Vinnies Victoria

Overview

In early 2019, Marlin developed a 2-step acquisition Facebook campaign for Vinnies VIC called Tough Questions.

The campaign was based on our insight that homelessness made nice people feel uncomfortable. We leveraged this tension for online acquisition by offering people a guide to navigating the questions they have around homelessness in return for their email address.

The initial campaign generated strong interest, so we expanded the Tough Questions framework and applied it to four strategic pillars : Education, Homelessness, Food Insecurity and Cost of Living.

In 2020, we created and ran the campaign for the Homelessness version of Tough Questions. Within one week, this campaign had generated more leads than the total from the previous eight-week campaign.

Problem

Vinnies VIC needed to invigorate their donor base and increase their number of prospective donors.

Solution

We developed and managed their 2-step acquisition Facebook campaign for lead acquisition.

Results

During its first week live, the campaign had more leads generated than the total of the previous eight-week campaign, including a lower cost per lead originally budgeted for.

The Challenge

Vinnies VIC needed to invigorate their donor base and increase their number of prospective donors.

The campaign needed to generate warm leads, and also boost engagement, volunteer leads and donations directly to Vinnies VIC website.

Marlin had developed the Tough Questions framework, but the previous two campaigns were not generating enough leads, and had a high cost per lead.

For the Winter 2020 iteration of Tough Questions, we wanted to take on the full campaign, including digital strategy, execution and campaign management. We proposed that we could look at the campaign holistically (rather than just content) to see if our digital team could boost the response.

The Solution

We developed a three-phase approach of Deploy / Optimise / Scale.

The strategy allocated more budget to the ads. We increased the specific audience targeting so that we used the budget in the most efficient way.

We simplified the initial testing phase, and instead put more focus on adapting and testing further creative based on which versions were performing well.

We tested two Calls To Action (CTAs) across three pieces of creative per CTA. We also included a CTA around volunteering and donating, to see how these performed with our audience.

We also developed an acquisition journey to convert generated leads into donors. This consisted of a Thank you eDM (including the link to download the guide) as well as three nurture eDMs.

However, the overall objective was for leads to become part of a long-term relationship with the organisation rather than a one-off donation.

Working with Vinnies VIC, we chose to expand the focus from homelessness to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on homelessness. This was relevant and timely, especially for our audience in Victoria who had been heavily impacted by the pandemic. We also worked with Vinnies VIC to launch the campaign in time for Homelessness Week, again making the topic extremely relevant.

The Results

The campaign raised awareness of Vinnie’s vital work with homelessness, created engagement, and generated a robust pipeline of leads for the organisation.

During its first week live, our campaign had more leads generated than the total of the previous eight-week campaign, including a lower cost per lead originally budgeted for.

The creative was performing so well that we decided to end the campaign three weeks early as we had exceeded target by week 4.

We had originally budgeted to change the creative each week, however the ads performed well, with a low cost per lead, so we only tested one creative change. This change became the highest performing ad.

By applying an agile digital strategy to a compelling creative concept, we were able to exceed Vinnies VIC’s expectations on all fronts.