World Wildlife Fund Australia turns to Adobe Marketo Engage to increase advocacy and contributions through emotional connections with supporters.

Australia

www.wwf.org.au

6%

Growth in marketable leads since previous fiscal year

Products:

Adobe Marketo Engage ›

Objectives

Strengthen relationships with donors to encourage giving that supports conservation efforts

Create a compelling engagement journey that attracts new supporters and builds strong relationships

Quickly create campaigns that leverage media attention around current issues

Results

2x open rates

50% increase in number of emails/programs created since previous fiscal year

6% growth in marketable leads since previous fiscal year

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With more than five million members globally, the World Wildlife Fund Australia (WWF-Australia) is the world’s leading conservation organization. According to Averil Case, digital marketing specialist at WWF-Australia, contributing to a nonprofit such as WWF-Australia is an emotional decision. So, it’s essential to engage with donors on an emotional level.

To make that emotional connection, Averil and her marketing colleagues have replaced traditional batch-and-blast email communications with highly personalized email campaigns and social media interactions through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Adobe Marketo Engage plays a key role in the new marketing strategy. With Marketo Engage, marketers apply data-driven analytics to determine which content to deliver to each supporter and to map out engagement journeys based on supporters’ individual interests and concerns. This data-driven approach ensures that people receive content that is meaningful to them — content that moves them from initial interest through to advocacy, membership, and financial contributions.

“With Marketo Engage we can listen to our supporters, engage them with content they care about, acknowledge their contributions, and take them on a journey that shows how their gifts are impacting the world,” says Averil.

Driving engagement with meaningful communications

Averil and her colleagues focus their marketing efforts on increasing membership, fundraising, and advocacy. With Marketo Engage, their marketing campaigns are more strategic because they can segment the marketing database of 600,000 contacts and not only personalize content, but also create individualized engagement journeys.

Last year’s Save the Koalas campaign is a great example of the successes they are achieving through segmentation and personalization. The purpose of the campaign was to spread awareness about the plight of the koalas in Queensland and to urge people to voice their concerns to the right stakeholders. The team created an advocacy campaign in Marketo Engage that triggered custom email messages from subscribers directed to 12 key policymakers in Queensland.

“Previously for this type of campaign, we had to collect petition responses and wait until the end of the campaign to send the information to the politicians,” says Averil. “In this case, by the end of the campaign, our subscribers had sent more than half a million email messages in support of the koalas. The response to this campaign was so positive that we immediately began taking the same personalized approach with subsequent advocacy campaigns. The result has been a doubling of open rates as well as positive feedback from supporters.”

“With Marketo Engage we can listen to our supporters, engage them with content they care about, acknowledge their contributions, and take them on a journey that shows how their gifts are impacting the world.”

Averil Case

Digital Marketing Specialist, WWF-Australia

Increasing marketing effectiveness and efficiency

Averil is convinced that being fearless in trying new things is essential to keeping WWF-Australia’s messaging exciting. And it’s the excitement that keeps supporters engaged. She notes that A/B testing with Marketo Engage makes it easy for the team to gauge the effectiveness of new approaches. As a result, marketers can quickly zero in on the subject lines, images, content, and other messaging components that are most effective in spurring people to act.

Cloning in Marketo Engage also supports the team’s quest to try new things. Instead of creating every campaign from scratch, marketers can replicate a current campaign, making a few tweaks and getting a new campaign running in just minutes. Tokens and snippets within the messaging enable personalization.

The higher efficiency enabled by Marketo Engage keeps marketers agile so they can quickly jump on opportunities related to current events. For example, when bush fires or other disasters threaten natural habitats, marketing can quickly put together a campaign encouraging contributions that will be used to protect or restore the affected areas. Speed is of the essence because it allows WWF-Australia to build traction while an event is still on the front pages. Higher efficiency also enables marketers to create more campaigns in less time and frees up time for strategic activities such as leveraging social media and planning and developing journeys.

Enjoying success

Marketo Engage is empowering WWF-Australia to carry out its mission of conserving biodiversity by expanding campaigns beyond email communications and into social media. Leveraging Ad Bridge, for example, the team now sends custom audiences to Facebook to engage audiences WWF-Australia isn’t able to reach with email and to reignite interest among inactive supporters.

With Marketo Engage, the marketing team is able to reach more people and connect with them on an emotional level. The result: higher open and click-through rates, which, in turn, drive advocacy, membership, and financial support.