Arkansas Hospice Foundation gains awareness with digital ads

Nonprofits are often behind the hardest work our society calls for. But that doesn’t mean they get the thanks they deserve. This is true for nonprofits in education and justice, but it’s really a labor of love to serve families as they navigate hospice care.

The Arkansas Hospice Foundation serves those from their state that want to make the most of the time they have with those they love. The work they do is all about surrounding patients, caregivers, and families with love during those moments.

But every nonprofit, though they may start with the day-to-day mission, needs to get the word out to better serve their community and connect with donors and clients. And David Edwards and Laura Grimes are passionate about reaching out to Arkansans who may not already know about the support that’s available to them.

Both David and Laura work directly in the Feathr platform, but they have very different processes.

A typical day with David

David is the director of communications with the Arkansas Hospice Foundation. But his day-to-day is all about finding new clients to serve and connect to the life-changing work. And he has a plan for making those connections happen.

David said, “Typically the way our operation works is we follow the marketing funnel where we run an affinity campaign for the broad interest, and then from there we’ll drill down further using the geofencing data, which then leads to retargeting campaigns where the ad frequency and engagement go up.”

A lot of his strategy comes by defining clear goals for each individual ad campaign. He’s expecting a lower click-through rate and lower conversions from the initial campaigns. But he’s doing that with the intention of gaining those further down the funnel.

“With affinity campaigns, we definitely cast a wide net,” David said. “But we can filter for caregivers for a family, or a patient that could benefit from our care. And then combining that campaign with retargeting helps us get the right frequency.”

Retargeting ad from Arkansas Hospice Foundation

And this is only step one for David. He’s also integrated Feathr with his social campaigns.

He said, “One of the things that we see Feathr really filling the gap with is around Facebook. Facebook’s platform is more and more geared toward business users with teams of designers. And the measuring tools aren’t giving us the whole story.”

He feels like he’s getting a fuller picture with Feathr, and that’s allowing him to lead the team with confidence as they approach the future.

A party to remember

Laura is the events & communications coordinator, which means she’s managing everything from donor relations to marketing channels including email, ads, and direct mail. But as their big annual fundraiser – Party at the Plaza – nears, it’s a full-time job putting all the pieces in place.

She said, “We had between 2,500 and 3,000 people at last year’s Party at the Plaza. We noticed a lot more interaction with our content and much higher attendance at the event compared to the year before. And we felt Feathr was the biggest driver in that. So, even though it's not a ticketed event, with more people come more donations. Last year’s Party at the Plaza ended up being our organization’s most successful fundraising event of all time.”

Laura is a big believer in multichannel marketing efforts. She doesn’t want to rely solely on direct mail or email or ads. She wants the campaigns to talk to each other, build on each other, and achieve something bigger together.

“Feathr gives you a more holistic approach to online marketing,” Laura said. “And because campaigns are so customizable and versatile, we're able to take what we learned from the first one and pivot depending on the desired outcome.”

A large part of that customization comes around targeting the right people with the right campaigns. If marketing is about getting the right message in front of the right person at the right time, so much depends on finding the right people.

Laura said, “The great thing about Feathr is being able to target these hyper-specific audiences through digital channels, and being able to find new people to serve. We’re getting our message out there with a high frequency and a very competitive cost per impression.”

When you find the right people that are invested in your mission, and you build your marketing efforts around reaching and engaging them, the results tend to follow.

The departments are talking again

Even though David and Laura are looking for different answers from their marketing platform, Feathr is giving them both exactly what they were searching for.

“It was very easy to set up,” Laura said. “This was actually our very first campaign in Feathr. And we had a lot of assistance on the front end from the team at Feathr, which was fantastic. And then it was just really nimble. We were able to adjust and adapt quickly to our evolving goals as we got closer to the event.” 

And David has a similar philosophy. By being in the platform and paying close attention to the needs of their audience, the team is able to better connect and engage with their clients and donors.

David said, “We continue to run more test concepts in smaller markets, optimize, and then roll them out in a larger service area. And we’ve seen what a difference small personalizations make. So with Feathr, we can customize our ads to uniquely meet the person’s needs. For example, with geofencing, we can serve individual ads per county, so people really feel seen.”

David and Laura believe in looking forward. They aren’t willing to be left behind in the digital age, especially when their service can make such an impact on the people they reach.

Laura said, “It's an extremely crowded ad space, both in traditional and digital campaigns. I'm a firm believer in not limiting yourself just to one or two forms of media. In the past, traditional channels were the primary source and digital was used as a support. But today we're seeing that flipped.”

She adds, “It's gotten us out there so much more than any other tool that we've used as far as reaching people that haven’t heard about us.”