Bringing brand and fundraising together for Help for Heroes’ Christmas appeal

Help for Heroes supports veterans and their families to live well after service, providing tailored support across physical and mental health, welfare and social needs.

Their latest Christmas campaign was our first opportunity to support them during their main fundraising period of the year.

Help for Heroes’ Christmas activity had traditionally been split into two strands.

The Christmas donation appeal focused on individual giving, asking supporters for all important donations. Alongside this sits Send a message to a veteran, a strong, emotive idea designed to build awareness and connection.

In previous years, these strands often ran as separate digital campaigns. In practice, that meant different asks running at the same time and competing for attention.

The opportunity last year was to treat Christmas as a more joined-up piece of activity, using the brand work to support fundraising, rather than sitting alongside it.

To bring the activity together, Send a message to a veteran was positioned at the top of the funnel to build awareness and emotional connection, while the donation activity focused on capturing and converting intent further down the funnel.

The aim wasn’t to force a direct handover between the two, but to reduce competition between them and allow each to support the other.

Donation activity began earlier in the season, helping to capture demand ahead of the busiest period. As competition increased closer to Christmas, performance was monitored and activity adjusted to maintain efficiency and momentum.

Activity included:

• branded and non-branded search campaigns for donation-focused intent
• Performance Max campaigns
• search and YouTube activity to promote the Send a message page

Search activity covered a mix of intent, from people looking to engage with the campaign through to those actively looking to donate to a veterans charity.

Video creative also played an important role. Help for Heroes already had strong Christmas footage in multiple formats, which supported performance across placements and helped maintain consistency across channels. Performance Max messaging reflected the tone of the campaign, focusing on reassurance and care, aligned with the emotional context of Christmas.

Audience targeting combined prospecting and remarketing. Prospecting focused on relevant interest-based audiences, while remarketing re-engaged people who had already interacted with Help for Heroes’ website or campaign content, helping move people towards donating.

People clicking on Send a message ads landed directly on the message wall, a simple experience focused on a single action. Donation traffic landed on a dedicated Christmas donation page, designed to reduce friction and make giving straightforward.

While tracking limitations meant it wasn’t possible to follow individuals all the way from sending a message through to donating, the two strands ran alongside each other throughout the campaign and supported the overall appeal in practice.

Running the campaign as a more joined-up piece of activity made a measurable difference compared to previous years.

• Income from PPC increased by 483% year on year
• Overall acquisition was almost 6× higher than the original campaign target
• PPC cost per acquisition was the lowest Help for Heroes has seen in the past 4.5 years

This campaign highlighted the value of bringing brand and digital fundraising activity closer together, particularly during key moments like Christmas.

It also surfaced opportunities to improve tracking and data capture in future, which could help connect engagement and fundraising activity more clearly over time.