KSS uncovering a new audience from the unlikeliest of places
How do you keep donations coming in without overspending, when many people in your area have already heard your message?
That was the challenge facing Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS). Many people across the region will have heard from KSS following recent high profile campaigns. Finding new people to support the cause though, that was getting harder. Especially without increasing spend.
So they teamed up with Join the Dots and brought in Herdify to try something different.
“Given it was our first use of Herdify, and a test, I think we can count that as a real success. The increasing response rates by Herdify score clearly shows the model can help predict responders. And uncovering an unknown audience for us is massive.”
~ Symon Russell, Executive Director of Individual Giving and Lotteries at KSS
The bigger picture
KSS is no ordinary charity. They fly helicopters into emergencies across Kent, Surrey and Sussex, saving lives when every second counts. But all that action costs money. A lot of it. Around £20.8 million a year, with 91% of that coming from the incredibly generosity of their supporters.
They don’t have the reach of a national brand. Their donor pool is limited to their region. And like many local charities, they’re feeling the squeeze.
According to the UK Giving Report 2024, donation amounts haven’t gone up in years. The average gift is still stuck at £20. And fewer people are giving at all. Most donations now come from a shrinking pool of "Super Givers" who are already stretched.
For KSS, their Christmas appeal needed to work hard. After a strong emergency appeal earlier in the year, they wanted to keep the momentum going, but target smarter and drive increased campaign efficiency.
What we did
Join the Dots led a multi-channel campaign across radio, press, inserts and door drops. Radio and press helped build wider awareness, while inserts and door drops focused on direct response. We stepped in to help with the targeting and used behaviour-based data to spot communities more likely to take action. Using KSS’s donor data and Join the Dots’ standard model, we took a list of high-potential postcodes and layered on Herdify’s behavioural insights. That helped us spot the communities where people were more likely to talk about KSS and act on what they heard.
Only the areas that scored highly in both models made it into the final campaign. That meant less wasted budget, and more focus on areas where real-world conversations were already happening.
The results
The standout result was that Herdify were able to help KSS open an entirely new audience, which they’d been unable to reach before. A core goal for all charities is audience diversification, and by harnessing consumer psychology, KSS were able to do just that.
The campaign brought in £82,000 from 2,211 donors through cold channels alone.
The Herdify test was a clear win:
- The higher the Herdify Score, the stronger the response rate
- The audience skewed more rural and slightly less affluent
- The new audience had an average lower gift, but all of it was a net gain for KSS as they had not previously engaged with the charity
Herdify isn't looking for the specific moments that shaped someone’s decision; instead, our modelling shows where people are already connected to KSS. Those connections might come from seeing the helicopter land, hearing a rescue story from a neighbour, or simply living in a community that already feels close to the charity. When those people saw the appeal, that existing emotional bond made them far more likely to give.
It’s a great example of how influence spreads offline. People in these communities were acting not just because of an ad, but because of what they’d heard around them.
Why it matters
Charities are finding fundraising harder than it’s ever been and every £1 spent needs to make an impact. KSS is no different. They need to be clever. And with community influence, they can be.
This campaign proved that behavioural targeting works, it also showed that less affluent donors can be just as valuable. They may not give often or give big, but when the message lands at the right time, they respond.
The UK Giving Report even highlights this trend. Some of the most generous regions in the UK, based on income, are also the least wealthy. It’s not about how much people can give. It’s about how connected they feel to the cause.
KSS didn’t just get short-term results. They found a new group of supporters who now sit in their CRM, ready to be nurtured and brought closer to the brand. Not because they were targeted by age or income, but because they live in communities that care.
