There's this irreplaceable time that is being stolen from these women, in girls, due to them not having access to clean water. Even the water they are collecting is dirty, so it's causing illness and it's causing other issues throughout their communities. And so, basically, we ask for people to donate to bring clean water to communities around the world, and you're paying the funds for that person to not go on that walk anymore. Then, all of a sudden, these women and children can live lives free from the burden of dirty water and waste time on their end, and it just gives lots more opportunity to these individuals and, of course, to the communities that we serve.
Speaker 2:Hey, there, you're listening to the Missions to Moomins podcast and I'm your host, dana Snyder, digital strategist for nonprofits and founder and CEO of Positive Equation. This show highlights the digital strategies of organizations making a positive impact in the world. Ready to learn the latest trends, actionable tips and the real stories from behind the feed. Let's transform your mission into a movement. Woohoo, alright, i am pretty stoked because this will now be the third time I have somebody on from Charity Water and the work you do is incredible. The first one was with Cubby Graham, who we talked about all things social media marketing. I think he was episode 25, which your episode, megan, will be 78. I think listeners don't quote me, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:So he was on what it feels like forever ago, but it was only like a year ago and then I got to speak with Vic Harrison, who is I mean, how do you even talk about her? She's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So brilliant a genius at marketing. And then, megan, i get to talk with you today as a director of performance marketing. So this is just a dream. This happened because Cubby introduced us via email while I was on maternity leave and I was like had to answer it. So I like jumped into the inbox and I was like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, but just wait for me in a couple of months. And so here we are. Here we are Here we are. Hi, megan, i'm so happy you're here. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. I'd actually listened to Cubby's episode and I was like you have to introduce me.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh my gosh, it was so much fun chatting with him. We could have continued that conversation for hours, but of course, listener, that would be awful for you, so we did not. Or maybe we went on. Wonderful, who knows. You have a long, long card trek. Then, megan, i want to jump in. You've had a really incredible career. Of course, i had to do some LinkedIn stalking in the for profit world And then you started at Charity Water just recently. What led you to Charity Water and the work that they do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, i've had an interesting career. I've kind of bounced around a lot. I didn't get a lot of opportunity when I was younger to work in the nonprofit space. I was at an agency for about five years during my career And while I was there I worked with some nonprofits facing history in ourselves. I worked with Girl Scouts for a year or two And I just really loved work that was more driven by a mission. But I think it's so strange when you're in the profit space, trying to get in the nonprofit space, it's actually not as easy as you would think it would be, and so I never was able to really go into the nonprofit space until a couple of years ago when I started Charity Water.
Speaker 1:How did I find Charity Water? That's a fun story. So I'm 32 now, i'm turning 33 this year And I learned about Charity Water when I was around 22 or 23. So right out of college I think I had heard Scott's story our founder Scott's story And I can't remember how. There was something online It might have been an ad, to be honest that I'd listened to And I was just so impacted, like I was so impacted by his story.
Speaker 2:His story is very impressive.
Speaker 1:Yes, and furthermore I was really kind of invested in this idea of a nonprofit that did things differently. Specifically then the main messages were the 100% model, so the fact that all public donations were going straight to the field, and then also the fact that you could see where your donations were going, so you'd get those GPS coordinates, you'd get those photos of the communities that you had helped. And I was just so intrigued by that. I never in my wildest dreams that I ever think a nonprofit would be giving donors that information. And so I started fundraising. I think I fundraised for two of my birthdays with Charity Water, just because I was so enamored by how it worked and the way it worked and how passionate Scott was about what he was doing. And so I'd always kind of lurked, i guess, at Charity Water. And when I was leaving my last position, which was at a fitness company, i headed up acquisition for a fitness company for about three years.
Speaker 1:The reason I had decided to leave was specifically because I wanted to do more mission driven work. It was during the strange time in which all of us were going slightly remote and we were in the height of the pandemic and I think I had a lot of time on my hands to think about what do I want to do next? And my mindset really changed on OK, what's really going to fuel you, especially with the perspective of maybe I'm not going to be here tomorrow or in a month or in a year And I really started thinking OK, if I'm ever going to do nonprofit work, now is the time that I should do it. And I just got really lucky. Timing is everything I feel like when it comes to jobs, and they were building out a marketing team. At the exact same time, i was looking for an opportunity, hopped on the Charity Waterorg website, looked at careers and saw that they were looking for a performance marketer and was basically like hi, i'm here, it's me. I want to hang out.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's amazing. I want to explain actually, for those that don't know, what is a performance marketing manager director do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think it's different because you might get different definitions from every person. I feel like it really depends on the organization sometimes Here at Charity Water. Really, what it means is that I guess the simplest way to define it is it's any paid activity that focuses on acquiring new donors Really stems through my team at Charity Water, and a large focus for us of course at Charity Water is our monthly recurring program, which we call the spring Love, our water pun spirit, charity Water, and so a lot of my focus is really on how do we build that monthly recurring program and, of course, working with teams that are a little bit more focused on nurturing and retention to ensure that those donors are happy, that they're being communicated with and they're being provided information about how they're impacting the world from a Charity Water perspective, Love that.
Speaker 2:I want to ask you about your World Water Day campaign, but I don't want to skip over the fact that we mentioned the spring, which is like the behemoth, the beloved monthly giving program that so many organizations look up to, and I do a lot of work on the paid ad side, specifically focused on social ads. When you say paid, I know we're also talking about things outside of just social ads, but what does that usually encompass for you? Like, what are you guys focusing most of your efforts on these days?
Speaker 1:For us it is paid social and I would say that's always been our bread and butter. But if you look at a lot of digitally focused brands, like brands that started digitally, that tends to be the case right, They started on social, they optimized on social. That's usually the behemoth of where they're spending most of their budget because it's so tried and true for them. So the same for charity water, like it was a, I would say, a digitally focused nonprofit when it started out and it continued to be So. When charity water first started, really the biggest launch was on YouTube, the biggest focus, And I would say that's still the same today.
Speaker 1:Video has always been king for us which way back when, to now, video, before it was popular, was a thing for charity water, and we continue to probably spend upwards of 60% of our budget into paid social on YouTube still, just because we're constantly curating new video content and we're constantly seeing that that's what's performant for us. We've been diversifying, of course, and I think that's just normal, because the digital landscape is so tumultuous at times and you never know what's going to happen tomorrow or in a month, or if Google wakes up and decides they want to change everything that they're doing overnight. So, aside from paid social like YouTube, beta, et cetera, of course paid search is the main thing for us And we've been diversifying out to live event marketing, which has been really successful thus far, but only in the time period of testing it for a little less than a year, out of home connected TV, direct response TV, email marketing, like from an advertorial perspective.
Speaker 2:I love that you mentioned the connected TV, because I've even gotten the emails from Hulu about advertising and I've seen you can tell some of the commercial spots that are coming from like some of it is not like a national, potentially like organization, that's more like a local or regional thing that's happening. So that's a really interesting testing ground. I think for nonprofits that hasn't really been explored very much is kind of those connected where our attention is so often between the Hulus and the Netflix and the Prime and the Peacocks and like all the subscriptions that we now have instead of cable, necessarily. You're doing a lot of research with Metta, with YouTube specifically, what are you finding? I don't know if it's the way that you answer this like in a broad term, but are there specific things that you find working really well right now?
Speaker 1:Oh, it is such a hit or miss. The funny thing about Charity Water and I like to proceed basically anything I say from an insight perspective with this is that I've worked with countless different forms of clients and brands over the 10 years of my career and everything I knew that worked changed. Like, for instance, one of the things that works fast for Charity Water and has worked best for Charity Water for probably around three to five of the last years is long form video content on YouTube. 20 plus minutes, like many documentaries, is what has worked for us, specifically in relation to talking about the spring and why we do what we do. That's not a recommendation I think I would ever make to any other brand, so I can tell you what's working. I just don't really know if it could be fastened correctly for other brands or it would be worth the resources that they would put into it. But yeah, for us on YouTube it tends to be a little bit more longer form.
Speaker 1:Anything that runs that is less than three minutes does not perform as well for us, no matter kind of what we do or how we slice.
Speaker 1:We have taken many documentaries that are 20 minutes and tried to slice them into 10 minutes and 6 minutes and 3 minutes.
Speaker 1:The 20 minutes always wins, i think, too an extent for us is our creative team. They're really storytellers, and so trying to cut down these stories to these miniature 30, 60, 90 second cuts just do not work. When we let them do the story justice and build it how it needs to be built from an emotional impact perspective, that's when we see it works, and we don't always know what emotional impact is going to be as fruitful as another. So, for instance, we've tested things like okay, let's talk about motherhood and stories about motherhood and how mothers feel in relation to their children and dirty water. First let's talk about Scott's story versus let's talk about taking somebody on a scroll for a walk for water with an individual in a community. All of those are so different and all of those have such different reactions from a community perspective And we're still testing so many different creatives right now to say what works exclusively. We haven't found a formula and I'm just not sure there ever will be.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the key right. It's like always, always testing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always testing. Whereas in the profit world, especially in fitness, there's a formula, there's a very specific. This is the beginning, the middle, the end, and this is exactly like I remember very specifically always being like within the first five seconds, you need the offer with it, you know what I mean. It's so formulaic in the profit world and the difference kind of coming into charity water. Is it so? story first.
Speaker 1:And there's not really a formula to it. A lot of times you just got to trust that the story is impactful enough. You've got to build it in a way that gives it room to breathe and grow, and you've got to just put it up and see what happens.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:But that takes a lot of creative resources and we're really lucky at charity water to have them. But a lot of nonprofits and a lot of even profits don't have those creative resources, which is a bit of a hardship in relation to looking at what we're doing compared to what they might be doing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, For some inspiration I do want to talk about, so switching gears a little bit to the World Water Day campaign this year. So I learned from Vic in her episode that charity water focuses on some tentpole events that you do a lot of work around And of course, there's other social sprinkled throughout, but there's a big focus on World Water Day, as there should be. It makes total sense to your organization, clearly, And this year's concept was incredible. Last year's was too, Let's be real. But this year the creatives of the team put together and, listener, if you did not have a chance to look at what they created, I just want to, Megan, tell me if I'm off here or would I forget, But I donated to it So I can kind of remember what it looks like.
Speaker 2:But essentially it was all about saving someone's time from them having to go walk to get water. Your donation and it was $40 is what was put into these blocks. Essentially, when you went to their website, it looked like a calendar being scheduled And you could essentially, by clicking on one of these blocks they're like $40 each on this calendar you were essentially paying for that quote unquote like meeting spot. That was essentially like a walk time. So if I purchased a block that was worth $40 as a donation, then I was being able to give that person back their time by giving them access to clean water, And it was just so creatively brilliant and beautiful and how they put that together. Did I mess that up? What am I missing?
Speaker 1:No, you didn't mess it up. Yeah, that is basically the crux of it. I mean, for us specifically, really, for all of our campaigns, we try to focus in on one understanding of what's going on and how a person might be able to help. Obviously, in relation to the global water crisis, you've got the majority of people without access to clean water in these really isolated areas where they have no other option but to walk to a water source In their nearest source, sometimes 30 minutes away, probably more likely an hour, two hours away. And we're not talking about paved streets, walking a mile on a paved road into town. You're talking about miles and miles in sometimes really treacherous, very hot environment. That's usually the task of women and children. They are spending hours in a day collecting this water and that means they're not likely to show up for school or for work, or maybe, if you're a mother, to have time for your family.
Speaker 1:This World Water Day, our focus is really on that.
Speaker 1:There's this irreplaceable time that is being stolen from these women and girls due to them not having access to clean water. Then, of course, we are a little less focused on this, but even the water they are collecting is dirty, so it's causing illness and it's causing other issues throughout their communities. Basically, we ask for people to donate to bring clean water to communities around the world. What you're talking about from a calendar perspective is we gamified it in a way where we said, okay, all you have to do is select this little calendar and you're paying the funds for that person to not go on that walk anymore. By doing that, you're giving. Basically, you'd be giving clean water to one person and you'd be giving that person their time back. We've got no more missed classes, no more hours spent away from family and friends and all of a sudden, these women and children can live lives free from the burden of dirty water and waste time on their end, and it just gives lots more opportunity to these individuals and, of course, to the communities that we serve.
Speaker 2:I loved it. Did you see so for this campaign from your job that you worked on? I saw the paid ads Yeah, so they were running those. There was an out of home campaign that I definitely want to talk about, and then organic social. Was there anything else that was driving acquisition to the site?
Speaker 1:There were some. We are kind of testing into affiliate marketing right now, so there were some affiliate partners that put some things live, but I would say a crux of it was really paid organic, organic from the lens of social email. So, yeah, really paid driving acquisition and organic and email driving repeat donors, people who have donated before and might be interested in giving to the campaign again.
Speaker 2:Did you see doing that type of gamification? So what would happen, listener, is you would click on this little calendar block and then it would immediately pop up the donation form. It would be pre-selected at $40. You could change it if you wanted to and then it would obviously go through the flow of making the gift, Having that interaction versus a standard. just like go to a website, go to a form, do you see a difference in conversions with paid ads?
Speaker 1:That's a really funny question you asked because for the paid ads, we decided not to use that gamification. We did things a little bit different with the paid ads this year, specifically because a lot of these tentpool campaigns for us are so focused on being timed right. It's only going to run throughout March.
Speaker 1:It's only going to run throughout December And for us, because of the creative resources it takes to curate the ads, to curate the landing page, which always is a little bit different than the organic landing page, anyways, we decided let's just make it evergreen, let's build it with the concept and let's allow the concept to run for as long as we want it to run for, if it runs well.
Speaker 1:So we actually didn't use the gamification because obviously, keeping up with that kind of calendar, the backend work, engineering work, to do that in an evergreen capacity is pretty extensive, And so we decided to just make it simple and just to have a normal donation module. So from a conversion rate perspective, i can't really talk about paid, just because he didn't change anything Organically, i'm not sure there was a significant shift. That being said, the makeup of the landing page was so different from you couldn't really compare apples to apples anyways, but we had a wonderful World Water Day So it did really well. Did it perform as well as a regular donation module? would, we'll never know. But from a paid perspective it performed really well.
Speaker 1:But that goes back to the story then Yeah, it goes back to the story And I will say this that there's a singular ad from our World Water Day campaign that is continuing to run to this day, june 26th, and we ended that campaign March 31st. That's how well it's doing. It's still running. That's exactly why we made it evergreen. It's like there might be magic here, and if there's magic, we want to keep it going.
Speaker 2:What do you think makes that ad work so well?
Speaker 1:We are doing some testing to figure it out. So obviously when we launch something like this, there's a big cohesion between the ad to the landing page. It's the same exact messaging And so we did some testing to truly understand is it the creative driving the conversion, the creative ad, or is it the landing page that's driving the conversion? And we just ended an experiment today that kind of confirmed for us It's not the landing page. The landing page actually, if we changed it to something less cohesive, was even a higher conversion rate. But it was a landing page that generally is standard and actually well for us, but it seems to be the creative itself. So the story within the creative that's driving a lot of the conversion and a lot of the interest. So the ad is a three minute short form video And I don't know if you're familiar with this, but we used to put out a series for the spring members called The Journey.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I think there were maybe five to 10 episodes in different locations And Tyler, who's our creative director, would go and kind of film them with the team. And there was a specific cut from one of these older Journey episodes where Tyler introduces a young girl her name's Tariq And he basically tries to do the same walk for water that she does every day And he struggles. He struggles to see this young girl with her gallons of water on her head, just like looking at Tyler who's huffing and puffing like a fountain. Oh, my God, Like how do you do this? We selected that spot, We pushed it down to about three minutes And it's really just Tyler taking that journey with Tariq and trying to relate to what she does every day. I think at some point she's so far in front of him And he's just like, oh, this little show off. I love that.
Speaker 2:That's so relatable, right, yeah, and you can't. actually, this allows somebody to visualize truly what is happening, what it's like when it's so far fetched in our minds in the United States that we'd have to walk a certain distance right To go get clean water. That is fascinating. So, listener, the ad is driving it. The landing page was just kind of like your standard donation page, but it was really that piece of storytelling that was so compelling.
Speaker 1:It's a storytelling that's driving it, and so we're doing we're now doing some additional testing in relation to, like, the ask amounts on the page, like, if we push them up, if we push them down, what are the differences with that? Should we switch it over to a standard landing page once we've done that? And so, yeah, really, when we see something work like magic, it's just this idea of trying to understand, okay, what part of the flow is bringing in that magic, and it does seem like it's the creative, and now it's just us trying to refine the landing page to figure out how do we even increase that conversion rate over time. I feel like I do need to shout out our creative team Yes, when I breathe in, so we brief things in for every creative campaign And I normally brief in about three ads every temple campaign. They're usually videos and they usually ask a lot of our creative team. Two of them I always give guidance. I'm like let's do this or let's do this, like I think this is going to work well. The third one I always leave it as an open brief. So I say you guys, do you like? what do you think, from a creative perspective, is going to really tug at people and make them understand what we're trying to communicate to them.
Speaker 1:And we have this one really wonderful copywriter her name's Mercy, and she was the one who came back to me was just like Megan, this journey episode, i think, is going to be perfect. And I was like, yeah, run with it, run with it. And we put it up in March And I think, within like the first seven days, we were just like why are our one time donations twice where we thought they would be Wow, and it was just. It was this three minute video that Mercy had been like. I think that this is it. I think this is going to work, and it did and it's still working. It's driving a lot of donations for us, which is just so exciting from the perspective of being able to acquire people, and acquiring donors means we get to help these communities in a quicker pace, which is really exciting.
Speaker 2:That's amazing I'm taking away. lean on your creative team, be a storyteller and test. These kinds of experiments must lead into what you pick for something like an out of home campaign potentially. it's obviously very different of where things are displayed. You have some members got posting on Instagram about it. New York Times Square billboards were gorgeous, gorgeous And it generated Because I remember a cubby emailed me this. he said you have to start to make it. They generated 207 million impressions, which is incredible. How did this come together?
Speaker 1:Honestly, we just have some of the most lovely and kind brand partners, so we don't normally out of home is a really significant cost for any organization, especially a nonprofit organization. So for us, doing out of home it could happen, but it would happen at such a small investment level. And so when we went into World Water Day this year, the kind of conversation we were having as an org was we really want to get our brand out there. We really want, like, tangible billboards, tangible acknowledgments of charity, water and what we're trying to do and get people involved. How do we do that? And we have a lovely brand partnerships team that were just like, let us reach out. Like let us reach out to brands, you'll reach out to vendors. I reached out to some of my vendors And we just got a really amazing response from these really lovely partners that we have And they don't everything you saw from an out of home perspective donated those Times Square billboards donated Amazing, just so lucky. And we continue to be so lucky to be donated that media.
Speaker 2:I will share the Instagram reel. I think it was a reel that Scott posted. What was the internal conversations like for coming up with the creator for the out of home?
Speaker 1:It was a little rushed, as it always was. We were like, oh no, we have to meet. I think we had like a five day timeline, like we had to get them on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was wild. We're aware now what the timelines are like for out of home, but it was just like a spur of the moment like, hey, why don't we reach out and just see if anybody can donate? We thought we would get maybe five million impressions. We got over 200, you know. So us thinking, oh, we'll make like two or three out of home ads turned into us making, i think, like a total of 45 out of home ads.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we just didn't expect how generous that all of our partners were going to be Plazzing kind of world. And then we were like, well, we've got them, so we're going to figure out a way to get them done. A lot of the conversation for us was just around. Thankfully enough, our creative designers had built an ad pitch deck for us, so they already had some ideas of what would an out of home ad in a subweight look like or what would an out of home ad in a billboard look like. So they really leveraged a lot of content they've already sort of created for the ad pitch deck For Times Square specifically, it was such a specific six billboards less than right for each other.
Speaker 1:So for those we kind of communicated together about all right, how could these billboards visualize and flow into one another and feel like an experience for people, and we literally had every single creative team members input into how does this come together and speak to the messaging of the campaign. So it was just a lot of communication truly, and I think it was a lot of just the design team and the copy team going and testing things out and saying this feels right or this doesn't feel quite on the mark. But they really came through with a five day deadline and like 40 assets of just like OK, we're going to go for it, and everything came out really beautiful.
Speaker 2:That's a five days.
Speaker 1:I know, i know, guess what. We've learned our lesson And now we're going to expect people to be generous when we ask for donated space And we're going to build so much more time.
Speaker 2:For listeners and for myself was it space that they had already owned as a brand and would have used it for themselves when they gave you their space. Is that how it worked?
Speaker 1:So in almost all cases it was through a vendor partnership. So basically it was like an agency level brand partner of ours who had partnerships with out of home vendors, that they have such a great relationship with these vendors that they were like, hey, do you have remnant inventory? If you do, would you be interested in donating the space to Charity Water for this particular campaign?
Speaker 2:Hey man, it all comes down to making the ask It does.
Speaker 1:The worst that can happen is no, and, trust me, we did ask a lot of vendors that were just like, oh, we just don't have the remnant inventory, we're unable to do that. Completely fine, we ended up finding a lot that could So, and it's really the first time we had made that ask. That's why we didn't build out enough time. We were just like let's just ask. I don't remember?
Speaker 2:Are you familiar with Colossal?
Speaker 1:It sounds familiar. I've probably heard of them. I don't think I've ever worked with them before anything.
Speaker 2:They do the massive painted billboards on the side of. It's not just New York City, they do Los Angeles. I think I have a couple other cities, but on the sides of buildings And it's usually like it's a campaign in itself because they usually time lapse it And sometimes for like different Super Bowl campaigns I've seen them they paint something over a series of days. So it's like what are they doing? What are they doing And that's being put on social And then it changes over like the next couple of days. It's fascinating, like the work that they do.
Speaker 2:So if anyone wants to look at it, i think it's Colossal Media And I remember when I was working in the agency days I would ask them. I'd be like, hey, do you have any buildings that aren't being used And could they be donated, or can we get them at a discounted rate or like whatever? Because if something's not being utilized like that, it behooves them to either let an organization have it and they can write it off, or they'll give it to you at a lower rate If it's coming up close. They're not filling it.
Speaker 1:So always ask, always ask. That's learning, and you know what That's been so different for me too. Because, again, switching to the nonprofit world, in the profit world you don't really ask for the most part, you're paying for everything all the time. And here I've just learned like, oh, there's just such generous people and all you have to do is ask. It's been really eye-opening.
Speaker 2:That's right. So I want to ask you I want to leave on a couple of questions One for nonprofits that are maybe they've ran some paid before. Maybe they're questioning like I'm confused on what our strategy should be. I feel like I'm just throwing like money at it. What would be your recommendation And I love talking about paid at all day, it's my jam What would be your perspective on what should they be paying attention to when they run a campaign?
Speaker 1:I think it sometimes depends on the budget. I've worked with a couple of clients, even in the profit space, where they're spending so little that they're not gonna get anywhere. Like it's almost like why don't you spend that money on something where you're face to face with a person instead? And maybe digital isn't the place for you right now with your current budget? I think, from my perspective like depending what your budget is at, just making sure that the objective of what you're running is based on what you actually want people to do. So, for instance, i've seen a lot of people optimize their ads for clicks when they wanted conversions. It's just never going to work the way you want it to. So, to be a little bit literal, when you're setting up your ad campaigns, to be really aware of what other small businesses your size or doing are small organizations So I used to do that a lot, just by following certain Facebook groups or certain forums, networking, talking to people.
Speaker 1:I think that that's really important And then, i think, understanding what's actually impactful to the people you're trying to speak to And I think there's actually easy, really low cost ways to do that before you even start advertising or if you realize something's going wrong in the way you're advertising. So using something like validately or user testing, where maybe you're paying like a couple bucks just to get somebody to get on a call with you or to give written feedback about this is what's working, this is what's not working. I think that can be really beneficial if what you're doing is you're hitting a roadblock and just not understanding why people are interacting in a different way that you want them to with ads.
Speaker 2:Yes, i think that's huge. What you just hit on is what you are providing valuable to the end user, that you're trying to do. Do you understand who they are and talking to them as an individual is here.
Speaker 1:And then again the budget is used, because if you say you wanna do that but you're only spending $20 a day and you can't test any, that's when it's like okay, but like if the average conversion, the average cost per conversion in your industry, is $50 on Meta and you're spending $20 a day, you're just spending money for no reason.
Speaker 1:So it's almost just like okay. Well, you know who you wanna talk to. You know to an extent what works and doesn't work for them. Digital probably just isn't your space. So what can you do? that costs less, that allows you to maybe interact more personally with those people, so really kind of putting those two together. But of course, if you have lots of budget and your objectives are all correct and your targets seem correct, i think the biggest thing is, yeah, qualitative testing for sure, and then not being afraid to take some risks. I think we all love to be a burst of risk when it comes to finances, but I think if you have the budget, you can figure out a way in which you can take some of those risks while also being fiscally responsible.
Speaker 1:And understanding that you have a pretty standard hypothesis that, even if it wins or if it fails, from a hypothesis perspective, you're learning enough that it's worth that cost Absolutely And something that I love that you talked about that I wanted to just touch on real quick the cost per conversion.
Speaker 2:I ran a conversion campaign for donations around end of year and they were coming in at about like $12 per donation, which I had not seen them that low in a very long time. But that was based upon also the audience that we were targeting. And the other strategy to think about is, especially in nonprofit space, a lot of donations, usually an engagement rate is higher with emails for a gift, so it's can you build up a really passionate email list to be able to nurture and like target down the line? So if you're an organization that's like whoa whoa I don't have $100 a day plus right To be spending on ads to come in then maybe donation ads aren't where you spend the funds but you spend it on where you can get leads emails for way, way, way less. You can run your $10, $20 a day and get a few leads a day in that way And I've seen those as low as a dollar or less. There was actually an organization that got them for like it was wild like 20 cents last year for emails. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think to an extent it's also about the way you build the lead ad, and we're not focused so much on leads right now. We're kind of at a place where we're really focused on conversion. But I think from a lead perspective, if you have a really engaging ask and you have the right creative content, getting people to submit their email especially if it's like directly on Facebook where they don't even have to navigate away, can be really really cost efficient just to kind of build up that email list And then hopefully the focus is just to target the audience well enough that you know they're qualified enough to be on that email list.
Speaker 2:Yep, exactly agreed. So I wanna ask you, megan, you seem like somebody who is always in the know and researching things and staying up on things. Is there something that you're reading or podcast that you listen to for fun or professional development?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not like the biggest like reader about advertising. I would say I get a lot of my information just scouring the web or, like I mentioned, I'm in some Facebook groups. I'm in some forums every day. I highly recommend going on Facebook and finding advertising groups because you usually get the information before anybody else does. I also read, you know, the normal stuff like ad week.
Speaker 1:I love listening to marketing happy hour on. I think I yeah, I listened to it on Spotify. It's one of my favorites. But other than that, honestly, it's just a lot of speaking to people and keeping in touch with all of my colleagues within the performance marketing area, because it tends to be that we're all going through the same issues at the same time. So, for instance, like if all of a sudden my CPMs are off, I usually shoot out a group text and like hey guys, is anybody else seeing the same issue? And of course, it's not always apples to apples, but it's just so nice keeping in touch with people that do the same thing as you, because they're usually right. You know, if there's any issues that come up or if there are any big wins that come up on these platforms, they generally are echoing the same statement, And if they're not, you know something's wrong. Yeah, And you can figure it out.
Speaker 2:It sounds like me and my mom groups right now. I'm like how do you guys do daytime naps?
Speaker 1:So like, how do I? it's funny because a lot of my friends are becoming first time moms right now. I don't have a kid yet And I'm just like, oh my God, the idea. Like me and my husband bought a house for the first time And I was like who allowed us to do this? I don't know how to fix the boiler, i don't know how to do. I feel it would be the same way with kids, like I don't know.
Speaker 2:All of a sudden, you leave the house and you're like oh, we got to. we have a human to take care of, Yeah. But I love that Finding your groups, finding the people that you can go to and ask questions 100%. That's why I love masterminds, so 100% Yeah.
Speaker 1:And staying in touch, like staying in touch, has been the biggest thing. not even just people within performance marketing, but people within other companies Like we, knowledge share all of the time.
Speaker 2:Awesome, i love that. It's so important. And then, lastly, megha, what are I have to say? what are things? what is one thing that you would like to ask for help or support on?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, i'm just like running through a list in my head. I mean, i think for us right now, we're really trying to understand and I think we're doing some tests for this, of course to understand where our organization is really the most impactful in relation to, like, communicating with donors and making people understand the impact that they're making by donating. So I think for me, it's really, you know, hearing from people about their experience with charity water, what's impacted them, maybe what could have been better. I think that that's always really helpful for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, always learning.
Speaker 1:Always got to think about it. But also charity water when I first met them is different from the charity water today, And I think that's a lot of like the knowledge we're trying to understand, which is, when somebody thinks charity water in 2023, what does it mean to them Compared to what we knew charity water was in 2020, which is so different?
Speaker 2:Yeah, fascinating. Thank you so much for your time. I could ask you a million more questions, but I know you had to get back to the impact work that you're doing. Thank you so much for being here today. How can listeners connect with you?
Speaker 1:You can connect with me on Instagram. just my name at Megan Tisgato, or you could just hit me up at charity water if you'd like. I'm always around, but yeah, definitely, if anybody has anything they want to chat about or if they want to connect and knowledge share, just feel free to check my Instagram and send me a message. Cool.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for being here and doing what you do Love it.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, dana, and I appreciate the time.
Speaker 2:Can you tell I love talking all things digital To make this show better. I'd be so grateful for your feedback. Leave a review, take a screenshot of this episode, share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with one E so I can reshare and connect with you MUSIC.