information about its efforts to supporters and potential donors. The Web site included detailed reports on Oxfam's work, past and present, and allows site visitors to make donations to the organization. Although Oxfam gladly accepts any donations, it encourages supporters to commit to a continuing relationship by making regular donations. In exchange, it provides regular updates about its activities on the Web site and through an e-mailed monthly newsletter. The Web site includes a sign-up page for the email newsletter, which goes out to more than 200,000 supporters.

Oxfam has been involved in relief work in Sudan since the 1970s, when it provided help to Ugandan refugees in the southern part of the country. More recently, Oxfam was an early responder to the 2004 crisis in that country. Oxfam set up sanitary facilities and provided clean drinking water in camps set up for thousands of displaced people fleeing pro-government Arab militias. The need in Sudan rapidly exceeded Oxfam's capacity and it decided to use e-mail to mobilize support for the project.

Oxfam planned an e-mail campaign that would send three emails in HTML format to supporters on its existing e-mail list over a six-week period. The first e-mail included a photo of children in one of the camps. The text of the e-mail message described Oxfam's efforts to provide clean water to the displaced people living in the Sudanese camps. The e-mail included links in two places that took recipients to a Web page that had been created specifically to receive visitors responding to that email message. The Web page allowed visitors to make a donation and asked them to provide their email addresses, which would be used to send updates on the Sudan project. A second e-mail was sent two weeks later to addresses on the list that had not yet responded. This second e-mail included a video file that played automatically when the email was opened. The video conveyed the message that Oxfam had delivered $300,000 in aid to the camps but more help was urgently needed in the region. This second e-mail included three links that led to the Web page created for the first e-mail. Two weeks later, a final e-mail was sent to addresses on the list that had not responded to either of the first two e-mails. This third e-mail included an audio recording in which Oxfam's executive director made a plea for the cause. The e-mail also included text that provided examples of which aid items could be provided for specific donation amounts.

Oxfam's three-part e-mail campaign was considered a success by direct marketing standards.
The first e-mail was opened by 32 percent of recipients and had a click-through rate of 8 percent. The second e-mail had similar, but somewhat higher, results (33 percent opened, 10 percent clicked-through). Ninety percent of those who opened the e-mail watched the video.
The third e-mail continued the slightly increasing trends for opening and attention (34 percent opened and 94 percent listened to the audio), but the click-through rate was much higher than the previous two e-mails (14 percent). Also, the dollar amount of donations increased with each subsequent e-mailing. The e-mail campaign raised more than $450,000 in its six-week period.

Oxfam coordinated this e-mail effort with other awareness activities it was conducting in the same time period. The organization sent letters to supporters who had not provided e-mail addresses and ran ads in two newspapers (The Independent and The Guardian) that carried messages similar to those in the e-mails.

1. Oxfam choose not to use online banner ads on this campaign. In about 100 words, explain the advantages and disadvantages that Oxfam would have experienced by using banner ads to achieve the objectives of this campaign.

Banners ads are a rectangular shape of object placed on a website to attract viewers towards a particular company or ar a product or a web page. Its proven that it is a great way to advertise on website. They tend to attract the viewers attention by displaying interesting video clips or animations on them as well as making them very colorful. Oxfam can benefit from it as they can be placed on their own website or on another website by paying a reasonable consideration. Oxfam can either place the banner ads at the top of a webpage or on a side of the page which stays still even when the page is being scrolled down by the viewer making sure that it is always in the viewer attention. As the banner ads can also include hyperlinks, Oxfam can make sure that it leaves the customers literally a click away from what they intend to show to the viewers.

Oxfam should consider that as banner ads tend to be on a particular website that the viewers visit, some of the viewers might be annoyed to have ads running on the page. Initially banner ads were a great tool to advertise, but today Oxfam has to be very through to use appropriate video clips or animations as to keep viewers attracted if not rather than attracting customers, viewers might start to consider that company just another company that annoys people. Oxfam is a voluntary company and their subscriptions come from viewers, hence by paying for banner the company might be loosing a considerable amount of donations on that.

However banner ads have proven to be more beneficial and almost always it outweighs the problems with the benefits that can be achieved even to a big company like Oxfam

2. Oxfam only use its existing e-mail list for this campaign, it did not purchase (or borrow from other charitable organizations) any additional email addresses. Evaluate this decision. In about 300 words explain the advantages and disadvantages of acquiring other email addresses for a campaign of this nature.

Oxfam uses emails to advertise to only the existing customers. The decision they took on not to purchase email addresses from other parties has its effects on the company. As they are using existing customer list, they are sure that the emails reach to them. Also the cost of this could be as low or even lower than one cent per email, hence cost effective. The email addresses that the company has a of clients who are interested about the company and who knows about the company, hence it is certain for Oxfam that the customers would at least look at the emails rather than just erasing them considering them as spam. However if Oxfam had decided acquire other email addresses for their campaign it would have contributed significantly in:

• Reaching many prospective donors and volunteers apart from their existing limited email list

• Since their email success rate was good, Oxfam will be able to convey their message to a wider prospective audience, leading to a lot of newer potential clients for Oxfam

• Streamline the campaign process that impact the customer

• Target or segmented the right audience

Acquiring email from other sources could have its consequences to Oxfam too, and some of them might be

• Prospective donors or volunteers might perceive them as “spam emails”. As the Internet and email become more widely used, SPAM email is becoming more and more a problem and this may give Oxfam a bad image or reputation, also the clients might just ignore and delete the emails without even looking at what it is leaving to a total waste.

• The cost of acquiring email from other companies might be very expensive, specially considering that those emails might not be even considered by a lot of the clients in the list.

• There is no certainty that the emails received from outside sources are valid. A lot of those emails might not be even in use by a lot of the clients.

3. For this campaign, Oxfam choose to use emails that contained HTML, audio, and video elements rather than using plain-text email. In about 100 words, described the advantages and disadvantages of using formats other than plain text in this type of email campaign. Be sure to identify any specific trade-offs that Oxfam faced in deciding not to use plain text e-mail.

Oxfam is adamant about keeping openness, approachability and honesty above all else in the company’s humanitarian mission. Oxfam strategy is showing its campaign concern in the industry in a transparent manner. Oxfam believes that credibility will attract more donors and volunteers in supporting the company’s good course. Oxfam decided to use HTML emails rather than just txt emails for their campaign. The benefits of using such media rich emails have a lot of benefits for Oxfam. A lot of the clients might not be interested in reading a lot of texts or might be too busy to read a lot of plain texts, hence would be more interested in the emails as they contain animations, sound clips or videos in the mails rather than just plain texts. At the same time by showing video clips and letting the clients hear audio clips the impact it can have upon the clients would be much more compared to just a text. Oxfam should consider that by using media rich HTML emails it could have some drawbacks too. As one the emails would take a lot of time to load, as the media contents are larger than just plain texts. Also the email servers need to be of higher capacity to accommodate the larger sized emails leading to having to invest in more on server space, meaning that the cost might be significantly higher.

4. Oxfam used HTML in its first e-mail, video in the second, and audio in the third. Evaluate the use of different e-mail formats for this type of message and consider the sequencing of the formats that Oxfam used in this campaign. In about 300 words, summarize the considerations that would affect a decision to use a particular sequence of e-mail formats in a campaign such as this and evaluate the sequence that Oxfam used.

Oxfam is a voluntary organization that carries out campaigns to attract donations from subscribers as to help the people in need. Normally sending a group of emails to clients might not have much affect on the clients, however sending them in a particular sequence, a group of media rich HTML mails could change this completely. Oxfam would consider the effects the mails would have on the clients, as it will be a complete waste to send a group of mails just for the sake of sending them. So it is very important to consider what are the factors that would lead to have the strongest impact on the clients, and how the mails can assist the clients to decide that Oxfam in the company they need to contribute. Hence it is crucial to carryout the campaigns in such a way that maximizes the participation from the outside parties. The decision to make use of HTML and media rich mailing was significant to convey the required message and what they do and how they help to the viewers. The sequencing of the mails as first HTML, second the video, and as the final an audio message was brilliant. This sequencing made sure that the message was conveyed to the viewer as intended and helped to raise a considerable amount of donation from the clients. First sending the HTML message was not enough for some clients, hence another video was sent to them to show how Oxfam helps people and to whom they help. To the clients who were not still convinced, another mail containing a pleading audio message was sent which eventually brought to their attention that contributing to what Oxfam was carrying out was the right thing to do.

5. A manager at Oxfam might be tempted to conclude that the sequence of formats used in the e-mail messages was related to the increase in donations over the six weeks of the campaign. In about 100 words, present at least two reasons why this would be an incorrect conclusion.

Campaigning is not a new phenomenon. Campaign organizations, whose very reason for existence is to campaign, have existed for a long time and have become increasingly high profile with real significance and long-term impact.
The two reasons why this would be an incorrect is that Oxfam campaign is highly interactive, being able both to create an agenda and also to jump onto one. Oxfam spend a major proportion of its resources on communication, communication being the core business and not just a tool. Oxfam campaign is a dialectical process, so it tends to be confrontational and in turn attract confrontational people to participate to their course thus increase in donations.