How does a conservation nonprofit grow its fanbase authentically & affordably?

I began partnering with The Antarctic & Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) back in 2020 on a year-end fundraising campaign, which leveraged Meta Ads to generate a 5:1 Return on Ad Spend and attract 31 new donors for the organization. Since that first campaign together, we’ve developed and executed creative campaigns for every season, including the annual and now beloved World Penguin Day Art Contest.

In 2022, after the iOS14 update made direct fundraising ads more expensive and less effective, we began testing a new approach to Meta advertising focused solely on lead generation. Lead generation ads are much less costly than conversion ads, and we were eager to see how affordably we could attract high-quality email contacts. Then, ASOC would rely on their excellent email communications to strengthen these relationships and promote their fundraising campaigns.

In the fall of 2022, we ran our first lead gen campaign.

We used Dynamic Creative to test multiple images, headlines, primary text variations, and CTAs—as I always do with new Meta campaigns. We also A/B tested two different versions of an optimized newsletter sign-up page to determine which headline and description would motivate more people to sign up. Relying on the M+R 2022 Nonprofit Benchmarks for digital advertising to set our initial goals, we hoped to bring in new email contacts at a cost per lead of $2.32.

Over a one-month period, we achieved an average cost per lead of only $1.31 and determined a clear winner from our landing page test. This initial campaign collected more than 1,400 new email contacts for ASOC! When we touched base a few months later, only a handful of these contacts had unsubscribed from ASOC’s list and seven of them had already become donors, including one monthly donor. Here’s a video walkthrough of our initial campaign results, including a beautiful letter the ASOC team received from one of their new subscribers on the other side of the world. 🤍

We ran a second round, continuing to test.

In February 2023, equipped with winning landing page, images, and messaging from the first go, we ran another round of lead generation ads—layering in some new image and text variations for further testing. This second campaign generated email contacts at an average cost of only $1.10 and brought in more than 1,200 email contacts for the organization. By this point, we had doubled ASOC’s email list with just two month-long Meta ad campaigns. 🐋 Flipping amazing!

Here’s a look at some of the winning ads across both campaigns:

Now, we’ll continue to advertise & optimize.

With a winning formula that’s easy to replicate and iterate on, we will continue to run Meta lead generation campaigns twice a year—in the new year and in the fall—so new email contacts can get acquainted and receive regular communications for multiple months before seasonal fundraising campaigns. We’ll continue to try new things with each round (new audience targeting, imagery, video, messaging, etc.) to attract prospective donors. And the best added perk of digital advertising is, the ASOC team and their other partners can continue utilizing the insights from our ad campaigns to inform their messaging and visuals across other channels.