New letter to blood donors — response to a challenge!

7 min readAug 16, 2022

I got this slightly irritating note from the NHS, so posted it as my Trust Thought for the Day to see other’s views. I got some really interesting contributions on what is wrong and why it is heavy-handed and also had a constructive and interesting direct conversation with the sender.

I was also asked what I thought it should say, as someone genuinely wanted to know ‘what a ‘good’ appeal looks like’. Great challenge to stop simply pointing the finger and make things better! As I also work as an advisor on Trust for another non-UK health service, I thought it worth thinking about for that work too ( I won’t charge them don’t worry!).

Why communications are vital

I often think it is a crazy and wonderful thing that hundreds of thousands of people give their actual blood to help others, without payment, on a regular basis. If it was a new campaign promise now by some politician we would say it was ridiculous and people would never do it. But we do, and in increasing numbers. More than 5–6,000 blood donations are needed every day in the UK, and around two million donations are recieved and processed every year.

Without them many people would die, so the communications which inspire and motivate us to donate are vital. They have improved in recent years, the NHS GiveBlood App helps you make appointments as near to you as possible and the emails are the stimulus which usually reminds me to go, are the sole reason I am a more regular donor than I was. I would donate more, if the donation centres close to me were open more regularly.

It’s no exaggeration to say that getting communications as good as they can be is a matter of life and death.

What about it didn’t work?

Overt use of ‘nudge’ techniques?

It felt like it was written by someone who has just gone on an Introduction to Behavioural Science course. ‘A committed blood donor like yourself’ and ‘as someone we know we can rely on’ are techniques to include me with the good guys, which supposedly makes me more likely to comply, than if I was pitched as part of an ‘out group’ — ‘everyone is donating blood except you — which used to be an approach, but was shown to be less effective.

Too corporate, too blatant?

This one felt too corporate in tone, too blatant in its approach. A LinkedIn commenter referred to the ‘transparent direct-marketing-speak of “that’s why we’re asking you, [#insertnamehere], as someone we know…’. That second ‘Hilary’ was a bad idea!

The fact that it came from someone with the title of Head of Donor Experience, rather than Head of Blood Stocks or something more operational or senior, didn’t help. And when I looked him up and found he was previously with Starbucks and the Virgin loyalty programme, it seemed to resonate with the approach taken by companies which is irritating but expected in a corporate setting, but felt inappropriate for the NHS.

Trying too hard, seeming insincere?

A few LinkedIn commentators agreed that this somehow looked like ‘trying too hard’, ‘laying it on a bit thick’ which feels insincere and ‘more like a clumsy attempt at emotional blackmail’. Also a very excellent point that most of it “isn’t necessary if they actually believe you “know how vital it is” and are “someone we know we can rely on”!

‘Be that helping hand’ as a heading, ‘book an appointment to save a life’ and ‘Please, do something amazing’ are what I would classify in my work on Bullshit as ‘Fluff’. Essentially pointless, meaningless, patronising, more the style of advertising slogans or social media homilies than an emergency request from the NHS.

Another query stimulated by the odd tone, was whether this was indeed a ‘real’ emergency, or just a boiler plate email every so often churned out as part of the general donor appeal process.

Thanks to David Rose for the positive response!

Thank you to David Rose (the sender) for replying to my direct message on LinkedIn (for some reason I couldn’t tag him). He responded promptly and constructively: “You’re absolutely right in recognising our templates were written several years ago when the ‘social nudging’ model was the norm in our organisation. Recognising that, and that our consumer sentiment has changed post-pandemic, we are updating most of our content in the coming months as well as investing in a new marketing platform to help us better personalise our emails.”

NB: Two important drivers of trust fulfilled here — responsiveness, honesty!

So what to do instead!

Explanations are important for trust. I am pleased to hear from David it is a template for when the stocks are genuinely low, but could there be some explanation for why that is, the school holiday period, concern about catching Covid? Does the service know why they are running short? It might then be helpful to respond with something relevant in relation to why, eg reassurance about covid security if their research showed this was a concern.
Easier response — David says that they are doing more personalise this, that would be great. In particular links to location, as the proximity of the donation centre is an important factor for me, I live near London and I’d rather wait a month or two until it comes to the church hall or donation van a mile or so away than go 2.5–4 miles to another centre. If it came to me more often I would donate more often, poor show I know!
Respect is a big driver of trust and while this is perhaps meant to demonstrate respect by showing that it knew I was a regular donor, and using my christian name, the association of this approach with corporate direct marketing techniques backfired and appeared disrespectful.

How about….?

The heading:

Instead of a bland ‘Be a helping hand’, which is meaningless — it should have a recognisable alert heading that is only received when getting emails when stocks are low. The heading that only appears on the App, see below, does that well. But despite having notifications on, this doesn’t come to my phone and I only saw it when looking up the app for this article.

Proposed new letter

Dear Mrs Sutcliffe

We are running low on blood stocks at the moment, which often coincides with the summer holiday season, but can leave us short in the Autumn. It would be very helpful if you could make one of your regular donations in the next month or so to help ensure we have all we need.

If you are able to do that, this link will show your nearest donation venues and available dates — or just call us on xyz to make an appointment.

Thank you either way,

Yours sincerely,

Wendy Clarke, CEO, NHS Blood and Transplant Service

Rationale

I wonder if a more respectful address than a christian name, which is OK in the app, but might be more appropriate in an email from a CEO? Unsure.
Intro gets straight to the point and doesn’t waste time and waffle.
Reason and explanation is given for the need, making it more current and less like a circular.
Clear and actionable ask stated.
Acknowledges regular donations without smarm.
Gives easy as possible way to respond in as personalised way as poss.
‘We’ is the blood service, not the stuff about the hospitals and patients and saving lives, we know full well what it’s for and the reminder is patronising.
Dithering about ‘Thank you either way, or Thanks you for your continued support of the Blood and Transplant Service’, or just Thank you. Or something better than support, which sounds like you are giving money. Want to thank them if they do or they don’t do it in response, for what they have done already.
Sign off from the CEO and no-one else.
Tempting to put some stats in about the numbers of people and 2million donations needed each year, but resisted, it makes it more salesy. Some great stats could be in the bit of the email below the letter?
‘Do something amazing, give blood’, is an OK strapline when used here, but not floating around in the initial letter.
And finally, I hope the job title ‘Head of Donor Experience’ also covers what happens when we are at the donor centres. I have had reliably pleasant experiences but others haven’t. That’s important too, the best letter in the world will struggle to get someone to donate if they have had multiple awful experiences, even to save lives.