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 spring campaigns (Amplify Austin + Send a Girl to Camp) was to leverage storytelling to gain support for our Summer Camp programs. We shared a story of Rika, a previous camp participant who now serves as a Camp Counselor. The campaign illustrated the long-lasting impact that summer camp can have on a girl’s life. We also showed the program’s comprehensive nature, describing the different activities girls participate in, as well as showing that this is a nation-wide program, available to girls from California to Massachusettes and everywhere in between.
campaign timeline:
Amplify Austin:
Cultivation: March 1 - March 5
Solicitation: March 6-7
Send a Girl to Camp:
Cultivation: March 28 - April 11
Solicitation - April 11 - April 30
CAMPAIGN STORY:
We highlighted Girlstart’s Send a Girl to Camp campaign in two ways: a dedicated landing page that shared Rika’s story (SAGTC campaign) and through Girlstart’s page on the Amplify Austin portal, which also shared Rika’s story. Both pages included a video from Rika.
Cultivation emails/ Social Posts
We used cultivation emails and social posts to tell people about Summer Camp and Rika’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 Summer Camp and highlighted the impact it has had on their lives.
Campaign Results*:
Email Open Rates: The average email open rate was 46%
Email Click Rates: The average email click rate was 4%
Audience Growth: The total audience growth during the campaign was 1.05%.
Key takeaways:
Amplify Austin and Send a Girl to Camp were the first campaigns that Track15 ran for Girlstart. These provided us with many insights for future campaigns, largely related to data. For example, both of these campaigns were highly segmented by location and type of donor (recurring), and the data did not support that type of segmentation. We advised - and then did - make changes to the data in Mailchimp for the next campaign.
