Case Study: Defenders of Wildlige

How do you reinvent a donor acquisition program?

The Challenge

Defenders of Wildlife partnered with Interactive Strategies to reinvigorate their donor acquisition program and help reach lofty long-term goals just months from end-of-year (EOY) giving. A deep audit of their paid media campaigns provided insights for an updated digital strategy that featured new advertising concepts. Our partnership produced significant results, exceeding growth goals in the first two years and growing yearly revenue by 15%.

Markets & Services

Digital Fundraising Campaigns

Win with urgency

The EOY giving season provided an opportunity to test a variety of new acquisition campaign concepts and tactics across paid social, paid search and online display. We worked with the Defenders team to develop new messaging and visuals that conveyed urgency and identified specific species in need of help. We then collaborated with the team on scripting video ads that featured the top campaign performers. The new concepts helped them reach and exceed their December web revenue goal by over $100k and add more than 2,300 new donors into their program.

Testing and Optimizing New Campaigns

Building on EOY success and beyond

Post-EOY, we continued our work with Defenders to elevate their program with urgent messaging and large campaigns based on previous campaign learnings. We focused campaigns on relevant commemorative days like Earth Day and mobilized quickly when news of unlawful hunting provided moments of additional urgency and context for our fundraising and lead generation ads. This is the description

Building a New Donor Pipeline

Fundraising-driven lead generation

To help grow and scale Defenders of Wildlife’s digital fundraising program, our team proposed a new approach to lead generation. Instead of third-party platforms or list buying, we used social ads featuring surveys and petitions to engage potential donors, leading to a higher-quality email segment that yielded higher donation rates and lifetime value.

New Channel Testing

Explore new channels

After implementing strong lead generation campaigns, we explored several new channels to reach new audiences such as TapJoy, a platform that places ads in mobile games, to test a donor acquisition campaign with a low donation ask.

Despite a low gift ask , the response far exceeded the benchmarks for the campaign. Not only was the immediate return on ad spend over 60% while hitting a cost per acquisition number lower than goal, but the program exceeded new digital donor goals in every month of the campaign. With that success, we were able to implement a similarly successful monthly giving campaign to boost the program’s sustainer numbers.

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