NHS Blood & Transplant has been using Dotdigital since 2014. For over a decade, SMS has been a cornerstone of how they communicate with donors — sending up to 50,000 messages every day to attract new donors, keep appointments, and encourage people to give again.
Teleperformance (TP) have been providing contact centre services for NHS Blood and & Transplant (NHSBT) for over 25 years, alongside the delivery of a range of multichannel communications to NHSBT Donors.
TP provide NHSBT with a world class customer service provision aiming to make the service even more accessible to Donors, ensuring services provided keep pace with changing technologies.
High demand and stocks running low
People with sickle cell disorder rely on closely matched blood transfusions — often from donors of the same heritage. With Ro blood in particularly high demand and stocks running low, NHS Blood & Transplant needed to find more donors and get them giving more regularly.
But there was a problem. Missed appointments were high — 15% overall, rising to 25% among black heritage donors. Every no-show is a missed donation. And for patients who depend on Ro blood, those missed donations have real consequences.
Building the case for WhatsApp
The team already had a well-established appointment reminder journey: five touchpoints across email, SMS, and direct mail in the two weeks before a donation. It worked. They didn’t want to tear it up — just make it better.
They had WhatsApp on their mind after hearing of positive results across other areas of the NHS. After attending a Dotdigital event and webinar, their mind was made up.
“Louise Glover, Service Owner: Ro Donor Experience Services, explains: “At the event, we saw there was a lot of knowledge in the room. It was clear Dotdigital had the expertise we needed. We were fascinated by the case studies and examples of other organisations using it — we felt surrounded by experts and in safe hands.”
Louise’s own research backed it up. WhatsApp has 80% penetration in the 18–30 age bracket, and black heritage donors over-index in the 17–34 bracket. Black heritage donors are also 6% less likely to answer an outbound call than white donors — making mobile messaging a good fit (source: NHS).
Rolling out WhatsApp
WhatsApp was added to the existing appointment reminder journey as an extra touchpoint 48 hours before each appointment. The team also rebranded their WhatsApp profile from the corporate “NHS Blood & Transport” identity to the donor-facing “Give Blood” identity — so when someone gets a message, they see a name and logo they already recognise from the app and social media.
The message itself is simple, but nothing in it is accidental. A bold “Please Confirm” headline makes the ask clear. It’s personalised with the donor’s name, donation details, location, and time. It gently reminds people why their donation matters. And crucially, confirming or rescheduling takes just one tap, using WhatsApp’s built-in buttons. If a donor confirms, they get an instant thank-you — and a reminder that their donation can save up to three lives in a single hour.
The service runs seven days a week, 8am–8pm. Outside those hours, donors still get an automated response straight away.
WhatsApp has not just been a marketing win. It’s saving lives. Seeing no-show rates fall — especially among black heritage donors — tells us we’re reaching people in the right place, at the right time. The potential to do more and make even bigger impact is huge.
Louise Glover, Service Owner
The numbers speak for themselves
WhatsApp open rates hit 83%, compared to 71% for email. Response rates reached 91% — against an email click-through rate of 20%.
Most importantly, no-show rates dropped. For black heritage donors, missed appointments fell by 40% — from 25% down to 15%. For white donors, the rate dropped from 10% to 7%.
The projected impact? An extra 1,080 Ro blood donations every year — and treatment for more patients who previously couldn’t get the blood they needed.
And this is just the start. NHS Blood & Transplant is now looking to extend WhatsApp to all black heritage donors — where first-donation no-show rates run as high as 58% — and to tackle the friction around deferred appointments. The potential to go further is significant.