Phoneraiser — Search Engine Marketing
Phoneraiser makes fundraising easy by collecting used cell phones from collection partners such as churches, schools and scout troops around the country. In return, collection partners are paid as much as $300 per cell phone. Millions of cell phones become outdated or replaced each year. As one of the few companies in the US in this niche, Phoneraiser was perfectly positioned to capitalize on this growing market segment—but only if it could get the word out.
Historically, the vast majority of fundraising had been done through sales of candy, cookies and other perishables, which require a committed effort and capital investment by the fundraising organization. By contrast, cell-phone recycling fundraisers require no cost—Phoneraiser even pays shipping when a collection partner sends in phones—making it easier to meet fundraising goals. But due to widespread lack of awareness of cell-phone recycling, there was little demand for this type of program.
To overcome this problem, Phoneraiser selected Captura as its key online marketing provider. The selection was made because Phoneraiser personnel were convinced that Captura could build a network of motivated collection partners through a targeted online campaign. Captura launched a demand-generation campaign that leveraged Search Engine Marketing and outlined to fundraisers the key benefits of a cell-phone recycling fundraiser. Here’s how it worked:
Extensive keyphrase List
Captura launched the campaign with less than 1,000 keyphrases. Over the next three months, Captura used incoming keyphrase data and performance to strategically build a list of over 15,000 active keyphrases related to the fundraising market. Most keyphrases were specific to the organization or the purpose for which the funds were to be used. This list also contained keyphrases related to over fifty specific groups in need of fundraising.
Keyphrase Bid Management
Competitive keyphrase bids for the fundraising vertical can be as high as five and six dollars per click. For bids at this level, Captura implemented its customized bid management and results tracking methodology to insure that volume and cost-per-action goals were met. Bid adjustments were made on a daily basis among seven different search engines to position each keyphrase for optimal performance. In late 2005, Captura estimated that it was making an average of over twenty-thousand bid changes per day on behalf of Phoneraiser.
Recognizing Seasonality
Captura found that fundraising traffic was seasonal:
- Between July 4th and Labor day, the campaign generated collection partners from band, sports (e.g. football), and cheerleading organizations.
- Leading up to Thanksgiving there was a large push for school fundraisers.
- And beginning soon after Christmas the campaign generated more collection partners from schools, plus a large number of partners from church-related activities and Spring sports.
The strategy to focus on the overall goal of raising funds, as opposed to the type of fundraising program, created a windfall for Phoneraiser.
- Captura was responsible for over 80% of all collection partners gathered in the first year.
- Overall cost-per-action was lower than projected.
- Captura was able to capture seasonality data to improve campaign volume and performance in the following years.
- Captura built on the success of this by following-up with an email marketing and affiliate program.
Interested in learning how Captura can help you? Contact Kevin McConnell.
