How the British Heart Foundation Lifted Email Engagement with Live Polling

Supporting a cause that you care about is a deeply personal experience. That’s why the [British Heart Foundation](https://mymarathon.bhf.org.uk/) chose a hyper-personalized, contextual marketing experience to cheer on their [MyMarathon](https://mymarathon.bhf.org.uk/) runners and help them gain the sponsorship they needed to crush their goals.The British Heart Foundation is a UK-based charity organization that helps fund research for cardiovascular disease. To build community and make fundraising fun, they host [MyMarathon](https://mymarathon.bhf.org.uk/), a self-paced marathon that can take place anywhere over the course of one month.Participants complete the 26.2 miles on their own terms – they can run or walk at the gym, in the park, and over a few days or spread out over the month. Along the way, MyMarathon runners collect donations for life-saving heart research.BHF needed a way to cheer on their runners, help them connect with their community and promote helpful content from their MyMarathon microsite. Here’s how contextual email marketing helped the organization and their runners cross the finish line.#### Boosting charitable giving + building community with email marketingBHF wanted to boost engagement, so they chose to use emails with live polling. Their poll asked runners about their progress and showed how many other runners chose the same answer. When the recipient made their choice, they were taken to page with tips for overcoming their challenge. They had two versions of the poll: one for those who completed the MyMarathon and one for those who hadn’t.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog-production/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/15145335/Screen-Shot-2016-09-15-at-10.51.24-AM.png)“We chose to use a live poll at this stage in our campaign to get an understanding of how people were getting on with the MyMarathon challenge but also to give people something to engage with in the emails and to feel part of a wider community who are all feeling the same about the challenge,” said Elly Crump at BHF. “It also allowed us a unique way of promoting content from the MyMarathon microsite.”The personalized poll allowed BHF to send their runners relevant content to help them reach their goals and deepen their relationship with the organization.Here’s a breakdown of the campaign’s performance.* Open rate: 38.06%* CTR: 13.82%* Click to open rate: 35.82%#### Use live polling for higher engagementLive polling is the perfect contextual marketing tactic for boosting email engagement and building relationships with your subscribers. It helps you send relevant content to your subscribers and gather valuable intel on their behavior. You can use that intel to consistently improve your email strategy over time.Want to learn more live polling and other contextual tactics to elevate your emails? Check out our eBook, [Everything You Need to Know About Contextual Marketing](https://go.movableink.com/Everything-About-Contextual-Marketing-Ebook.html?utm_source=inboundweb&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=contextualmarketing_ebook).