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New Strategies for Marketing the

Lupus Foundation of America,

Philadelphia Tri-State Chapter’s

26th Annual Lupus Loop

Exploring New Channels:

CASE STUDY

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OverviewThe Lupus Foundation of America, Philadelphia Tri-State Chapter collaborated

with the DonorDrive Marketing Services team to create and implement a diverse,

multi-channel strategy to boost the recruitment and revenue numbers for their

26th annual Lupus Loop event in Philadelphia.

This new strategy focused on four main goals:

• To increase the number of returning participants from their 2016 event

• To expand their constituent base and recruit new participants and donors

• To improve the fundraising results of their already registered participants

• To increase awareness about lupus and raise support for Philadelphia

Tri-State Chapter’s programs and initiatives

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The Lupus Foundation of America is dedicated to “improving the quality of life for all

people affected by lupus through programs of research, education, and advocacy.” They

are the only national organization focused on “solving the mystery of lupus” and providing

care and support to those who suffer from its brutal impact. The Philadelphia Tri-State

Chapter of the organization became a DonorDrive client in early 2012, and has used the

DonorDrive platform to host its annual Lupus Loop 5K Run & 2.5 Mile Walk to End Lupus

Now for the past six years.

Their largest yearly event, the Lupus Loop accounts for 70% of the Philadelphia Tri-State

Chapter’s annual revenue, which goes to fund research, education, advocacy, and patient

& community services around the Philadelphia Tri-State area. 90% of the funds raised

for the event stay local to help the 48,000 people living with lupus in the area, while the

remaining 10% go to support the Lupus Foundation of America’s National Research

Program. The Philadelphia Tri-State Chapter also hosts their annual Walk to End Lupus

Now in the spring, as well as a handful of ticketed events throughout the year.

Background

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- Annette MyarickPhiladelphia Tri-State Chapter

CEO

“Our walks are a great source of

empowerment for our community living with

lupus or affected by lupus. In many ways it's

the first point of entry in how they connect

with our organization, take action, and do

something positive. It's a critically important

event for the work that we do.”

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Over the past few years, the Philadelphia Tri-State Chapter has experienced stagnation

with the Lupus Loop, both in overall event revenue and in the number of registrations.

They, like so many other nonprofit chapters, have a small staff that’s responsible for

executing a large and varied number of tasks. Resources, both labor and financial, for

exploring new marketing opportunities are slim. Historically, marketing for the Lupus

Loop was executed through email campaigns, direct mail, and with an assortment of

social media posts. By partnering with DonorDrive Marketing Services, the Philadelphia

Tri-State Chapter team was able to expand their marketing expertise while testing out

new strategies.

The 26th Annual Lupus Loop was scheduled for Sunday, October 29th in Philadelphia.

While registrations for the event opened in early May of 2017, the DonorDrive Marketing

Services team didn’t become involved until early August. Annette reached out to the

team after attending a DonorDrive client webinar focused on recruiting and retaining

participants for your events. According to Annette, the webinar made her question that

“there are tools within DonorDrive that we’re probably not using to capacity and what are

we leaving on the table as a result of that?

At that time, the Lupus Loop had only a 2% retention rate from their 2016 event.

Problem

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expand your marketing

expertise

test out new

strategies

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An initial discovery period brought the two teams together to discuss the Philadelphia

Tri-State Chapter’s goals, the history of the event, and potential target audiences. With

this information in mind, the DonorDrive team proposed a marketing strategy that was

segmented into two major phases.

Phase one, which would run through August and September, would focus on increasing

event registrations, both of returning and new participants.

The second phase, which would start at the beginning of October, would center on

growing the event’s overall revenue both by coaching participants to become better

fundraisers, and by connecting with potential new donors.

These phases would be implemented across three main communication channels: social

media, paid advertisements on Google, and through native DonorDrive platform tools.

Strategy

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Defining the Audience

Once the proposal was approved, the first step focused on defining the target audiences.

Defining a specific audience is crucial to a successful marketing strategy - otherwise you

risk spending your marketing budget on people who are very unlikely to become involved.

By targeting a specific group of people who are somehow connected to your cause or

event, you greatly increase the effectiveness of your ads.

DonorDrive outlined three audiences for the Lupus Loop - lapsed participants, existing

participants, and potential new participants and donors.

The lapsed participants, anyone who had registered for the Lupus Loop

in the past three years, were targeted in both phase one and phase two

- in phase one as potential registrants, and in phase two as potential

donors.

The existing participants were targeted solely in phase two, with

messaging focused on improving their personal and team fundraising

efforts.

The third group, potential new participants and donors were targeted

in both phases. To find these new potential fundraisers and donors,

DonorDrive’s Director of Marketing Services, Anne Baum, utilized multiple

tools including Facebook and Google’s lookalike audiences, targeted

search ads filtered by location and demographics, and targeted search

ads based on keywords, such as “lupus” or “information on lupus”.

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solving themystery of lupus

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Messaging

With the target audiences defined, the DonorDrive team moved on to crafting the

messages that would be shared in the ads, social media posts, and email communications.

These messages were divided into four main themes:

Knowledge about what lupus is and its impact, conveyed

mainly through statistics

These messages were deployed via Google Display Ads, Facebook Ads,

and Instagram posts, targeting all three defined audiences.

Information about the programs and initiatives funded by

revenue from the Lupus Loop

Again, these were shown via Google Display Ads, Facebook Ads, and

Instagram posts, targeting all three defined audiences.

Event Updates

Featuring information such as the total amount raised for the event, the

number of participants, and new event features such as achievement

badges and incentives, these ads were largely siloed to Facebook and

Instagram posts as well as through DonorDrive’s Scheduled Messages.

Fundraising tips and past fundraiser success stories

Shown to existing event participants to improve and motivate their own

fundraising efforts, shared on Lupus Facebook and through DonorDrive’s

Scheduled Messages.

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To create the individual messages for these four different tracks, the Philadelphia Tri-State

Chapter provided DonorDrive with detailed information about their various programs

and treatments and completed a Creative Brief so that DonorDrive could become familiar

with the language and tone affiliated with their brand. Creating continuity between your

marketing messages and your overall brand voice is crucial to not confuse your users.

“Working with the Philadelphia Tri-State Chapter was the

perfect example of a successful relationship. They are

an amazing team and we felt lucky that we were able to

complement their team by adding resources and expertise

to strengthen their event marketing.”

- Anne BaumDonorDrive Marketing Services Director

In addition, the DonorDrive team conducted supplementary research, searching

accredited medical websites for the most up-to-date statistics about lupus and its effects,

as well as digging through social media to identify the most popular hashtags and

accounts associated with lupus and the Lupus Loop.

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- Annette MyarickPhiladelphia Tri-State Chapter

CEO

“Really being able to talk to

someone with marketing expertise

and fill in the gaps that we have, I

thought it was just a tremendous

experience.”

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Design

With a plan now in place, DonorDrive began taking steps to put their strategy into motion.

Roping in their Design Services team, DonorDrive created an assortment of design assets

to display on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google, all using the newly created

messaging alongside striking black and white imagery.

To ensure the visual elements properly represented lupus and the groups most affected,

DonorDrive used imagery that predominantly featured women and people of color. The

Philadelphia Tri-State Chapter also shared past event photos with the DonorDrive team,

which were then recycled into weekly “#throwbackthursday” postings.

Fundraisers loved seeing themselves featured on Lupus’s Instagram, and these #tbt posts

often drew the most likes and comments. Annette shared that many other members in

their community reached out asking if they too could share their story after seeing the

new story-based posts.

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ResultsCreated a Positive Return

The marketing tactics implemented by DonorDrive drove registrations and donations.

• Every $1 spent on marketing returned $2.50 in revenue for the Lupus Loop.

Increase in Average Raised Per Participant

By communicating with event participants after they registered with fundraising and

team focused messaging, we saw an increase in the average amount raised per

participant and team:

• The average participant raised $70.20, up from the average $68.79 raised in 2016

• The average team raised $646.32, up from the average $618.38 raised in 2016

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- Annette MyarickPhiladelphia Tri-State Chapter

CEO

“I was really pleased with not

only the quality of what you put

together on our behalf, but you

totally clicked right in with our

brand, our tone, our voice.”

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Retained and Recruited Participants

To increase retention rates and attract new participants we delivered unique

messaging to lapsed and potential participants using custom audiences in Facebook:

• At the beginning of the project, the percentage of returning participants

from the 2016 event to 2017 was at 2%. By event day, that percentage had

increased to 28%.

• 56% of the participants obtained from the new marketing efforts were new

to the Lupus Loop.

Drove Donations

DonorDrive applied custom audiences to deliver donation specific messaging to past

donors, encouraging them to support the Lupus Loop:

• The paid Facebook and Google advertisements generated donations that

averaged $46 each.

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Increased Event and Chapter Awareness

Planning out a communication strategy with unique messaging by audience and

purpose ensured the posts and ads were right for the Lupus Loop audience.

• Overall the Facebook advertisements were shown to 60,564 users, gener-

ated 2,268 post reactions, were shared 505 times, and resulted in 143 page

likes.

• Philadelphia Tri-State Chapter’s Instagram followers increased from 500 to

569, a growth of 14%, and their Facebook followers increased from 4,669 to

4,932.

While the overall event revenue and registrations for the 26th Lupus Loop did not

increase from 2016, both metrics rose steadily after the implementation of the new

marketing initiative. The new strategic approach to their event and organization marketing

helped the event grow and improve in multiple measurable ways and set them up for

even more growth moving forward.

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- Annette MyarickPhiladelphia Tri-State Chapter

CEO

“I think that’s the real success, the

stepping stones that were put into place

to help us next year and really across all

our walk series. It pulled us to a higher

level in terms of the assets that were

created, the messaging - really getting

the buzz and attention. Our national

office even called me and said ‘oh this

is really great!’ ”

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Are you looking for more ways to utilize your

digital channels for your Peer-to-Peer

fundraising events? let us helpNonprofit organizations come to us when they have limited marketing resources

in-house. We help them prioritize and manage online marketing efforts to drive

retention and participation. The result? Teams are able to focus on running

successful events while we run the marketing.

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