Opportunity International is a charity that designs and innovates financial solutions to help people in the developing world break the cycle of poverty.
The charity wanted to increase unrestricted income to form around 40% of their total income generation and identified digital as a key area for this.
We assessed the digital channels that the organisation uses to promote its work and delivered recommendations on how to improve their activity.
As a result of our recommendations, the charity was able to secure investment from their Board for additional headcount and freelance support to create and implement their first digital fundraising strategy.
The challenge
Digital was a relatively untapped source of income for Opportunity International.
They wanted to improve the way they used digital channels, all with the aim of increasing their income.
What we did
Opportunity International was new to digital fundraising, so we delivered their channel review with two objectives in mind.
Firstly, we wanted to raise the standard. We measured this against best practice and what we knew other organisations of their size and turnover were doing (a market/macro analysis).
Secondly, we wanted to identify specific wins and opportunities in the ways they were already using their channels.
We identified key areas for them to focus on to help reach their goals. These were:
- SEO – the development of rich, engaging content to attract people to their website
- paid search – to drive highly interested audiences to the site
- paid social – to deliver on-brand messages and content and do more middle-of-funnel acquisition
- email marketing – to steward supporters they’d acquired and deliver fundraising asks
We asked each team to write a pay-per-click (PPC) brief outlining how much they could invest in this area and what they’d want to achieve.
We built our recommendations at a scale that would suit the pace they were willing to work at and the resources they had available.
Because they had limited in-house capacity to deliver this work, we gave topline recommendations on how to get started and developed briefs. This would help them outsource this work to freelancers and agencies.
Our detailed discovery and analysis process led to the following:
1. A topline PPC approach.
We used example search volumes to help them understand what kinds of content to develop and the impact of these. We also equipped them with a framework to map their objectives and activity against.
2. Restructuring their paid social accounts.
We suggested they split their Business Manager and ad accounts to manage them directly. This would get rid of management issues and give them more control over delivery.
We also gave recommended approaches to setting up their pixel and audience targeting and identifying quick-win acquisition activities to earn buy-in for digital.
3. Analysing their channels.
We analysed the email and social media content they’d published over a 12 month period and assessed key landing pages.
Based on the patterns and trends we spotted, we gave bespoke recommendations to help them increase their effectiveness on each of these channels.
We provided Opportunity International with an in-depth report including best practice guides tailored to them and really specific analyses of their channels.
We also delivered a roadmap to help them work out which channels to invest in first in order to hit specific goals.
What we achieved
The team at Opportunity International took this clear business case to their board of trustees. They not only secured much needed investment in resources but also helped prioritise digital as an important marketing tool for the organisation.
As a result, their digital presence has improved dramatically.
- the charity has improved their existing channels and developed new ones
- both new and existing channels have increased reach and engagement
- brand awareness for the charity is increasing, which they know will lead to an uplift in income.
Jenny Dunn, Head of Marketing and Communications at Opportunity International, said, “We were really pleased with the report that Platypus created. They understood our needs as an organisation and ensured that their recommendations were realistic for us. They were wonderful to work with – responsive, flexible and provided clear and helpful guidance that has helped us prioritise and develop a digital strategy that fits our needs and our audience.”
