Promoting a Charity Gala on Social Media: What ¥80,000 Did for YouMeWe
YouMeWe’s mission is: “To empower vulnerable youth in Japan to achieve independence and financial stability.” On October 14, the highly respected NPO led by founder Michael Clemons held a fundraising gala in Tokyo. Our campaign had two jobs: get people to the event and inform more people about the organization. Custom Media were given eight days and ¥80,000 to do that. Our plan assumed around 25 leads. The campaign produced 138.
One form to separate two interests
The campaign ran on Meta in English, using instant lead forms so people could reach out without leaving Facebook or Instagram, resulting in 88 saying they were interested in the gala, while 50 asked for more details.
That division matters a lot when dealing with the budget of an NPO. Any charity audience contains people ready to buy a ticket this week and people who have never heard of you. One question on the form sorted them with no extra work, and the second group didn’t turn into wasted spend. Fifty people who asked for information are 50 people YouMeWe can write to about next year’s event, or about contributing in other ways, without eating up more ad spend or outreach budget.
Give people something to look at
Custom Media knows that a charity dinner is easy for viewers to scroll over, as they’re not uncommon. YouMeWe had a Shohei Ohtani jersey on display at the gala, so the static ads used it as the hook. Targeting stayed in Tokyo and layered interests in social causes, philanthropy, baseball and event participation.
Then, the leads came in, and they were mostly women. Women submitted 103 of the 138 leads, or 74.6%. The 45–54 age group was the largest at 47 leads, with 35–44 adding another 37. Those two bands made up about 61% of everything we collected. Men submitted 35 leads, 14 of them in the 45–54 group.
Baseball was one of the interest layers, and three in four responders were women. The report can’t tell us which interest did the work. That’s the argument for opening the demographic breakdown a few days in. If the people responding aren’t who you pictured, there’s still time to change the copy or the image.
Facebook outperformed Instagram once again
Facebook brought in 85 leads, about 62%, and Instagram brought in 53. We saw the same lean toward Facebook in the Singapore Management University event campaign, where an older, professional audience responded there first. With YouMeWe’s responders sitting mostly between their mid-thirties and mid-fifties, it makes sense.
Fifty-three leads from Instagram is still more than one third of the total. Switching it off early would have cost a lot, so let a few days of data make that decision.
Where the ¥80,000 went
Spend finished at ¥80,363, which was a slim ¥363 over budget. The ads reached 22,134 people across 68,131 impressions and drew 829 link clicks. Cost per Mille was ¥1,180 and cost per lead came to ¥582. In terms of frequency, the campaign landed at 3.08, so the average person saw the ad a little more than three times in eight days. For a short push that’s fine, although on a longer run I would suggest bringing in a second creative before people tire of the first.
GoConnect also ran an event page and a newsletter giveaway for two gala tickets alongside the ads, which put the event in front of readers already based in Tokyo. Our Grand Hyatt giveaway shows how that format works and it ties in beautifully here.
Leads are not tickets
The 88 people who said they wanted to attend hadn’t bought anything when they submitted the form. The campaign closed on October 12 and the gala was on October 14, which left very little time to turn an inquiry into a seat.
The SMU results are a useful warning here. Lead forms produced more than five times the registrations of the landing-page campaign, but about 32.61% of those registrants attended, against 72.73% from the landing page. An easy form brings in more people, and some of them are only half-sure if they’ll attend, so overshoot the mark.
What to take to your own event
- Put one sorting question in the form. “Attend the event” and “tell me more about us” gave YouMeWe two lists from one campaign.
- Lead with an attention grabber. A jersey, a guest, an auction item. Something a person can picture beats a description of the evening.
- Start earlier and stop earlier. Eight days was tight, and ending two days before doors open left little room to follow up.
- Contact your leads right away. A message within a day or two of the form, then a reminder close to the event, is where interest turns into attendance.
NPOs rarely have a large media budget, and this campaign worked with a small one. If your organization is planning a gala or fundraiser in Tokyo, get in touch with GoConnect to talk through what a campaign like this could look like for you.
