Case Study: Increasing Donations with Digital Donor Acquisition Program
The Challenge
In the United States, a significant portion of blood donations comes from an aging demographic, with 45% of donors being over 50 years old. Comparatively, younger generations contribute far less, with only 10% of donations coming from individuals aged 23-29, and 12% from those in their 30s. As these reliable older donors age out, blood centers face the critical challenge of recruiting Millennials and Gen Z donors, necessitating innovative and appealing engagement strategies.
Incept’s client, like many blood centers nationwide, needed to expand their donor base by attracting younger donors. Traditional methods were proving insufficient, and a fresh, dynamic approach was essential to secure the future of blood donations.
The Solution
To address this challenge, Incept’s client planned a promotional raffle tied to a popular music festival, aiming to captivate the interest of younger donors. Incept proposed leveraging a paid digital marketing campaign with precise targeting parameters to deliver ads to potential donors aged 18-35. The chosen platforms for this campaign were Instagram and Snapchat, both highly popular among Gen Z and Millennials.
The campaign strategy included:
Lookalike Audience Targeting: Ads were shown to a lookalike audience based on the blood center’s best donors, enhancing the likelihood of engagement from similar demographic profiles.
Intent Data Utilization: The campaign utilized intent data related to music festival interests, ensuring the promotion resonated with the target audience's preferences.
The Result
The campaign was launched two weeks ahead of the promotional week, creating a buzz and encouraging potential donors to participate in the raffle by donating blood. This strategic timing and targeted approach yielded impressive results:
Reach and Engagement: The campaign reached over 95,000 prospects, generating almost 250,000 impressions.
Website Traffic: Approximately 4,000 individuals visited the blood center’s website to learn more about the promotion and potentially schedule a donation appointment from the campaign’s ads.
Donation Increase: During the promotional week, the blood center received almost 150 more blood donations than an average week, a 133% increase from the average weekly donations.
To gain deeper insights into the campaign's effectiveness, the blood center conducted a survey with the donors. The survey aimed to identify which promotion inspired their donation, the channel through which they learned about it, and other relevant factors. The findings were conclusive:
Survey Responses: Over 100 responses were collected.
Promotional Impact: Two exciting promotions were running during this time, but only one was being marketed via a paid new donor acquisition campaign. An overwhelming 98% of respondents indicated that the music festival promotion was the primary motivator for their donation, proving the direct impact the campaign had in getting the message out to donors and driving them in to donate.
Channel Attribution: The vast majority of donors said they hear about the promotion via social media.
Conclusion
Incept’s targeted digital marketing campaign successfully addressed the challenge of attracting younger blood donors by leveraging digital platforms and aligning promotional incentives with the interests of the target demographic. This case study underscores the importance of innovative strategies in engaging younger generations and ensuring a sustainable blood donor base for the future.
