NSPCC
An evidence-led journey audit that grew the leading fundraising product's sales by 84%
Every winter, NSPCC's Letter from Santa turned a personalised letter into both a magical moment for children and vital charitable income. We ran a deep, evidence-led audit of the end-to-end customer journey, to protect what was working, fix where families were dropping off, and show exactly where to invest.
The challenge
Like many fundraising products, Letter from Santa sat at the crossroads of emotion and practicality. People were buying for a child they loved, but they were also making an online purchase where trust, reassurance, clarity and ease mattered enormously.
NSPCC wanted more than a funnel review. They needed evidence-based answers to real questions: who bought the product and why, how people discovered and decided, where the emotional highs and the operational pinch-points sat, and which improvements would most directly lift conversion and sales.
What we did
The audit was built on a simple belief: to improve the experience, you first have to understand the customer's reality. We combined a data-led picture of the audience with a clear map of the real, end-to-end journey.
Audience deep dive
A quantitative-led understanding of who bought in this category: the emotional motivations and purchase triggers, the practical barriers, the competitor consideration set, and what value really meant to customers, both rationally and emotionally.
Customer experience mapping
A full journey map across every stage, from discovery, evaluation and reassurance through purchase and payment, fulfilment and delivery, the product moment itself, and post-purchase advocacy, separating what customers cared about from what was actually being delivered.
Rigorous mixed-method research
We triangulated insight across a 4,168-person survey (customers, competitor customers and potential buyers), a 1,856-response post-purchase survey, 25 in-depth interviews, and 15 live screen-sharing sessions to watch real friction as it happened.
The results
NSPCC gained a much clearer picture of who their customers were and what really drove purchase, and could see, with evidence, what they were already getting right so those high points could be protected and amplified.
The audit exposed the journey's pinch-points, clarifying exactly where investment would have the highest commercial and brand impact. Its recommendations heavily informed objectives and resource allocation for Years 2 and 3 of the product strategy.
It also shaped the creative: a new letter design, built on what customers valued most, went on to outperform every other version in 2021 by a landslide. In all, the work contributed to an 84% increase in sales.
Letter variants tested
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