Using data to inform the way forward

As digital channels continue to claim a growing share of audiences’ attention, organisations are increasingly turning to digital marketing tactics to grow sales, and build long-term brand awareness. With these new opportunities comes a new risk: without a unified, holistic digital strategy, these tactics can deliver disappointing results, and prevent teams from achieving their true digital potential.

This case study of ntegrity’s work with Vinnies perfectly illustrates the factors behind digital success, and how digital strategy can be implemented for optimal results and ROI.

Using data to inform the way forward

ntegrity’s analysts conducted a thorough Digital Audit across all digital channels (including search marketing, social media, website, email, and donor database) to identify shortfalls, opportunities and areas in need of immediate action. Taking a look at Vinnies internal culture to better understand the internal barriers to change, ntegrity was able to identify some critical issues:

• Vinnies’ donors were getting older, but data highlighted significant shortfalls when it came to engaging younger audiences across all digital channels.
• Staff were siloed and weren’t working in collaboration with each other to best tell stories online.
• Data was not being used strategically to inform campaign decisions.
• The public knew about Vinnies’ op shops, but not a lot about their life-saving services and charitable work in our community.

A new vision

The highest priority was translating these problems to the Vinnies team in a clear and convincing manner. Creating a narrative meant Vinnies were able to understand their key business problems in the space of a 30-minute presentation.

A clear and concise explanation of the issues translated into the development of an ‘always on’ content marketing strategy to transform a silent, stagnant following into an empowered community of active Australians.

Search engine marketing was identified as one of their highest-converting yet most under-resourced channels. By implementing search engine marketing tactics in their campaigns, Vinnies secured a staggering 17:1 ROI on SEM advertising spend.

Growing alongside Vinnies

Vinnies were able to understand the challenges in a deeper and more meaningful way through fortnightly WIP meetings, and consistent data-led recommendations.

In following the data source and being able to continually feed real-time insights back to the client in a simple and actionable way, they were able to measure, assess, and improve Vinnies’ performance. Vinnies now circulate these reports organisation-wide to empower their whole team with knowledge.

Vinnies has built a culture of content, whereby staff members are equipped with tools that make them passionate content producers and storytellers. This was in response to a large increase in engagement data in response to volunteer-based social media content. The Vinnies team now have tools enabling the collection of user-generated content and stories from volunteers.

ntegrity’s work with Vinnies has allowed a legacy charity to become an online leader. Vinnies have now allocated 240% more budget to digital, built a team of eight digital staff, and put digital strategy at the heart of their organisation. They now make data a priority, and share their learnings by circulating digital reports throughout the organisation, nation-wide. With our guidance, they have become an organisation of digital natives.