MAKING STRIDES AGAINST BREAST CANCER - (A.C.S) HUDSON VALLEY
(HV STRIDES)
Event Marketing
The American Cancer Society (Hudson Valley Subdivision) holds an annual walkathon to raise funds and find a cure for breast cancer. When starting, the goal was to generate more interest/awareness for the walk and increase donations.
MY ROLE
Ad Campaign Strategist
Data/Reporting Analyst
Social Media Manager
TEAM
Client P.O.C
Marketing Director
Content Manager
CLIENT
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer - Hudson Valley
TIMELINE
2 Months
INITIAL CHALLENGES
Given that the event was one month away after developing a strategy to implement, things had to happen fast. In the first week, we optimized the social pages to push users into sign-up pages and followed up with donation requests. We also designed an online event page to easily collect user information (team name, email, etc.).
The issue was reaching new users and encouraging them to sign up or donate to the cause. We found that people don't feel inclined to do much about finding a cure unless you or your close family were affected by it. Our strategy was to share emotionally captivating content to as many new users as possible while structuring our posts around how we are all affected by breast cancer.
STRATEGY & IMPLEMENTATION
The original strategy was simple, use emotionally captivating content to influence traffic to the sign-up and donation pages. However, the execution of this proved more complex than we had thought. New data began to reveal new challenges regarding the day of the event. So, the strategy had to be optimized to effectively mitigate as many of these issues from past years. And that is precisely what we did. Here's how...
NEWLY FOUND CHALLENGES
How We Solved Them
CHALLENGE NO.1
Sign Up Follow Through
To our surprise, as more individuals signed up, we learned that only about 50% of them would likely attend the event. In contrast, almost 100% of team sign-ups would be present the day-of. So, we targeted team sign-ups.
CHALLENGE NO.2
Donation Quantities
The next problem we faced was donations. As we began to collect more through the emotional content, we noticed the amounts donated were for less than $5, while the rewards (apparel, toys, etc.) began after donating more significant amounts.
THE SIGN UP SOLUTION
Team Names
The solution was easier than we thought. When someone signs up with friends or family, they feel more obligated to follow through than when they sign up alone. We pushed the team name option through social media marketing and encouraged users to sign up 3 or more people with a fun and creative name. And it worked.
DONATION INCENTIVES
Leverage Rewards
People were unaware of the rewards program and therefore donated smaller amounts. While sticking with the emotional content, we also showcased the rewards for specific donation amounts. This combines the emotional trigger with an in-the-moment incentive to donate a more significant amount.
THE RESULTS
People Loved It!
We saw almost double the number of teams sign-up as last year from encouraging fun and creative team names. But did they all show up to the event? YES! We increased attendees to 9,000+ people from about 5,000 the year before. As for donations, HV Strides raised over $400,000 through Facebook and social media traffic alone. We brought their regional team from the mid 50's range (out of about 250) to the Top 5 most donations raised through Facebook. We even got mentioned in The Times Herald-Record because of how great the turnout was!
