open rate across the journey
click rate
unsubscribe rate YoY
About Dementia UK
Dementia UK is the specialist dementia nursing charity behind Admiral Nurses, who give families expert, one-to-one support at every stage of the condition.
Allys Short is Dementia UK’s Digital Marketing Executive, and she ran the email side of the charity’s annual brand campaign.
It was a six-week campaign built around one line: “If you love someone living with dementia, you’re living with it too.” Billboards, YouTube, Spotify, Meta ads and organic social all pointed to free guides on living with dementia, written with Admiral Nurses. Anyone who downloaded a guide could opt in to hear more by email.
One condition, very different experiences
Dementia doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Someone recently diagnosed needs something very different from a partner caring for them full time, or a friend who wants to understand what’s happening.
The previous year’s campaign had already split supporters into groups, but the emails themselves were still fairly general. Everyone got the same supporter story and much of the same support information, whatever their connection to dementia.
For a charity whose emails can genuinely change someone’s day, that mattered. “The support and information we’re providing can deeply affect people’s lives,” Allys says. “It’s so important to give people specific information for their situation.”
Asking people who they are, then listening
Phase 1: Getting new sign-ups straight into Dotdigital
Lead gen forms on Meta were connected to Dotdigital via API, so every new sign-up was enrolled straight into the campaign automation without anyone exporting or uploading data.
Phase 2: The selection email
The first email asked supporters one simple question: how does dementia affect you? They could choose from:
- Someone close to me has dementia
- Someone else in my life has dementia
- I have dementia
- Prefer not to say
The prefer not to say option was a deliberate choice. “With health conditions, sometimes people don’t want to give too much information,” Allys says. Anyone who picked it, or didn’t choose within three days, was sent down the broadest route, built for people who know someone with dementia.
Decision nodes then checked which link each person clicked and sent them into the matching journey.
Phase 3: Personalizing the content, not just the route
Each journey got its own content, so someone living with dementia received a different supporter story from someone caring for a loved one. Carers got specific, practical support information instead of general advice.
The team also used random split nodes to test content throughout the journey and see what landed best with each audience.
Crucially, none of this needed a full preference center. “When people hear about selecting based on preferences, they automatically jump to a preference center, which is such a large piece of work, especially in a smaller organization,” Allys says. “Doing it on this smaller scale is a really great way to test personalization.”
Personalization starts with understanding someone’s circumstances. Allowing supporters to choose the information most relevant to them increased our engagement, reduced our unsubscribes and let us provide better support for people.
Allys Short, Digital Marketing Executive, Dementia UK
The more personal, the better it performed
Across the full journey:
- 56% open rate
- 11% click rate, up 1 percentage point year on year
- Unsubscribe rate halved year on year
- 3.7% download rate for support resources, up 0.7 percentage points year on year
The breakdown by journey was just as telling. People living with dementia had the highest click rates, because the content spoke directly to their situation. Carers opened at really high rates but clicked less, a sign they were interested but short on time and needed quick, practical content. Even the broadest group, with the loosest connection to dementia, still performed well.
Impact beyond the campaign
The results gave the team the confidence to use the same approach elsewhere. “We were very happy with the results, and that’s why we’ve been building on that structure,” Allys says.
She’s since rebuilt Dementia UK’s website welcome journey around the same idea, asking new subscribers about their connection to dementia in the first email and tailoring what follows. The team has also just run the format again for World Alzheimer’s Month, using Meta lead gen to sign people up to a personalized email support series.
Looking ahead
Personalization is now the starting point for new journeys at Dementia UK, and Allys has a clear message for other charities thinking about trying it.
“Charities can be a bit behind corporations because we don’t have the same budget,” she says. “Being curious and not being afraid to test things is really, really important. We’re still finding out what Dotdigital can do and working out the best way to use it.”
