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 Girlstart's fall campaign was to harness the power of storytelling to garner community support for our "Back to After School" initiative. By sharing real-life examples of the program's benefits, we aimed to inspire the community to invest in the futures of these young learners. The campaign emphasized the program’s comprehensive nature, from fostering a love for science and technology to building critical thinking and teamwork skills. Contributions to this campaign were essential to ensuring that Girlstart continued to provide life-changing STEM opportunities to students across the region.
campaign timeline:
August 19-September 9th: Cultivation Emails
September 16- October 7th: Solicitation Emails
CAMPAIGN STORY:
We shared the story of Girlstart’s After School program through a dedicated landing page that highlighted its transformative impact on girls like Abi. The campaign showcased real-life examples and testimonials, illustrating how the program empowers girls to explore STEM through hands-on activities that build confidence and curiosity. By focusing on the personal growth and enthusiasm these students experience, we emphasized the critical role donor support plays in sustaining and expanding the program, providing clear opportunities for the community to contribute to Girlstart’s mission.
Cultivation emails/ Social Posts
We used cultivation emails and social posts to tell people about After School and Abi’s experience and engage our audience, fostering deeper connections and driving support.
solicitation email/Social posts
These emails transitioned from storytelling to direct appeals for donations, including impact messages and examples of how donations ensure the continuation of the After School Program and highlighted the impact it has had on their lives. It also included individual appeals to donors in video form from Jaylynn
Campaign Results*:
Email Open Rates: The highest open rate was 21% for the second solicitation email sent on 9/23.
Email Click-Through Rates: The highest click rate was 5% for the last cultivation email that was the quiz email, asking folks to engage to find out the answer.
*Average open and click are the numbers for October 2023 - October 2024. Typically, we use the previous year's campaign average open/click, but since this was the first year we've sent emails and we made so many changes to your list, I used the yearly stats.
The Mailchimp clean up that also happened this year could have affected these data points as well.
Audience Growth: The total audience growth during the campaign was 1.05%.
Key takeaways:
The average open rate for the campaign was slightly lower than the average from Oct 2023 - Sept 2024, but the average click rate was higher.
The email with the highest click rate was the same as NTXGD with the highest click rate -- the quiz. The subject line was "Friend, can you solve this?".
The social ad had high click rate, but similar to NTXGD, I think we can continue to tweak the audience in Meta.
NTXGD and Fall campaigns: I think it's critical that any peer-to-peer or individual asks that happened last year continue to happen this year. These campaigns do not work without other development work.
