Allegra Marketing and Print helps Girl Scouts get social

By on August 26th, 2009 In Agencies, Social Media

Girl Scout uniform from the 1970s

Girl Scout uniform from the 1970s

You asked for examples of how social media is being used, and here’s one that incorporates both traditional and new media approaches.  Thanks to Greg Taylor for the tip.

When you think of the Girl Scouts, you don’t automatically think of social media. But some of the techniques used by Allegra Marketing & Print helped increase the average donation of Girl Scout alumni in the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council from $50 per donor to $225.00.  It also created 25 friend referrals and 135 new members of the Facebook page.  Total response rate was 8%.

The goal was to engage Girl Scout alumni to begin to develop a network of donors for future campaigns. Research turned up the fact that motives for involvement varied based upon age. So the agency had to version their marketing message to specifically resonate with each particular age group.

Solution — the alumni were divided into four personas based on the calendar years in which they had been involved as scouts. Allegra created a multichannel cross media campaign targeted towards each persona.

First component:  a variable data direct mail piece, versioned by persona and featuring prominent women of the community that have been Girl Scouts. The campaign theme was “Support the Sash.”  The imagery depicted these women in their professional lives today, wearing a sash. The direct mail piece was sent to an alumni list of approximately 3100 people. The call to action was to drive recipients to a personalized involvement site.

Second component: an e-mail blast that arrived on the same day as the direct mail piece. This carried the same theme and had similar copy to the direct mail piece. It also drove recipients to their personalized involvement site.

Third component:  an integrated Web strategy that included the personalized involvement site, a social media component and a traditional website. The personal site was versioned by persona and provide compelling copy that resonated with each group. They were asked to make a donation to help Support the Sash. Those that selected the donate option were sent to a donation site that allowed them to complete a transaction online. A representative followed up with a phone call to thank them for their donation, or if they did not donate, to call them and ask if they prefered to donate in a different manner.

Respondents who did not want to “donate now” were offered another avenue to get involved, as part of the objective to cultivate future donations by keeping the women engaged. The “refer a friend” function allowed them to invite others who were not part of the original campaign. The second involvement component was a link to join the Facebook cause page, which encouraged ongoing donations. In addition, a YouTube video was uploaded to create more campaign awareness and drive incremental involvement on the cause page. All non-responders received a secondary call to action via e-mail a few weeks after the campaign dropped, encouraging them to visit their involvement site.

Comments

Ryan Says:
August 26th, 2009 at 10:01 am

Terrific campaign. Interesting to see the older organizations starting to catch up with the technology that these days is a necessity to survive.

Jim Veihdeffer Says:
August 26th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

Very good marketing campaign — thanks for reporting it Linda.

But I have to add my now-usual quibble about Facebook: I’m getting a bit tired (OK, a lot tired) of people using FB for charity fundraisers — I believe they’re called “Facebook bombers.” I have one friend who seems to have a new charitable cause every week. Maybe it’s just a Facebook “cause” page, but inevitably that leads to invitations to donate.

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