Increasing your ROI with Care2
Rebecca Williams, Executive Director of Habitat Horses, leads a horse to sanctuary
Online program growth has become increasingly important for nonprofit organizations, which makes a growing email list essential. Habitat for Horses (HFH), a new Sanky client, recognized this and wanted to grow their online program through email acquisition. With the right mix of strategy and content, we helped HFH get a positive ROI in just seven months, resulting in exponential growth with their online program.
Habitat for Horses joined the Sanky roster with an online goal in mind: grow our program and generate revenue. While all online clients ultimately have a similar goal for their online programs, Habitat for Horses (HFH) presented an interesting case – with an existing email list of about 10,000 names, they needed to intensely grow their email list before online program growth could commence.
To do so, we turned to our good friends at Care2, the world’s largest community for good. We knew these action-takers would respond to Habitat for Horses’ mission and many could become compassionate and driven supporters. With two petitions focused on issues important to HFH, Care2 delivered a list of 22,000 names of individuals who supported these same issues. This list had already been optimized by Care2 for email validity and opt-out removal before it was returned to HFH – a step that takes the results of your acquisition even further by eliminating useless emails. In addition, these new prospects also diversified HFH’s list, giving their list a national profile.
In just seven months, nearly 4% of these new names have become new donors to HFH, making 1,139 gifts for $34,145 – resulting in an astounding 157% ROI. To convert these names into donors, the Sanky team created a compelling onboarding campaign that featured a simple cultivation email followed by an appeal and appeal resend. This onboarding series raised over $1,500 and had an average open rate of 30.11% - well over the industry average of 15%.
In short:
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Email acquisitions are a great way to boost growth in an online program
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The strategy to acquire these names is just as important as the content
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Your onboarding campaign is crucial as it is your first communication and your first opportunity to engage and convert new donors
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Make sure the topics used for acquisition are aligned with your organization’s core mission so you acquire donors who truly care about your work and are likely to stay on.
