Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Year End digital fundraising campaign was consistently hitting revenue targets, but with an increasing cost per acquisition. Changes in Meta’s targeting options and restrictions by Google’s advertising policies meant increasingly limited reach to valuable audiences.
We knew there was room to analyze digital fundraising results and improve year-over-year performance.
With the removal of religious-based interest targeting on Meta, we knew we’d have to rely on more zero-party and first-party data to build our audiences. Even rented lists that worked well for print campaigns were no longer performing well. By focusing on increasing the sizes of our email lists during the off-peak season and adding in top-of-funnel audiences to remarket to, we were able to reach the right people in the right place. Similarly, through keyword performance analysis and expansion into Google’s larger ad network, we were able to increase the top-of-funnel audience size and improve the quality of the lower funnel audiences.
In combination with timing and budget allocation adjustments, we were able to achieve a 76.5% increase in gross revenue between 2021 and 2022. With a return of $64.79 for every dollar spent on ads, we are excited to see what future years of optimizations bring.
