How UNICEF Australia thanked 20,000 donors with personalized videos

For this project, our client was UNICEF Australia - the local branch of the world’s leading humanitarian organization for children. They work to improve the lives of children everywhere by providing access to education and healthcare, and delivering life-saving aid in emergencies, among else.

They wanted to create thousands of personalized videos that highlighted specific projects that each donor had supported, the ''badges'' they had earned along the way, and how their impact compared to others.

That’s when they approached Plainly to help bring the idea to life.

And that idea? It soon turned into one of the most ambitious donor campaigns to date!

The goals

Before this campaign, UNICEF was thanking donors with personalised emails. But they wanted to explore other ways to improve the connection with the donors and bring to life the fantastic support they provide.

‍So, they thought they’d do things a bit differently this time. The goals were clear:

• Give donors a more personal and meaningful thank you.
• Show the difference they made and reinforce a sense of community.
• Encourage social sharing to help spread the word.
• Set the stage for future fundraising.

The challenges

The biggest challenge? Scale. Creating 1000s of personalized videos manually simply wasn’t an option. That’s because the team didn’t have the in-house infrastructure to handle video rendering at this volume. 

They also needed everything to be easy to distribute and quick to set up, without a heavy technical lift for their team. On top of that, the solution had to integrate seamlessly with their CRM and work with Adobe After Effects, as it was the tool their creative team was already comfortable using for template creation.

The solution

Plainly ticked every box. UNICEF’s creative team designed a single After Effects video template that would serve as the base for every donor’s video. Plainly's team provided assistance with the template by sharing best practices and tips on making the template automation-friendly.

‍Once the template was ready, they uploaded it to Plainly, marked the dynamic elements, and prepared it for rendering. After the initial setup, UNICEF’s team compiled the data source - in this case, a CSV file with details like which projects the donor supported, which “badges” they’d earned, and how they ranked among other supporters.

‍From there, UNICEF used the CSV to drive the rendering process. Using the template and donor data, the platform rendered 20,000 unique videos automatically. 

‍Each one was paired with its own landing page, personalized for that specific donor. This meant every supporter would have a dedicated space that showcased their impact, making the thank-you feel even more personal and share-worthy.

‍UNICEF then exported a CSV from Plainly containing all the video links and also a personalized thumbnail generated by Plainly. This thumbnail was embedded directly into the thank-you email, so when a donor clicked on it, they were taken straight to their personalized landing page with the unique video.

The implementation

The setup was fast - just a couple of weeks from the first handoff to launch.

UNICEF prepared their donor data and creative assets, and Plainly was there to lend a helping hand. Once the workflow was in place, generating and sending thousands of personalized videos was straightforward. 

The team could drop in their latest data, hit render, and have every donor’s video and landing page ready to go without a lot of back-and-forth.

The results

Thanks to Plainly, UNICEF was able to deliver more than 20,000 personalized landing pages to each of the donors, along with custom-made videos. The feedback from their supporters was positive, with an 8% increase in their generous donations to Children in the world. 

While a big success with the donors, the collaboration with Plainly was a huge win for their internal team, too. Not only did the entire process run smoothly, but they also got a scalable setup they can use for future campaigns.