United Way increases program awareness with Feathr

Elisabeth Bocklet, senior director of marketing and communications at United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County (United Way ABC), like many marketers in the nonprofit space, was used to building campaigns only after the donations landed.

She said, “When it came to advertising, it was very much dependent on sponsor donations. And typically that would be radio ads, or often a local paper would have a promotion where if you buy a print ad, you get some digital marketing too.”

If you’re a marketer at a small- or mid-sized nonprofit, you know exactly what it’s like to build marketing campaigns with what you’re given, and then figuring out how to do it all with a team of two or three.

But for United Way ABC, traditional methods weren't getting the results they wanted, especially when subtracting for the intangibles — a lot of time wrangling with all the vendors with little actionable data feeding back to the organization.

They began to look for a platform that would offer them more marketing channels, giving them year-round exposure to their audiences and more granular data on the people that made up their diverse community.

Elisabeth said, “We chose Feathr because with the amount of dollars we were investing in these other things over a short time frame, we could spread our budget out over time and have a more long-term impact.”

“A couple of years ago we ran a TV campaign,” She said. “And it was almost the exact amount as our annual license in Feathr. But that commercial was about 27 seconds. Today, I could use that same amount of dollars to do a lot more things over the course of the year.”

Who’s to thank here?

Elisabeth knew that much of her marketing budget was tied directly to sponsor donations. This meant that before she reached the community at large, she needed to build more stable and sustained relationships with her loyal sponsor base.

By sharing sponsor’s stories with the community, Elisabeth could reinforce the value these partnerships offered. Local businesses get to support an organization making real positive change, and in the process, they gain access to the community they’re investing in.

Elisabeth said, “We started by keeping it as simple as possible, and running a pure thank-you campaign to our sponsors. And we saw some pretty significant growth in terms of their visibility and our joint visibility together.”

Over a less than three-month campaign, Elisabeth increased traffic to one of their sponsor’s pages from 113 to 614 views. That’s a 443% increase from the prior year. And to put it plainly, the sponsor was floored!

Channeling one success into another, and another…

With even more buy-in from sponsors, it was time to take that support to the community, finding new families to connect to the critical work United Way ABC was doing every day.

“We host these weekly community nights in seven locations around the county,” Elizabeth said. “And it's a free dinner for the family along with academic support for the kids, community building, all that stuff.”

She said, “These events were going really well prior to the pandemic, and we were seeing on average 60 people a night, and then the pandemic stopped all that. So 2022 was the first year we really started back up. All the volunteers were ready, and one family came in the door, and it was crushing.” 

Momentum is critical. When the families weren't showing up at the weekly meetings, volunteers started asking themselves what they were doing there. Elisabeth knew she needed a plan to get more families in the door each week, which would in turn reignite the sense of purpose that attracted volunteers.

She first got the team to adopt winning strategies from the past, but she also had a few new ideas she wanted to try out.

She said, “We did the calls from the school, the flyers in the backpacks, all those things that had worked previously. But families are totally overwhelmed these days. And so we started the geofencing ads and the lift to general awareness was super critical.”

Elisabeth reported, “It went from really no one coming to — suddenly the very next week after I ran these ads — 30 families showing up, and it was like ‘what!’ and that was the only thing we had changed. Or it was really the cumulative effort of all of those ad campaigns together.”

And that wasn’t the end of the story. Families kept showing up. Today, around 55 families are walking in week after week, building stronger communities that together can fight against poverty and injustice.

It all starts with a first impression

In the nonprofit landscape, it can be difficult to say we’re looking for conversions. But when you connect the dots and realize what that means for a nonprofit, a conversion changes a life.

Elisabeth said, “You want them to take whatever that action is and usually that means clicking through, reading it, taking the call to action, making that donation, signing up as a volunteer — that’s the ideal scenario. I’m also interested in just having people see our stuff.”

In an environment where potential donors and volunteers are being barraged by news stories and display ads, getting the positive message about your nonprofit to land at the right time in front of the right person can feel near impossible.

Elisabeth said, “We used to hear from supporters asking, ‘where are you? I haven't seen anything recently.’ And I can't always control that. But what I can control is making sure that when they are online, if there's an opportunity, we take it. They might not open the newsletter, but when they’re doing the daily crossword puzzle, our message is fed to them right where they are.”

One thing leads to another. And for United Way ABC, these first impressions have led to stronger ties to sponsors and new families connected to the work.

And whether you call it an impression, increased engagement, or a conversion — what matters is that the story is getting out there and lives are being changed for the better.