Wood for Trees wins double award at Apteco Live

Press release

Data systems and analysis agency, Wood for Trees won the coveted Best Use of Apteco Software Award jointly with Teenage Cancer Trust, and Apteco Partner of the Year, at the Apteco Live 2022 conference (18 and 25 November 2022).

This follows the agency also being appointed Apteco Partner of the Year in 2019 and being runner-up in the Best Use of Apteco Software Award, alongside Cats Protection, in 2021.

The winning entry of the Best Use of Apteco Software Award 2022, judged by a selected panel and event delegates, was presented at the conference by Wood for Trees Senior Solutions Consultant, Nick Cook, and Teenage Cancer Trust Mass Participation Project Manager, Harriet Durban, along with the other finalist entries from Greene King, Health Education England and Paragon DCX.

They explained how working together, using the full range of Apteco marketing software solutions, they have created fully automated, tailored and streamlined email stewardship journeys, providing personalised and relevant, dynamic and high-quality email content for ‘own place’ fundraising event supporters of the charity.

Previously, participants were manually sent three generic emails on registering for an event, which was time-consuming and resource intensive for the charity. Now, participants receive up to nine, automatically generated, bespoke emails, dependant on the length of time between the date of registering and the event itself, and the event type.

As a result of these new processes in place, Teenage Cancer Trust has a considerable projected year one uplift of £200,000-£300,000 fundraised income from mass participation events.

It has also significantly saved time and resource in the mass participation and data teams at the charity, which can now be spent building and implementing wider organisational strategies, as well as providing additional support for their fundraisers. The previous manual process took two full days of an employee’s time per week and the new automated process would be the equivalent of a full-time job.

Not only this, but the more supporter-centric approach to the charity’s stewardship will create brilliant experiences for its fundraisers, personalising their journeys and tailoring to their needs, which should build brand awareness and increase supporter retention and engagement in the long-term.

In addition to submitting an entry for the Best Use of Apteco Software Award, there are numerous other engagements taken into consideration in selecting Apteco’s Partner of the Year. Wood for Trees has worked with Apteco for over 12 years and is the only partner to currently hold the full suite of Apteco training accreditations. The agency has also secured three new charity clients in the past 18 months, using Apteco marketing software: Centrepoint, Crisis and Stroke Association.

Wood for Trees Solutions Director, Matthew Tamea, participated in a discussion panel at the conference and received the Partner of the Year Award, alongside Wood for Trees Solutions Consultants, Nick Cook and Ben Perch.

Mr Tamea says: “We’re surprised and absolutely delighted to have won not one, but two Apteco awards this year. Given how busy we’ve been in 2022, it didn’t feel like there was a lot of time to focus on awards, but the natural outcome of all our hard work means we put ourselves in a great position.

“We’ve a brilliant, long-standing working relationship with Apteco – they’re an organisation we love working with and it’s great to see the work of the Wood for Trees team and our charity clients recognised with such prestigious industry awards.”

Head of Mass Participation at Teenage Cancer Trust, Rachel Thomas says: “We’re thrilled to have won this award and the amazing efforts not only of the team at Teenage Cancer Trust recognised, but also Wood for Trees in improving our stewardship journeys.

“It’s been an incredibly tough few years and it’s even more important now than ever before to put our supporters first, and this automation enables us to do just that. It’ll have a huge impact not only for our supporters, but also how we approach our stewardship going forward, to ensure we’re maximising fundraising potential and, ultimately, raising vital funds to support young people with cancer.”

James Alty, Founder and Managing Director of Apteco says: “We had three great finalists in this year’s Apteco award competition and Wood for Trees and Teenage Cancer Trust are deserving winners who showed exceptional and effective use of our software.

“They demonstrated improvements in concurrent communications for their supporters, driven by their fundraising timetable and also in the efficiency with which the team at Teenage Cancer Trust worked.

“The competition is intense and every year entrants not only have to convince the Apteco judging panel that they should be finalists, but they also then have to win over an audience of their peers at the annual Apteco user conference to vote for them following short presentations of their use cases.

“Congratulations to Teenage Cancer Trust and Wood for Trees on their success in the votes and, ultimately, for helping their supporters with their fundraising activities. The whole Apteco team are proud to be able to support such a worthy cause.”

Read more about the award-winning entry from Wood for Trees and Teenage Cancer Trust using this link.