Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
Debriefing Roots Ethiopia's Lead Gen Strategy - 800+ New Email Subscribers in 2 Weeks
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Meghan Walsh from Roots Ethiopia is back to bring a fresh perspective on how my Grow Your List Ads Challenge (and a killer lead magnet) helped them bring in over 800 email subscribers at $1.93 per lead!
Together, we explore the creativity and collaboration behind Roots Ethiopia’s e-cookbook, which weaves together the allure of Ethiopian cuisine with the organization's heartfelt mission. We discuss the power of email marketing and how strategic timing, such as aligning campaign launches with end-of-year fundraising, can keep supporters engaged and invested.
Meghan walks us through her email sequences that are garnering a 52% average open rate and how she plans to add even more value to her subscribers this spring.
This episode is a testament to how a well-executed lead magnet can do more than just grow an email list - it can build a community!
If you’re interested in learning more from Meghan about building monthly giving programs, check out Episode 38.
Resources & Links
Learn more about the incredible mission of Roots Ethiopia and check out their newsletter. You can also connect with Meghan on LinkedIn.
Check out Meghan’s first episode on Missions to Movements: 3 Months, 1 Monthly Giving Program Launch: How Roots Ethiopia’s Meghan Walsh Made It Happen.
Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you.
Bloomerang is the proud presenter of Missions to Movements.
Bloomerang is the trusted, all-in-one giving platform that connects your data, streamlines your systems, and helps your mission go further. Learn more at bloomerang.com.
If you’re building a movement, join Bloomerang’s GiveCon in St. Louis May 15-17 to learn what’s working right now in donor retention, AI, major gifts, recurring revenue, and community-driven campaigns. Register now and use code M2M to save $200!
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Transforming Missions Into a Movement
Speaker 1I didn't have enough information to really recognize that this would be as important to us as it became. I could only hope. I had no concept. I thought it was for the big players. World Vision, oxfam.
Speaker 2Hey there, you're listening to the Missions to Movement podcast and I'm your host, dana Sneiner, digital Strategist for Non-Profits and Founder and CEO of Positive Equations. 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. Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Missions to Movement podcast. If you have not joined me before, I'm so glad that you're listening today. My name is Dana Sneiner and I am the host of this show that has been running, for we're coming up on the two-year anniversary, which blows my mind, which is so exciting. In over a hundred episodes of talking to incredible people like Meagan, who is on the other line here, this is Meagan's second time being on the show. Meagan, do you know? The first time you're on it was episode 38. Episode 38. And we were talking all about monthly giving and I want you to talk about the roots. But if you have interest in building monthly giving programs and how to grow and scale yours, I definitely recommend checking out that episode with Meagan. Meagan, welcome to the show. Will you give us a little bit of an update of what's the mission of Ruth Ethiopia.
Speaker 1Well, hi, dana, I'm so glad to be here. Our mission it's a big mission, but I can say it very simply that supporting education and job creation in Ethiopia and we work in a certain region we send kids to school, we help moms create strong local market work and we improve schools that are under resource. So schools that don't have enough desks, blackboards, don't have a school library. 90 for 5% of schools in Ethiopia, primary schools, don't have a school library.
Speaker 2Wow, yes. What do you find as the when you share your mission with supporters? What do you find that draws them to the organization to become supporters?
Speaker 1So, dana, I think there are two things. One is that we really believe in local ideas for lasting change. So when I say that, I'm describing that, the wisdom that is found in community, in the elders, in the young people. They know what they need, they know how to develop what they need. And sometimes it's a matter of some resources, and so we really believe in the idea of Ethiopians helping Ethiopians, and we live by that. Yes, I think that people really believe in the social justice and the economic justice piece of working on education and job creation, and I think we do a good job of letting people know exactly how their donations are making an impact. That's a really big piece of moving the work forward.
Speaker 2You do do a great job and I don't want to wait till the end to ask but where can people learn about your organization and kind of see this in action, what you're talking about?
Speaker 1Rootsethiopiaorg.
Speaker 2Boom.
Speaker 1And when they're there, they should sign up for our newsletter, because it is really fun to give monthly updates that are specific and encouraging.
Speaker 2Okay, I love that. You just said that people should sign up for your newsletter when we're here to talk about lead generation. You are so on point, megan. I love it, so I do want to ask. So, as you were saying, you're all about local people supporting local people, communities supporting communities, and I'm all about nonprofits helping other nonprofits, and so I was very excited when you agreed to come on today to share a little bit peek behind the scenes of what you've done with lead generation. So last year for the first time just for context for everybody I have taught and have been running social media ads for over a decade, basically since they started back in my agency days when I worked in New York City, and for a long time I was teaching ads through courses, through online courses that you could buy. You'd be self taught and then you would learn and run your ads. What I realized over the past I don't know a couple years is that Facebook ads manager and this is Facebook and Instagram specific so the meta platforms can be hella confusing and daunting and intimidating and they like to change what things look like or what they're named or the process pretty frequently, and that made it difficult for a course, to really feel like I was doing what I set out to do, and that's to make people feel confident in running ads and see results at the end. And I felt the best way that I could really help to do that was by launching ads challenges, where I brought together a small cohort of people like a max of 15 to 20, and would work with them on actually reviewing the ad copy and creative and, in this case, lead magnets to grow an email list. And so Megan joined me last year for the Grow your List ads challenge and I want to ask you, like when you first saw it, when you heard about it for email growth, like why did you decide to join the challenge?
Speaker 1Quite honestly, I had never done anything in meta other than boost a post, and that was my comfort level. And I had had such success with you, dana, in developing our monthly donor program and using a Facebook ad in that development that I was confident that I would have tremendous success. And I had been thinking for a full year about creating a lead magnet. I had been going after the idea and I just knew that, working with you, all those pieces would come together because we would agree they needed to. Yeah, and it wasn't so much that I thought that I would learn how to be an expert at a Facebook ad. I wasn't looking for that. What I was looking for was the completion of a project that would move us forward. And boy did it ever.
Speaker 2I like blue the way. The promise of the challenge is 100 emails in seven days, not to like get far ahead of the game. But, megan, what were your results?
Lead Magnet Success Case Study
Speaker 1So I ran the ad after our first time. I did it for like a second tiny little week at a low level of investment, and we have 810. I know subscribes oh my gosh, that's incredible.
Speaker 2What was your cost per lead?
Speaker 1It was under a dollar 93 cents.
Speaker 2That's incredible. I want to go back to the lead magnet you talked about, because you did an incredible job coming up with one. A lead magnet is something of value to the audience that you're looking to attract, and you do that in exchange for an email address. Okay, I'm beyond it. I want to talk about what your lead magnet was, but first, what was your initial opinion of social ads before you use them?
Speaker 1I didn't have enough information to really recognize that this would be as important to us as it became. I could only hope. I had no concept. I thought it was for the big players World Vision, oxfam, right.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think that's so common. That's a huge myth. Like, honestly, as long as you're feeding money into the platform, let's be real. Metta doesn't care who you are, and same thing. Right, I'm a solopreneur. I don't have millions of dollars that I'm spending on ads. I don't spend thousands. Like, you can do a lot with a little on the platform when you have a great lead magnet in this case with ads, good copy and good graphics. So before, so these 800 people, that's a big email list boost. How did you grow your email list before running ads, or what did you like normally do?
Speaker 1Almost nothing A pop-up on our website that said hey, join our email list.
Speaker 2What was the growth of that?
Speaker 1A trickle 32 subscribers new subscribers over seven months.
Speaker 2Seven months yeah wild. And then those people. At the time did you have an email like welcome series for those people?
Speaker 1Okay, Dana, this is why I work with you, Because you say you need a welcome series and I say, oh, yes, I do. And you say I love Flo Desk, have you seen Flo Desk? And I say no, Okay, so no, we did not have a welcome series that I think was strong or engaging and as part of the lead magnet, of course, that was one of the handful of things that I knew that I would be asked to pay attention to and I was ready to do that. So I will just say, working with you, Dana, always helps me kind of unfold all the petals on the flower right, Because you are very clear about hey, if you wanna make this successful, here are the five things that you're gonna need to do. Not just launch the ad, but make sure you keep that audience warm and you welcome them and then you begin to nurture them. So I got a lot more insight, prepping the lead magnet, about that next step.
Speaker 2Yes, one of the things that we cover in the challenge is the first thing is developing the lead magnet, which you came in with, which was incredible, and then we just tweaked it, made some edits. It was designed in Canva. How did you come up with the idea for your lead magnet?
Speaker 1I think this is a great story. I had had, like a Google a nonprofit Google ad discovery conversation and because I had wanted the nonprofit Google ad but was trying to learn about who I would hire to manage it and what that would look like. And in the course of that we talked about a lead magnet and brainstormed, if I had a Google ad, what would be a great lead magnet? And in the context of that discovery conversation, a recipe book came up and so for about a year I was stewing on no pun intended like what would a recipe book look like and who would write it and why would they do it? And I reached out to an influencer on Instagram. Her name is Sahais Kitchen, t-s-e-h-a-y. Sahais Kitchen. She's Ethiopian, she lives in Sweden, she's a chef, she's an amazingly kindhearted, generous woman and I had been following her and she said I'd love to write five recipes for you and turns out she is just masterful at everything.
Speaker 2Wait, pause. How did you reach out to her?
Speaker 1Well, it would be compared to a cold call. Ok, I DM'd her on Instagram.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, vegan. What did you say? What did that message say?
Speaker 1I said, I am the board chair from Roots Ethiopia and I love watching you cook this beautiful food that speaks so much about the culture of community in Ethiopia. I would love to discuss with you an opportunity to develop a small e-cookbook in support of Roots Ethiopia.
Speaker 2And what was her response?
Speaker 1She said I love it, please let me do it. I can do five recipes. I'll ask my videographer to come in and do a few videos. And she picked five iconic recipes and I did all of the back-end work on that. So her Instagram is gorgeous. It's a visual feast. Love that. And I just want to say part of the lead magnet included her followers. Part of our success, right was she could bring in also her audience, which she did so generously.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's incredible, so she shared it on her Instagram.
Speaker 1All yes, and she loved sharing it because it was really her kind of testimony to food and community. And let me add, when I did our welcome email series, I connected to food in that welcome series. So the welcome series is different from our normal newsletter welcome series. I tied it specifically to food with food images from local markets and local families, and so I really tried to develop that language to stay within the lead magnet interest, which is cooking Ethiopian food which is so smart, because that's why people signed up in the first place.
Speaker 2So that connection makes sense. It's not like you're jumping from oh hey, you downloaded this thing. Let me like totally switch gears and talk to you about education right off the gun. Precisely, I wanted to honor that connection. Yeah, which really makes sense. Okay, so let's talk about the lead magnet itself. Where was it created? Did you create the cookbook recipes?
Speaker 1I did the whole thing in Canva and I'm a complete. You know I have no design skill, but Canva handled so much of that for me and I had images and I was able to develop the cookbook. I got some feedback from you, from some other folks, to make sure that I had an ask at the end of the cookbook and a QR code at the end of the cookbook, and I did it all like from the ground up, but it was astoundingly easy easy enough that I'm already on to my next lead magnet for the Google ads.
Speaker 2Yes, Okay, amazing, and the cookbook was beautiful. I think I remember one of the comments I gave when I was reviewing it was to shorten it. I think when you first showed it to me it was pretty long, if I remember, and we shortened it right. So some of that was formatting.
Speaker 1Yes, that I had to go back and correct my formatting, which I hadn't done before, and the other was I took out commentary about each recipe Really, it was authentically the recipes and then a sweet note from Sahai about the cooking and then a note from me.
Speaker 2Yes, so good, okay. So then we had your lead magnet, and I want to talk through the whole process, from running the lead Jane campaign. So, when we had the lead magnet, then we worked on the ad copy, the ad creative of course, and then going through and selecting the different audiences that we would run the ad to. So, and I don't know if you remember this, but I believe we tested three different audiences, right, yes, okay, we did your warm audience, because sometimes the warm audience is retargeting people who already visit your website, who are already on your social channels, but they might not be on your email list because they never got there. And then did we do a lookalike? Yes, and then we did Ethiopia interest, right. Or cooking, cooking, cooking. Okay, do you remember which one performed the best? The lookalike did not perform at all Interesting.
Speaker 1So we, as we were testing the audiences, we removed that. Okay, the warm audience, actually 60 people who signed up for the cookbook were already part of sort of a constituent record for us.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1So that was great that they came into our the cookbook portion. And I will add that when someone came in who was an existing constituent, they did not go through that whole welcome series again but got like two celebratory emails about hey, how's the cooking going? So that was actually really nice additional touch for those folks. The audience that performed the best was the. I think we called it like Ethiopian cooking. It was very unique. It was like cooking and philanthropy. It was two things together.
Speaker 2Okay, I think I remember that. Yeah, this is why it goes down to you have to test and like you're talking about. So Something that we did was within the challenge, as we looked at which ones were working and we would turn off the ones that weren't performing to let the budget go towards the ones that were performing the best. Okay, and then I do remember we had two different ad creatives in Canva and One was bigger text headline in the blog for this. I'll put the ad images in the show notes so that everybody can see what I'm referencing. But one definitely had more of like a bigger block text at the top with an image of Ethiopian food. And then the other one had Ethiopian food still, but it was like a little bit smaller Text and, if I remember Properly, the bigger text one performed much better. Right, that's correct.
Speaker 1Okay, it also had a very rich color to it.
Speaker 2Yes, something that popped and that's something that I'm seeing across the board. It's kind of ironic with something I've been talking about in ad webinars is we used to have this old Ad rule where you literally would upload an image and if there was 20% text or more on the image, you would have to delete it and Facebook wouldn't run it, which is the total opposite now, where bigger text, more text, is actually performing better. When you decided to run your second ad, did you run it the exact same, or how did you set it up the second time?
Speaker 1So you use the word hello difficult and I use the word hairy when I go into Facebook, yeah, ads. So I just basically duplicated the whole darn thing and then watched what happened and took things out. I didn't want to make any changes and I Already knew that the ad had legs, mm-hmm, and so I just let that whole process happen again.
Speaker 2Did you see similar results?
Speaker 1I did see similar results, and I did it for only for about $200 for eight days. Okay, and I think that turned up about 212 new subscribers.
Speaker 2Negan, that's amazing.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I just was laughing because I, you know, I went in there with I don't exactly know how to do this, but I'm just gonna click, you know, duplicate and then press go. Yeah, that's the level of my Competency actually in the ad itself. But it's enough right, I know that it works and I know how to ask people to help me to get it to work.
Email Marketing Lead Magnet Strategy
Speaker 2Yes, yes, very true, which you are very good at that as well. Okay, I had to take a quick break here because I needed to ask you are you ready to run your own social ads, to grow your own email list with a hundred plus new people ready to learn about your mission in Just seven days? Yeah, I'm here to help make that happen. I will work with you on creating your lead magnet, review your ad, creative your ad copy and make sure that we're setting up your ads for success. The next round of my grow your list ads challenge starts the week of March 11th, right around the corner. Limited spots are left. This happens in a small group container, so click the link in the show notes or go to my website, positive equation, calm to learn more and secure your spot now. The next ads challenge will not run until September, so if you want a big boost to your email list now and to nurture those people leading up to giving season, click the link in the show notes or go to my website again, positive equation, calm to learn more. So the ads are running. Ads are working. You're growing your list. That's phenomenal. That's way more than 34 people over seven months, for sure. So now you have this solid group of 800 people that are running through this email welcome sequence. What does the email sequence look like? With how many emails is it? Can you tell me about each email?
Speaker 1Yes, I can, because I actually wrote down some notes, so I would remember and, and, and. Ironically, this is exactly the moment in time when I'm doing all of my workflow audits. Oh Perfect, they're a little tired. Yes, you know they're a little tired and I wanted to update them, and I've gotten a little bit of feedback also, and it has helped me, for instance, strike out slightly more casual tone and Make sure that any images have captions under them. So the audit has been just tightening up that series. So the first note is oh my gosh, I'm so excited to have you here. Remember to grab your free e-cookbook Right, and it's very simple.
Speaker 2What's your open rate? You said you know.
Speaker 1On that first email our open rates are about 52%.
Speaker 2Okay, cool.
Speaker 1The next email asks is your mouth watering to do? And has a beautiful image of spices being sold in a market in Ethiopia, right in the area where we work, and in it I'm just encouraging cooking and reflecting on how much cooking is a and eating in Ethiopia is a very communal experience and Really just being an encourager. Also, I mentioned what my favorite recipe in the book is. I love Mr White. I like that, yeah, and I make it. I make it at home. The third email is a hey, here's what you can expect from us. Hmm, it's a really simple. We send out a monthly newsletter every Friday. You get a gorgeous photo from Ethiopia in your email and Every once in a while you might hear from us with a need very simple kind of text, light. It's a sweet, you know, template that I use from Flo Desk, which is, let's me say, a lot in Tiny sentences. Yeah, at the end of this one I also have a picture of myself and I said I would love to hear from you. You know, hit reply. I mean who you are and how the cooking's going. So that's number three. There are eight in this series.
Speaker 2Oh, wow, okay, good. What's the timeframe from the first one to the last one Lasts about three weeks. Okay, wow, that's good.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I try to give time. After that I have a very it's just a photo collage of our team in Ethiopia doing the work they do. Hey, here's who we are. This team delivers.
Speaker 2Cool.
Speaker 1You know, just like Dorgash.
Speaker 2Yeah, I love it. Have you had people on that email with you with the asking for the reply? Have you had people reply?
Speaker 1Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2Yes, amazing when you said that I was thinking about and maybe you already have this but if people would send you back like photos of them cooking.
Speaker 1So I have asked for that. I have gotten responses, text responses, but no photos. Okay, okay, one of the people, dana, who downloaded the cookbook, she has adopted a daughter from Ethiopia who's now 22 and she was printing the cookbook and binding it. You know, it's just, it's five recipes for her daughter for her life, independently in her own apartment.
Speaker 2Now, oh my gosh, what a beautiful story.
Speaker 1It was so sweet, like here's how I'm gonna use this. I also wanna add for the audience, because I think this is really important. The timing of doing this lead magnet was very special because in the fall when this idea of being top of mind and having all kinds of ways to connect with donors and community is really important for that next end of year ass. So I really wanted to develop some kind of warm and be able then to go back to that audience and say here we are. And it so happened that we were raising money for food at the end of the year, so there was a connection there that I could draw on.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Okay, so sorry, I interrupted you halfway through. I think you weren't emailing them before.
Speaker 1Oh well, the staff photo is sort of like the Horton. Here's a who you know. We are here, we are here, we are here, and I feel like making this personalization helps convey you know we are who we say we are. You look at our staff it's all Ethiopian. They live in the villages. You know they live and work in the villages themselves. They marry, they have children, they go to school. Next email is one that you helped me develop. That's my monthly donor video for the Roots, which is our monthly giving program. And when I did the, when we developed our monthly giving campaign in your monthly donor mastermind class, you helped us oh my gosh create a beautiful video that tells the story of Roots, ethiopian, and also conveys the importance of why monthly giving is so critical to the work that we do and how a child or a mom will get exactly what they need when they need it, because we can rely on monthly donations.
Speaker 2I'm so glad you put that in there.
Speaker 1Yes, and it asks people to consider stepping forward as a monthly donor. I can tell you that that has not happened yet with any of our lead magnet folks. Time is of the essence here. You know it's like the stock market time, not timing. You know. I mean I've got to just develop this trust and warmth, so I do that.
Speaker 2That's a fairly interesting because we did this in September yes, right, and so it actually really hasn't been that long yet, not at all Ran new people. So I would be very curious at around like a year mark to see if that's changed with continuous like nurturing with this group, because are you still seeing opens?
Speaker 1I'm still seeing opens and I went and I looked at the data and it's something like 60% of the people who downloaded the lead magnet are still with us reading their emails.
Speaker 2Oh, amazing. Yes, that's great. I mean, that's wonderful. That's a large chunk of new people that are still there. Oh my gosh, I just want you to run this ad because it works so good. I just want you to run it all the time.
Speaker 1Believe me, I think about it. So in the 810 subscribes, 650 of them are still active. So we lost about 16% of the initial downloads.
Speaker 2Five people. We didn't need you anyways. Thank you, Right I?
Speaker 1never worry about unsubscribes.
Speaker 2Me either.
Speaker 1And then about 2% are somehow bouncing around. They're not reaching who they're intended to reach and 100% of our existing that are somehow in our existing system constituents, 100% of those are still engaged.
Speaker 2Awesome Cool.
Speaker 1Amazing. And then my last email is like oh my gosh, I think you're amazing and I'm so glad you're here and I show a beautiful cup of Ethiopian coffee because who doesn't love that? Yeah, and really say hey, stick around, You're inspiring us.
Speaker 2Me and you're inspiring me, and I mean hopefully everybody listening. That is so beautiful and so well done. As you've been going through your audit of everything, is there anything that has been a big tweak or update?
Speaker 1My only tweak and update is that we are now running a Google ad. I asked a donor to cover the cost of a Google ad manager for a year and that donor said yes.
Speaker 2Awesome.
Speaker 1And we are using the cookbook as our lead magnet.
Speaker 2Smart Repurposed.
Speaker 1You know it's not doing as well as it did in the Facebook ad.
Speaker 2Interesting, very. Yeah, I think that might have something to do with visuals. Yes, there's no visual. When you have a Google ad, right, you're relying on text only. And cooking is such a visual thing. You see it and you're like I'm hungry.
Speaker 1I mean, and it's just a different or subbed of audience. Yes, but that's a difference. So we're using it as a tool and another piece of work which I love. Yeah, and I'm going to work with Chef Sahai to add a bonus recipe this spring, just for fun, to put it out there to add to everyone who has already downloaded the cookbook.
Speaker 2I love that.
Speaker 1I also have sent the link just in a subscriber email. It's like, hey, do you know about this? And so the cookbook has several lives to put into action, and I did want to mention this we were talking about. Hey, are any of these folks who downloaded the lead magnet going to ultimately give? We have a fantastic campaign coming up and the price point in the campaign is $7.14 to provide a student with tutoring for their national exam.
Speaker 2Oh cool.
Speaker 1And the downloads for the recipe book will get a very specifically dialed in ask, and it's $7.14. I mean, it's such a great ask for such a great project and I want to say this project is the kind of project we do, because the folks who said hey, our eighth graders need tutoring are social workers in the field the schools themselves this is completely a local idea for lasting change.
Speaker 2You know what I love. I'm just riffing here in the moment and if you did decide to duplicate the campaign again during this time frame, we did not, I believe, have an audience, specifically parents, and you can in Facebook and as manager, you can select parents of a certain age. So if we selected, like, school age children and because, knowing so, if they have an interest in cooking Ethiopia and their parents of certain age ranges, then knowing what the ask is in the email series, they might be more inclined to take action because it's gonna resonate with them, just based on their personal lives.
Nonprofit Marketing and Engagement Strategies
Speaker 1The part I love the most about what you said is using the word we Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, and you know I'll follow up, okay. So, dana, this is your brilliance. This is your brilliance, but this is also the brilliance of a lead magnet. Is finding that space to use the lead magnet in new, creative ways?
Speaker 2Yes, yes, so good. Did the chef end up sending you or doing those videos? Oh, yes, I have the videos. Oh, have you used them with social? No, all right, megan. Okay, this is the other thing I wanna say. You have listed so many things that you have accomplished and you have done. Megan, will you share with everybody how large your team is?
Speaker 1Oh, you mean paid staff in the United States.
Speaker 2I mean just anybody who's helped execute all these things with you.
Speaker 1So I'm really the wearer of the hats, can we?
Speaker 2just take that. This is my thing about Megan is I think we, I included, can all say, oh, I could never do this, or X, right, because it's me, it's you, it's individual listening, right. But this is Megan created an email welcome sequence on a brand new email tool and, switched by the way, has created this brand new ad campaign that's blossoming and bringing new people into our community as a pretty much staff of one. And so when I say like, this is the power, social ads, if you have them and you do this experiment and you test and you see what works. If 98 cents roughly, but with the ads, I don't know, and somebody proved me wrong, please, I don't know another advertising tool that can raise the awareness and bring in the amount of people at that cost that's like about cost of a stamp these days.
Speaker 1I'm just saying folks need to join your program so that they can develop their Facebook ad with you and continue to create and flourish. It's really exciting.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's fun to see that. I mean, I feel that way there isn't like a little adrenaline hit that when you like log on and you're like, oh, that's 50 more, oh, and for you gosh 400. And that was again. Let us remind how many days did we run these ads for? Was it 10, two weeks? I don't even know if it was that the first group. Did we run it that long?
Speaker 1I'm pretty sure we did. I'm pretty sure that my ad went 10 weeks because I was ready.
Speaker 2That's true. That's true. You started at the beginning, Okay.
Speaker 1I did. I didn't have to wait extra days because I didn't have it ready in time. I was ready. I just started it. It was, and I thought I'd be excited with 100 emails. I had no idea, dana, and you keep giving your skillset.
Speaker 2Thank you, I'm gonna try. I was okay. So we had roughly 400-ish I think, in that first round. Let's just call it 14 days. That's roughly 28,. 29 people a day. That's founding, which is incredible. I just wanna like hats off to you, Rock. Do you have any like tip or advice for fellow nonprofits that might be thinking about it but are hesitant about just ads in general?
Speaker 1Yeah, I do. I mean get the right help Right, dana. I mean put together your quality team, just like I did. I mean I knew when Dana put up this offer that I was going to join because I already knew that Dana knows her stuff and that you'd bring the right assets into the teaching at any level that any of us were. And I saw that happen. And be brave, be courageous, because it's worth it. The discovery is worth the time, the money and the courage. Yes. And it just gives a whole lot of the same thing happened with our monthly donor campaign which, by the way, right now I'm running, because how many times did you remind our crew and the mastermind the way to build monthly donors is to ask people to become monthly donors. And right now we're doing our upgrade for our existing donors and we're asking folks to come in as new monthly donors and we've segmented and personalized. And, just as I was preparing for this, I sent my board of directors texts that they could use in their own emails to make some outreaches. Everyone has a goal. I mean I have a great. Our board of directors is being passed it and they will do the work. And they, because the creative behind the work takes time. We work on making sure I can hand that over, so that's also part of a lead magnet activity, right? Is your board of directors being engaged? So trying not to stay in the solo of I know what's going on and this lead magnet is out there. If so, it's moving that lead magnet into other platforms.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, where people can enjoy it and share it. If you feel inspired, which I hope you do, from this conversation about Roots Ethiopia, where can somebody learn about your monthly giving program?
Speaker 1So I would love it if people would go to rootsethiopiaorg backslash the dash roots, or you can find it under the take action tab on our Roots Ethiopian website and you might be really interested when you get there, because you will actually see there's a banner it says hey, are you already a monthly donor and want to increase your gift? Click here. It's a nifty little donor portal from FundbrakesUp, another space that you helped create for us.
Speaker 2Yes, I love that you have up and you also have on your homepage Saver Ethiopia get your free recipe cookbook.
Speaker 1Yes, so we are using all the tools. So if a monthly donor arrives on that page, they're like oh, I can just click here and change my monthly giving. Awesome, I'm gonna increase it $5.
Speaker 2So good.
Speaker 1Yes, so I would love people to learn about the roots and watch the video, hear the story of how our work started and also kind of the big vision we have for being world changers together.
Speaker 2You rock and you certainly are. If people wanna connect with you directly, how can they do that?
Speaker 1LinkedIn is great. I love LinkedIn. You can find me, megan Walsh. My name is spelled G-H Megan M-E-G-H-A-N, and Roots Ethiopia is also on LinkedIn. Another shout out to encouragement from Dana and friends to show up there and learn. You know, when I talked about changing my welcome series to be a little more conversational, that's one of the places where people are talking about how do we engage with each other Absolutely and be real, be authentic. Dana, I know you presented about that at one of the conferences I attended with you, so really this is the lead magnet, is exciting, and now I've made a whole list of notes just from this conversation how to move that beautiful cookbook into some new hands. If you're listening, go to our homepage download it.
Speaker 2Yes, I love it. And then I don't know if this already exists with it, but you have those videos. If you have them on YouTube, have you embedded the videos into the Canva cookbook? Oh, just a thought Not to add more things like testing to your plate, but that might be interesting.
Speaker 1Yeah well, nothing's adding to my plate this week because I'm leaving for Ethiopia on Saturday. I'll be there working for two weeks. One of the things that I plan to do for Chef Sahai is to do some video of local cooking, of at least one of the recipes, so we can talk about it in its very local context, which, for us, is rural Ethiopia, in homes with mud floors and wood-fed tiny little fires.
Speaker 2Oh my gosh. So the whole other episode I need to do on planning content for a trip and like pre-planning content ideas and thinking about what you could end up using it for, cause I think a lot of times we go and we experience something and we're like, oh, if I had only, or I wish I had this. So I'm sure you've already done this, but thinking through the next I don't know how many trips you take often but thinking about all the different types of places that you might use content and thinking about do I need a horizontal? Do I need a vertical? Do I need a video? I know it can seem like a lot, but just like looking at the website like, what could I update? What needs something new? What campaigns are we going to be running?
Speaker 1That's a really fun podcast. You'd have a big audience for that, but I want to thank today's audience and I want you to know that anybody who really wants to discuss with me we can talk on the phone. Just more specifically, the process I use and how you can find your new audience right there through a Facebook ad, as hairy as it is.
Speaker 2I am so grateful for you and grateful I mean listeners she'll do it. Take her up on it. Like Megan is real, you rock. Thank you for everything you're doing. Have a fabulous trip and I can't wait to see all the amazing content you come back with. See you, megan, 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 1e so I can reshare and connect with you. I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna stay on it.
