The primary goal of the campaign was to drive year end donations. Budgets were essentially flat YoY so while we were aiming to improve upon 2019 results—hoping to diversify their media mix. However, we knew 2020 was an unprecedented year with many unknowns. We needed to plan a campaign we expected to be effective, but one that allowed for flexibility – knowing we may need to pivot throughout.

In an effort to avoid relying too heavily on Facebook, as we do with many of our campaigns, we diversified our media mix to include programmatic display. We partnered with MiQ in order to extend the campaign beyond just paid search and social.

We kept a close eye on performance and implemented significant optimizations throughout the campaign. We paused audience targeting segments that were underperforming and shifted budget to platforms performing well. Based on performance, we shifted budget out of Facebook and into the programmatic display as it was driving more donations, at a lower cost. 

Additionally, we continually refreshed the campaign creative. This included swapping images but more importantly utilizing different messaging to highlight the various donation-matching offers that were in place at different times within the flight. During the final days of the campaign, we relied on urgency messaging to drive last-minute donations.