Save the Bilby Fund

Overview

Save the Bilby Fund (STBF) is a national charity that has been working to protect the precious Bilby from extinction for over 10 years.  The struggle for survival of this gentle marsupial has sparked the rise of chocolate Bilbies in place of Bunnies at Easter.

The ‘Bilbies Not Bunnies’ campaign was undertaken by many conservation groups & chocolate brands like Cadbury to increase awareness about the threats which the Bilby faces as a result of habitat loss and competition from introduced animals.  Easter time is a great opportunity to shift the spotlight on the Bilby and away from the Rabbit – who is largely responsible for its demise.

However, in late 2011,  Cadbury decided to discontinue the production of chocolate bilbies and their token donations. This led STBF to engage the team at Flat Earth Direct & us to develop a campaign concept to drive both awareness and donations.

Problem

Raise public awareness about the issues and acquire new regular givers for STBF through a two-step, petition and donation conversion campaign.

Solution

• Create a conversion-focused microsite.
• Create a donation flow with secure payment & contact integration directly into the Blackbaud eTapestry CRM.
• Create a custom reporting tool for analytics & data exportation.

Results

• 3000 signatures within 12 hours of the petition launch!!!
• Exceeded the 10,000 overall petition target!!!
• Online donations well above campaign target!

The Challenge

The objective of the project was two-fold: raise public awareness about the issues and acquire new regular givers for STBF through a two-step, petition and donation conversion campaign. The emotive campaign message, “Don’t Dump the Bilby” and associated collateral, was aimed at creating public awareness while also acquiring new supporters to further expand the STBF donor base. Signers would also be contacted by phone asking them for a regular gift – the primary aim of the campaign.

Project Goals:

• Create a conversion-focused microsite.
• Create a donation flow with secure payment & contact integration directly into the Blackbaud eTapestry CRM.
• Create a custom reporting tool for analytics & data exportation.

The Solution

Working with the Flat Earth Direct, Clever Contacts and Blackbaud, we provided a microsite solution for the two-step campaign by:

• Creating a conversion-focused microsite with an emotive and mobile-first user experience
• Using a tally counter for social validation showing 5 of the most recent sign-ups to further encourage others to complete the petition.
• Providing the functionality to prefill user information into forms.
• Enabling custom email and Facebook shares functionality at different points within the user journey.
• Developing a bespoke donation flow with secure payment and contact integration directly into the Blackbaud eTapestry CRM.
• Creating a custom advanced reporting tool for deeper supporter insights – including information on donation amount, source and number of form submissions.
• Integrating directly with the telemarketing agency to provide real-time data on sign-ups and contact opportunities.

The simple format encourages sign-ups

The social campaign was extremely successful in capturing the attention of users and driving them to the microsite where the majority subsequently converted through the petition form. By designing the layout of the microsite to be simple, socially validated and content light, users were given a single conversion focus at each step of the journey.

After signing the petition, supporters were sent to a personalised thank you page which provided them with an opportunity to donate or share the online petition through their social networks.  While only a small percentage of users went on to make a one-off cash donation there were a significant number of users who shared the campaign with their followers. This was not a surprising outcome given the emotive nature of the campaign!

A 360-degree view of supporters

The Save the Bilby Fund’s current CRM (eTapestry) had its limitations in terms of exporting certain supporter information so that the team could execute its regular giving program.  So we built an advanced custom reporting tool within the microsite to solve this problem!

The custom reporting tool essentially allowed the team to segment their supporters based on their engagement of the campaign & export contact details of different segments, so their regular giving team could contact as soon as possible – as we all know, the sooner the call, the better the conversion rate!

The Results

Working collaboratively with the Save the Bilby team, we knocked it out of the park!!

These are some of the campaign highlights:

• 3000 signatures within 12 hours of the petition launch!!!
• Exceeded the 10,000 overall petition target!!!
• Online donations well above campaign target!
• Ability to track supporters coming from social channels for the first time
• A clean petition form including social validation with increased signups
• Easy reporting that can be applied to future campaigns
• A single source of truth about their supporters

Wrapping Up

We were so excited to play our part in Saving the Bilby at Eastertime. Over 10,000 more people know about the plight of this long-eared animal that will now be part of its solution.

Do you have an existing campaign like Save the Bilby, that could be enhanced from the clever use of digital technology? If you do, we’re all ears.