The Client
InvestMyCommunity is the UK’s only dedicated fundraising platform for community organisations. Launched in 2020, InvestMyCommunity is relatively new to the fundraising space, and therefore needed a more substantial client base to grow – both through raised awareness with their target audience, and support in helping their prospects progress through the funnel to become customers on a larger scale.
The Challenge
In June 2021, InvestMyCommunity partnered with us at ProsperoHub, a Diamond HubSpot CRM Solutions Partner, where we designed a long-term marketing and sales strategy utilising HubSpot tools to help them achieve 500 new customers in one year.
In the beginning, InvestMyCommunity’s marketing tactics and sales processes were almost non-existent, and they needed support creating expert content from scratch.
An additional challenge arose when the planned closure of Virgin Money Giving (VMG) on 30th November 2021 was announced. This presented us with a unique opportunity to market specifically to community organisations within VMG’s client base that now needed a new fundraising platform. It was crucial to start sending out high-quality marketing content within a short time span to reach these potential customers before competitor platforms did.
The Solution
Virgin Money Giving campaign
This was a time-sensitive campaign to create, deliver, and yield results. We took a multi-pronged approach, using the Marketing Hub tools, and built a significant amount of content within two weeks, and continued to create and deliver additional content for the next two months up to and following the platform’s closure.
We created:
- New written and video content. Three blogs, seven videos, and 18 landing pages were created to inform, answer common questions, and invite the prospect to sign up or book a meeting to progress them along their customer lifecycle. Downloadable gated content was also included to further increase conversions.
- Targeted email campaigns. In total, 33 emails and seven workflows were created. Tailored content was sent to specific groups within Virgin Money’s audience to cater to their individual needs, interests, and customer lifecycle stage.
- Targeted social media campaign. Over 130 social posts were created across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, targeted to VMG customers through keywords and hashtags.
- PPC ads and Facebook ads. In order to attract VMG customers who were actively looking for an alternative fundraising platform, we utilised ads with appropriate targeted criteria.
- Dashboards to measure success. Using HubSpot’s engagement analysis tools, a range of dashboards were created to measure every aspect of the campaign.
- New ‘book a meeting’ calendars and CTAs. Implemented to build brand trust and increase conversions
Lead generation campaign
For this campaign, a total of 500 new customer sign-ups within one year was agreed. We held a workshop to define four key buyer personas to target with tailored content to address their individual needs and interests, and an initial content meeting was held to discuss and confirm the content calendar.
This ongoing campaign includes:
Attract:
- Daily social media posts.
- Regular blog posts published on IMC’s website to provide value and boost SEO.
- A paid ads campaign.
Engage:
- A series of marketing and sales emails, tailored to each buyer persona, to show how InvestMyCommunity can address their individual challenges and provide solutions. CTAs were included to invite contacts to sign-up or book a call with InvestMyCommunity’s CEO.
- Downloadable gated content on landing pages to increase conversions.
- Landing pages linked in the emails with further helpful information, customer success stories, a CTA to sign-up, and the option to book a call with the CEO.
Delight:
- Continual content optimisation based on engagement data.
- Utilising customer questions and feedback gained in market research to re-integrate into our content and address common questions before they arise.
Results
In two months, we achieved 253 new sign-ups (140% monthly increase) and 905 MQLs. We have forecasted that if our current growth continues, by February we will have reached 433 new sign-ups – meaning we are significantly ahead of schedule to reach, and exceed, our target of 500 in one year.
Since the start of the VMG campaign, we’ve sent around 11,000 new contacts a total of 158,944 emails.
- The average open rate is 21.7% which is on par with the industry benchmark of 21.39%.
- The average click-through rate is 3.9%; nearly double the industry benchmark of 2.66%.
InvestMyCommunity’s website traffic increases by 125% each month due to our marketing content and outreach.
- In September, at the beginning of the VMG campaign, InvestMyCommunity received 6,062 website sessions. In November, this had increased to 30,509 sessions.
- For every doubling of traffic, 30% more conversions are achieved.
In addition, we have increased efficiency in the HubSpot customer flywheel as prospects register with InvestMyCommunity and become customers.
- The weekly conversion trend is increasing. In November, the conversions increased by 31.1%.
- Half of all new customers converted after the first piece of marketing content they engaged with as a cold lead. The other half followed the customer lifecycle stages.
Our Impact
InvestMyCommunity considers us an integral part of their marketing team and have been so delighted with our partnership and success so far and the initial HubSpot CRM migration, that they have agreed to a complete website migration to fully integrate with HubSpot and increase our level of creative control – bringing everything onto one platform.
Short-term success
We have successfully resolved the awareness issue with InvestMyCommunity’s target audiences – with email campaigns reaching a total of over 30,000 relevant contacts between the VMG campaign and the lead generation campaign.
Furthermore, our ad campaigns have been so successful that InvestMyCommunity's ads are now directly competing with GoFundMe, JustGiving, and Crowdfunder.
Long-term success
We have set InvestMyCommunity up for long-term success with evergreen marketing content for all platforms. In addition, automated workflows and contact lists have been created to ensure new contacts are segmented and communicated with accordingly.
We have also established detailed engagement data and analytics dashboards, elevated marketing and sales tools and features, PPC and Facebook ads, a sales playbook, and the option to book meetings with the CEO.
New content is currently being built for two new InvestMyCommunity campaigns to launch in 2022.
