Being able to communicate with you is important. Find out more about how we use marketing communications.

We will use the details you provide to us to communicate with you about our work. We would also like to tell you how your support is helping and other ways you can help in the future whether that’s through volunteering, campaigning, events or fundraising. From time to time we might also send you appeals asking for a donation to help more cats.

We promise that we will only communicate with you in the way you wish us to and we will always respect your privacy. You can change your mind at any time via Change contact details or consent in the Privacy Policy

Email/text marketing

If you actively provide your consent to us along with your email address and/or mobile phone number we may contact you for marketing purposes by email or text message. By opting in to email communication from Cats Protection you grant us the right to use the email for email marketing. All emails include an unsubscribe link so that you can change your mind at any time.

See SMS terms

Online advertising

Cats Protection is open to trying different ways to raise awareness of the charity to new people and makes the most of online advertising, where appropriate, including on social media sites to advertise cats in need of rehoming, advocacy campaigns to help improve the lives of cats, ways people can help support the charity’s work etc. We always adhere to the respective social media site’s policies and never upload any of our supporters’ information.

Any online adverts we place depend upon online behaviours and interests (eg cats/cycling) or demographics (eg age/gender), ‘likes’ on our Facebook page or similar anonymised data collected via cookies.

We use the Conversion API with your consent to connect to our website to share marketing data in a hashed (unidentified) format.

Cats Protection will always ensure, no matter which online site we use for advertising, we only do so if we can maintain the standards necessary to protect your information.

Postal marketing

In certain instances, we may collect and use your personal information by relying on our ‘legitimate interest’ to contact you via post. The law permits us to send marketing communications without prior consent so long as you have not previously opted out of such communications.

Our existing supporters will receive regular updates from the charity, including information about our work, services and ways in which you can show your support for cats. We may also contact you if you are not currently known to Cats Protection, but we believe you may be interested in hearing about our work because you have opted in to hearing from charities through a third party organisation. We will only obtain your details in this way if you have not opted-out of receiving unsolicited mailings, by checking your details against the Mailing Preference Service

If you tell us that you would prefer not to receive future communications from Cats Protection, or we receive a notification from the Fundraising Preference Service we will ensure we do not directly contact you for marketing purposes again. However, there is a possibility you may receive unaddressed mail from Cats Protection, (i.e. door drop appeals and raffles) as these communications are targeted at postcode level and so we are not able to prevent individuals from receiving them.

Telemarketing

We also rely on our ‘legitimate interest’ in order to telephone existing supporters and service users for marketing purposes. We may call you to thank you for a recent donation, to update you on our work including any new services being launched and to tell you about our fundraising campaigns and ways in which you can support us further. We actively check telephone numbers against the Telephone Preference Service unless you have explicitly told us that you consent to receiving marketing calls from/on behalf of Cats Protection. At the end of each call we will check your communication preferences to ensure you are happy to be contacted by telephone again in the future.

Personalisation and profiling

We also carry out targeted fundraising activity to ensure that we are contacting you with the most appropriate communication, which is relevant and timely and will ultimately provide an improved experience for you. For example, by providing timely news about our work, letting you know the different ways you can support us and how you can help raise funds.

We may use your personal information that we have gathered in the course of our relationship to understand the likelihood of you responding to a fundraising communication from us and whether you are able to support us further through a higher monetary gift or by volunteering your time or services. To assist us with this work we may use additional information from public/private third-party service providers to create a more accurate and fuller picture of you.

Because we have a greater understanding of you and your motivations for support, this means our communication will hopefully be appropriate, relevant and of interest to you.

For more information on how we work with third parties, please see Do we share your information section in the Privacy Policy.

You can opt out of your data being used for profiling. However, this may mean that you stop receiving marketing communications from us or the communications will become more generic and less relevant to you. If you do wish to opt out please refer to Change contact details or consent in the Privacy Policy.

Data analysis and researching our supporters

We look at information such as demographics of supporters and levels of previous donations to help us send you suitable communications and requests. Where we identify people who have the potential to support us with a larger gift, we may gather and analyse information about you from publicly available sources (see below for examples) to develop a better understanding of you, to allow us to make better decisions, fundraise more effectively and ultimately to help more cats. We undertake in-house research, using information you have given us and may use additional, publicly-available information from third party sources. Examples of sources we might use include; Public registers (eg Companies House, Land Registry), internet search engine results, property sites (eg Zoopla, Rightmove), open postings on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, media articles (eg rich lists, who’s who publications).

In the case of support from organisations, such as grant-makers and companies, we may conduct in- house research using publicly available information from third party sources, such as the registers of Charity Commissions and Regulators, and subscription services such as trustfunding.org and Company Book as well as search engine results, social media sites such as LinkedIn and media articles.

We use this information to communicate with you in an appropriate way, to meet your needs and also raise funds more quickly and cost-effectively than we otherwise would. You will always have the right to opt out of this processing at any time.

Third parties

We may disclose your personal information in the following circumstances:

  • to third parties who provide a service to us and our data processors. This would include our trusted partners that work with us in connection with our charitable purposes, and other entities that act as fundraisers for Cats Protection
  • to third parties who sell Cats Protection products or provide Cats Protection information and marketing (subject to your communication preferences and our internal policies and procedures). We require these third parties to comply strictly with our instructions and data protection laws and we will make sure that appropriate controls are in place. We enter into contracts with all our data processors and regularly monitor their activities to ensure they are complying with Cats Protection’s policies and procedures
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