Overcoming rising costs to drive record-high year-end donations
In Short:
Despite rising digital advertising costs, Delve Deeper helped The Salvation Army Western Territory achieve a 70% year-over-year revenue increase, a 2,245% revenue surge on Giving Tuesday, and a record-breaking year-end donation total by optimizing paid search, refining audience targeting in paid social, and implementing a data-driven, flexible budget strategy.
The Challenge:
As the 2024 year-end giving season approached, The Salvation Army Western Territory faced a significant challenge: digital advertising costs were rising rapidly, making it more expensive to reach potential donors. The cost-per-click (CPC) had surged by 144% compared to the previous year, so simply maintaining previous performance levels would require a much higher investment.
Giving Tuesday and the final week of December were becoming increasingly competitive periods for nonprofit fundraising, with organizations vying for donor attention and dollars.
The Salvation Army West needed to maximize donations efficiently without overspending. The charity’s traditional approach to digital advertising – relying on brand campaigns and standard search ads – was no longer enough. This required a data-driven strategy to optimize performance and drive greater impact during these critical giving moments.
Delve Deeper stepped in just before peak giving season with a clear mission: refine the approach to paid search and paid social management, ensure budgets were used strategically, and implement a campaign structure that would sustain and scale donation growth despite rising media costs.
The Approach:
Delve Deeper focused on a three-pronged strategy beginning on October 1, 2024: optimizing bidding and budget allocation, leveraging audience-first insights to guide decision-making and enhancing creative and audience targeting.
To start, in paid search, we shifted the focus toward high-intent audiences by refining keyword strategies, improving bid adjustments, and introducing Performance Max (PMAX) campaigns. PMAX had not been part of the previous year’s strategy but quickly became a crucial element. Brand campaigns were expanded, while non-brand search was carefully managed to ensure only the most relevant audiences were targeted.
We also made strategic changes ahead of Giving Tuesday and the final week of December, allocating 30% headroom in the budget to ensure campaigns wouldn’t hit spending caps too early, allowing them to capture last-minute donations effectively.
In paid social, Delve Deeper doubled down on high-performing audience segments. Instead of a broad targeting approach, we refined our focus, directing spend toward the 55+ age group, which generated the highest volume of donations. CRM lists and website visitors proved to be the most valuable targeting methods for this age group.
Creative optimization played a key role as well. The most effective ad, featuring the message “Others see old clothes, we see new hope,” significantly outperformed others. This insight led to a shift in creative strategy, prioritizing compelling ads that resonated with potential donors.
As the year-end giving period progressed, we closely monitored campaign performance, adjusting budgets dynamically and relentlessly optimizing to push more spend into the highest-converting placements. For example, we found that Facebook Newsfeed emerged as the top-performing social platform, delivering the highest donation volume, while keyword exclusions in search helped refine traffic and reduce wasted spend. These real-time optimizations ensured The Salvation Army West was getting the most value out of every advertising dollar spent.
Summary:
Results:
The impact of these strategic adjustments was undeniable.