The Air Ambulance Service (TAAS) operate two emergency air ambulance services, the Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance (WNAA), and the Derbyshire, Leicestershire & Rutland Air Ambulance (DLRAA). They also operate The Children’s Air Ambulance Service (TCAA), an inter-hospital paediatric and neonatal transfer service, to help critically ill babies and children access the care they need.
The charity’s Supporter Experience Team sends a variety of outbound communications to supporters. These can range from processing and acknowledging donations, stewardship letters, welcome packs and birthday cards for supporters and the charity’s children’s fundraising club members.
Outbound mailings were sent manually – with team members spending entire days of their working week folding mailings, putting them in envelopes, labelling envelopes with an address, and franking them ready for postage.
As a growing requirement for mailings saw them sending upwards of three hundred birthday cards and hundreds of stewardship letters each month, the team were keen to find a more sophisticated solution that allowed them to keep their personal touch, whilst giving them back time to enhance their touchpoints for their audience.
Keen to free up time for their outbound team, The Air Ambulance Service knew that a more modern solution to their mailings was needed. After learning about CFH, TAAS realised that our hybrid mail solution Docmail would enable their team to cut out the labour-intensive parts of their work and help them to drive their supporter communications into a new era.
As the first hybrid mail solution launched in 2008, Docmail allows organisations to send and manage postal communications from their PC or laptop. Offering secure, online access, the solution offers an industry-leading postal communication solution that can perfectly support the charity sector. With the ability to send personalised mailings from one account with multiple logins, Docmail is ideal for organisations with multiple team members needing access or single users.
Like many charities, TAAS have an older demographic of supporters meaning that physical mailings have always been a preferred method of communicating with their supporters. Docmail offered the perfect blend of mailings with a personalised touch, as well as an ease of use that cuts out the time-intensive processes of mailing by hand.
The initial training session with CFH’s Client Training Manager Michelle Marsh was well received, with the team opting for a group session over individual sessions offered. With a full introduction to both the Docmail web portal and the print driver, The Air Ambulance Service team picked both up quickly, finding the system simple and easy to use.
For any questions and queries, TAAS team found they were able to get the support they needed from both Michelle and their Account Manager Serena Schofield, with any issues they couldn’t solve quickly escalated through the support team. From there the team were able to use Docmail to streamline the process of sending all their postal communications, from thanking fundraisers to birthday cards.
Using their internal CRM to generate the mailing address, recipient, and when needed fundraising details, the team used the Docmail print driver heavily – sending communications easily in 3 simple steps to individual recipients or large batches of contacts via a virtual printer installed on their desktops.
In the charity sector, it’s critical that your mailings are recognisable, and as impactful as possible straight away, standing out from the rest of the post delivered. The Air Ambulance Service were particularly happy about Docmail’s ability to send their mailings with a range of customisable branded envelopes depending on which of their services the mailing was for.
As the only hybrid-mail service that allows for customised closed face envelopes, Docmail was an ideal solution for The Air Ambulance Service – as they operate with 3 distinct brands. Using the envelope templates within Docmail, each user can quickly access the branding they need depending on which audience their mailing is going to – with the capability to add colour logos, additional messaging and more.
A year into working with CFH, The Air Ambulance Service are happy that our hybrid mail solution was the right option for them. The Docmail platform gave their team the ability to massively reduce the manual process of sending post individually by hand and save money on the cost of sending their mailings.
The Air Ambulance Service have sent more than 11,000 pieces of mail through the Docmail platform – with the time they’ve got back from sending each piece used to evolve the scope and quality of the messages they are sending. Each mailing the team sends out includes statistics about the work they’ve been able to do. For example, in October 2024 the Children’s Air Ambulance team flew 6 missions, including a transfer from Nottingham to Norwich which took 41 minutes by air instead of 2 hours 50 minutes by road. This extra bit of detail gives a real sense to their audience of the impact their donations have and the lives they’re able to change.
Alongside this process of improvements, the team have also been able to create more touchpoints for their audience – helping them to drive fundraising and keep their audience more engaged with the amazing work they do each day. The team commented that they’ve “really been able to improve the supporting experience for our donors and wider audience” – a key priority for a charity doing such important and life-changing work.
Aware that they’ve only employed a fraction of what Docmail can offer, now they’re more than comfortable with the platform, TAAS are interested in deploying the SMS options available through Docmail in the new year. The Air Ambulance Service team are also keen to continue sending more developed mailings moving forward, including more welcome packs and promotional leaflets.
I’m very happy with Docmail as the relationship holder. Serena has been absolutely fantastic from the very first introduction call. We’re at the point now where the team can process mailings with their eyes closed. I’m this impressed with the functionality without even scratching the surface of what Docmail can do, and we’re looking forward to expanding this down the line.
Senior Support Service Executive,
The Air Ambulance Service
