How this NGO captured more leads at a lower cost from 7 different channels using WhatsApp automation
Animal Equality is an international organization working with society, governments, and companies to end cruelty to farmed animals. They have offices in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Spain, India, and the United Kingdom.
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Animal Equality works to end cruelty to farmed animals through intense undercover investigations, corporate and government outreach, legal strategies, and grassroots activism.
Los Angeles, CA, USA
80+
Non-profit - Animal Protection
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Animals have been a part of human society for centuries. They have served as companions, assistants, and sources of food. Throughout the years, humans have also used animals for labor and entertainment.
With the advent of industrialization, many animals were forced into lives of servitude and cruelty.
While today we are more aware than ever of the plight of animals and the need to protect them from harm, there’s a lot to be done to make the masses aware of animal abuse and the laws around it.
Many people are still unaware of the laws in place to protect animals from abuse and ensure that they are treated humanely.
Animal Equality is a voice for the voiceless. They work to expose the dark side of factory farming and promote a plant-based and cruelty free life style as the solution to ending animal abuse.
Animal Equality's ultimate goal is to see an end to animal farming by spreading awareness and reaching people worldwide.
Creating awareness about animal cruelty and improving engagement with prospective donors to improve leads
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The rising cost of acquisition and marketing
Attracting leads, capturing intent & converting donors required Animal Equality to create a strong brand recall that reminded the audience about the organization's efforts in achieving the mission.
However, running a broad brand awareness campaign across multiple digital channels wasn’t a budget-friendly strategy. Keeping the lead acquisition costs low and driving recurring donations was an uphill battle full of experiments, failures, and small wins.
One direction - The content marketing funnel & lagging engagement
The Animal Equality team was capturing high intent leads through low-cost content marketing efforts — forms in online petitions, newsletter subscriptions, and even gated content like vegan recipe cookbooks and retargeting the audience using email marketing campaigns.
Gio Fumagalli | International Director of Marketing and Digital Strategy at Animal Equality
Animal Equality's top-of-the-funnel engagement was confined to only 1% of the total user base due to organic distribution algorithms of social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
Hence, it was important for Animal Equality to derisk its dependence on any one particular social media channel, and that’s where the chatbot has played a pivotal role. It has helped increase followership, content engagement and funneling down, and distribute users across Animal Equality’s digital marketing channel mix.
Freedom of expression & free speech roadblock
Animal Equality wanted to get closer to the community and, as a default, felt building a community on Facebook was the way forward.
Animal Equality's zero-censorship policy made it hard to find the proper channels — and many often censored their content. At the same time, they wanted to engage with their supporters in a meaningful way — they wanted to talk to them.
A conversational lead generation channel that’s personalized, inexpensive & independent
People donate for a variety of reasons. Some people donate because they believe in the cause and want to support it or to connect with others who care about the same cause.
Regardless, connecting people to the organization's mission and building 1:1 relationships at scale is key to building trust and bringing people on board to make donations.
WhatsApp - A channel to glue it all together?
The next step was clear for the team — identifying a channel that acts as a glue and binds all the other marketing efforts, including multiple channels and touchpoints with donors.
So the team put together all the learnings from past marketing experiments to conclude three things about their audience:
1) They preferred being made aware & educated about the cause personally;
2) They wanted to easily discover newly published undercover content.
This pointed them towards the most loved chat channel worldwide that promises brands a high user engagement — WhatsApp.
WhatsApp + Automation - The perfect recipe recommended by Conversational Design
To understand the way forward, the team got in touch with a leading conversational marketing agency based in Italy — Conversational Design. They recommended automating WhatsApp and making it the primary conversation channel while integrating it with other channels for lead capturing, nurturing, and engagement with prospective donors.
Mattia Gnemmi | co-founder of Conversational Design
Having worked on multiple projects and clients to deliver conversational marketing experiences using WhatsApp, they saw an apt use case fit and recommended Landbot's WhatsApp chat automation solution.
Landbot - A chatbot platform for the non-developers
Landbot’s WhatsApp chat automation solution has functionalities like a no-code builder, team workspaces, and a testing environment, which makes bot development & async team collaboration easier.
Animal Equality has been using Landbot’s WhatsApp chat automation to generate leads and engage with activists and donors in real-time.
On the other hand, they can check their campaigns' performance in real-time. With Landbot's Analytics section, it's easy to understand what's working and what's not working.
The platform is enabling Animal Equality to:
- Reach a wider audience across different platforms;
- Integrate with other marketing assets like their Website, Landing pages, emails & ads;
- Transform marketing content and campaigns into conversations that help forge donor relationships.
Mastering the Art of Reciprocation with a Chatbot
The chatbot flow is simple and initiates when you click on an ad that promises you a free Animal Equality goodie — a branded bracelet. A conversational chatbot asks you for your basic details, such as mobile number, email, and physical address, followed by subscribing to two social accounts — Youtube and Instagram — before the goodie is successfully shipped to you.
Here’s a sneak peek into how Animal Equality’s WhatsApp chatbot engages a prospective donor in a conversation by offering a free branded bracelet.
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All of the lead data captured in the bot flow is being sent to Salesforce via a Google sheets integration.
Reach Maximus - One channel to acquire an audience for six others
How the bot collects info and opts in user in all the 7 channels for content outreach.
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The team does regular lead nurturing that involves onboarding sequences and email broadcasts. Apart from this, they have fundraising activities that target leads specifically in the list, where they convert the majority of the leads. Animal Equality uses Landbot to send proactive messages to prospective donors in this list to nurture them, keep loyal donors in the loop, and build long-lasting relationships.
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Step 4 - Campaign assets submission, review & approval
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International Director of Marketing and Digital Strategy at Animal Equality
Marketing Manager | Conversational Design
Boosted lead engagement to 86%, resulting in reduced cost per lead and over 2% overall donor conversions
Reduced drop offs with 8 out of 10 people completing the bot flow
Animal Equality has 47 different user fields in its lead generation process, and yet 86.29% of leads engage with all the touchpoints due to the interactivity and conversational nature of the bot flow.
The interactive nature of WhatsApp has made it easier for them to take action throughout the process, as opposed to a form where donors can get overwhelmed by the number of required fields or decide they don't have time to fill out so many separate fields and drop off.
Slashed the Cost Per Lead significantly for all the channels
The blended cost per lead for all the leads acquired through the chatbot is 2.33 Euros, where the lead is accessible on the majority of the seven channels. This is significantly lower when compared to the cost per lead for building a list for only the email channel, which is 0.30 Euros.
37.5% uplift in donor conversions in the free bracelet campaign
The graphic below shows the uplift in donations for people who opted in to receive the same free bracelet in their direct mail by opting in using a chatbot vs. a two-step pop-up while signing a petition.
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650$
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Shaping social change & creating equality for all beings
It's safe to say that there's something on WhatsApp for everyone.
Ultimately, Animal Equality has shown us that businesses and startups can benefit from using WhatsApp for lead generation and conversion as much as non profit organizations. The only difference is that you will have to figure out how to split test and fine-tune your strategy since so many audience segments, channels, and bots are available.
Overall, Animal Equality uses a combination of tactics to drive people to their cause. They have the resources to run a campaign, the creativity to create compelling content, and the persistence to continue such efforts in the long term. And with Landbot, they now have the right stack to generate leads, create a following and engage with people proactively on a platform they are already using.
With plans to implement a web bot to funnel their web users into WhatsApp for better conversion, Animal Equality has unique means of outreach for exposing the public to animal rights issues.
Animal Equality has been and continues to be at the forefront of social change and creating equality for all beings. By supporting them in any way possible, we can help move our world toward a cruelty-free, animal-related lifestyle.
And if you're ready to pledge your support for them, you can donate here.
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