National Park Trust (NPT) is a Washington DC-based land conservancy and environmental education organization dedicated to preserving parks and creating future park stewards. They work to identify key land acquisition projects that benefit our national parks while also connecting kids to these unique, iconic places. National Park Trust’s vision is that everyone will have an American Park Experience, which can only happen with widespread awareness and appreciation of our national parks and other public lands.
When we started our work with NPT, they were struggling with brand recognition. Given that they had “National Park” in their name, it was hard to distinguish them from other National Park organizations. They also were facing the challenge of activating their email list – prior to working with Media Cause, they had never done a digital fundraising campaign.
In order to achieve NPT’s mission, we worked together to gain a deeper understanding of their existing audience composition and the best messaging strategies to resonate with their interests. We helped them find their target personas so we could reach people more likely to be interested in NPT’s work, and built a strategy designed to grow the organization’s supporter base and mobilize their followers to become loyal supporters and donors.
Then, we utilized our marketing know-how to craft a targeted approach that helped NPT reach the right audiences with the right fundraising messages. We were able to revamp their lead acquisition strategy and build a strong foundation of supporters to launch a successful first digital fundraising campaign.
Through a series of interviews, surveys and data analysis, we identified four new personas for National Park Trust to actively attract and engage with for donations and supporter involvement.
We always use data to inform our approach. We surveyed NPT’s email list and analyzed their current donor and website data to help determine the types of people National Park Trust was attracting and compelling to donate. We know National Park organizations are expansive, but we identified the unique value that NPT brought to their followers.
We utilized Unbounce to help segment National Park Trust’s growing audience, and expand our core group of supporters. We created custom pop-up messaging for different audiences based on their program of interest to provide the most enticing value proposition and foster long-term communication streams unique to each persona.
We used a three-phased email and social media marketing approach with donation matching and board involvement to activate current National Park Trust supports. We activated and engaged our community members by leveraging various online channels (Facebook, Instagram, Classy, Google Ads) through compelling storytelling. We offered tangible impact level donations to drive a $75 average donation value.
