introduction:
Our Annual Giving service revolves around story-based, deadline-driven campaigns designed to engage supporters year-round. By emphasizing frequency, consistency, and personalization, we develop and execute four annual campaigns, creating tailored creative assets across digital and print media. Our commitment is to activate donor relationships, inspire broad audiences, and provide the strategic support needed to reinforce these relationships through personalized communication.
Campaign objective:
The primary objective of Brother Bill’s Helping Hand’s End of Year Campaign was to encourage donor support during the holiday season through a multi-channel, story-driven approach. The campaign celebrated and highlighted the "Top 10 Blessings" of 2024, showcasing the impact of BBHH’s wrap-around services on the community. These stories illustrated how BBHH’s programs enrich lives, empower neighbors, and address essential needs, demonstrating the profound difference donor support makes in transforming lives.
The campaign included a series of cultivation emails and organic social media posts, followed by targeted solicitation emails and paid social media ads. Additionally, an end-of-year direct mail piece featured segmented messaging, with major donors ($2,500+) receiving tailored content about the need for expansion, while lower-level donors were presented with a giving ladder showcasing the tangible impact of their contributions.
campaign timeline:
November 21st - December 10th: Cultivation Emails
December 3, December 16th - December 31st: Solicitation Emails
CAMPAIGN STORY:
We shared the story of Brother Bill’s Helping Hand’s incredible 2024 through a dedicated campaign that highlighted our "Top 10 Blessings" of the year. This campaign celebrated milestones like the launch of many partnerships, the rapid growth of the after-school and ESL programs, the expansion of Community Markets, and the incredible busyness of all the Grocery Stores. By showcasing these moments, we emphasized how BBHH’s wrap-around services enrich lives, empower families, and address essential needs within the Dallas community.
Through a combination of storytelling, cultivation emails, social media posts, and direct mail, we engaged supporters in the impact of these achievements. Each piece highlighted the role of donors, volunteers, and community partners in making these blessings possible. By focusing on the transformative power of these moments, we invited the community to continue supporting BBHH’s mission of faith-driven service, creating more opportunities for enrichment and empowerment in the year ahead.
Website traffic
Total BBHH Website Traffic (11/21 - 12/31)
Visits 13,233
EOY Page Traffic
Visits 575
4.35% of visitors to BBHH website during campaign were visiting the EOY page
This is up from last year 2.45%
Average time on page 1 minute 35 seconds
Total Button Clicks During Campaign
Clicks 2,814
Total Button Clicks on EOY Page
Clicks 31
1.1% of people who clicked during EOY campaign clicked somewhere on EOY page
Giving Clicks
Clicks 21
68% of the people who clicked on the EOY page clicked on the giving button
Cultivation emails/ Social Posts
We used cultivation emails and social posts to highlight the many blessings and engage the audience, fostering deeper connections and driving support. This included a quiz, testimonials from volunteers, and exciting updates from all of BBHH’s campuses.
solicitation email/Social posts
These emails transitioned from storytelling to direct appeals for donations, including impact messages and examples of how donations ensure continued growth of BBHH’s wraparound services. This included a video appeal from Wes on Giving Tuesday.
Campaign Results:
Email Open Rates: The highest open rate was 45% for the email sent on 12/23, which highlighted the ESL program’s growth and the partnership with Aspire.
Email Click-Through Rates: The highest click rate was 1.90% for the 8th email, which highlighted the partnership with Rees Jones, SPCA, and the job fairs.
Audience Growth: The total audience growth during the campaign was minimal at .74% but still positive, including increases in email subscribers and Facebook followers.
Key Takeaways:
Open rates trended upward, especially toward the year's end, and were all sent after 3 PM CST, which suggests your audience is most engaged in the afternoons/evenings.
The highest open and click-through rates during these two times.
An A/B test would be a good way to test these times for emails we need/want to make sure are opened to see how that data continues. It also might be helpful to test on a new email list (see next)
Overall, on average, open click rates slightly decreased compared to 2023 (39% from 40%), but your list size has continued to grow
It might be worth creating a new list in Constant Contact that is more likely to engage with these campaigns, like donors and volunteers or using tags
P&P could still receive any number of these emails, especially as they relate to overall BBHH news/updates
Website traffic numbers are significantly different as last year’s campaign started much earlier. However, the percentage of website visits during the campaign that were to the EOY story page almost doubled from last year (2023-2.45% — 2024-4.35%)
Continue to experiment with more compelling calls to action, visually appealing designs, or incentives to encourage clicks in emails
With two spring events, it might be worth reviewing the data for a specific spring campaign that doesn’t mention the two events or if that can be the story or how to mitigate the Gala into Wild Game overlap and an April - May campaign. It might be worth it to focus more attention on the two events communications/promotion and run ads or a more general campaign to boost followers, subscribers, etc. Then we could do a summer campaign in full that encompasses the back-to-school bash like this past year but building off of what we did to improve it.
