If lockdown has taught us anything it’s that perspective is important - taking time out to pause, reflect and refocus. So at Rally, we’ve done just that with our first ever client, Peace Direct.
A partnership to build a new approach
When we set up Rally, we wanted to create a new way of working: one that is focused on collaboration and partnership, so clients are empowered to transform how they mobilise the public at scale. A movement, not a moment. Lasting change, not a one hit wonder.
We share these values with Peace Direct. Their approach to peacebuilding in the field is unique amongst INGOs and they wanted to carry on this non traditional approach to radically change how they engage the public at scale. All of this with a view to ultimately making their income - and with that their work - sustainable.
So we were both really excited to be able to form a partnership back in November 2018 to work together to create a Digital Engagement Strategy. A strategy to build an engaged community of digital supporters, joined by a desire to build long term peace - and so lay the foundation to create sustainability and lasting, impactful change.
As Gemma Britton, Head of Fundraising and Communications at Peace Direct said, ‘Our work together has felt very much like a partnership because Rally’s values and approach are so well aligned with our own work with peacebuilding partners around the world. Those of collaboration, learning, innovation, being honest about what’s not working, and always holding long-term success and sustainability at the heart of what we do.’
A joined up plan for lasting change
Key to our approach was establishing the levers that would drive us forward to deliver scale, sustainably and for the long term. This meant reviewing Peace Direct’s whole digital ecosystem - from search to social, content to conversion - so we could understand how everything works together and then identify opportunities to take co-ordinated action to transform performance.
From this we created a plan for radical change: a plan where our actions were always led by data and in service of a clear goal shared across fundraising and communications. Namely to deliver, more reach, more action, more money and more impact.
We made it easier for people to find us, overhauling our use of the Google Grant to transform the number and quality of visitors to our website.
And because there’s no point increasing web traffic if you make it hard for those visitors to take action, we focussed on improving our conversion in our priority areas for engagement - our email sign up and donation pages.
Alongside that, we updated our opt-in wording to help build Peace Direct’s community of digital supporters so we could have ongoing communication with as many supporters as possible.
And to make that communication more effective and responsive, we overhauled our email programme - its frequency, content and call to action - to make it geared towards inspiring ongoing action from the community we’re building.
And we didn’t just build a digital community through email, we radically improved our performance in social too, using a storytelling approach to transform reach and engagement.
Embedding new ways of working
All of this was underpinned by a focus on fundamentally changing how the Peace Direct team works forever. Firstly they busted through the old silos of fundraising and communications and put in place shared goals and plans to deliver them. And we adopted a long term view - that this was a never ending journey, where we would always be testing and learning from the data to refine our approach and keep moving forward and building success.
Most importantly Rally helped equip the Peace Direct team to be self sufficient to carry on this journey themselves by bringing in the right partners to share their expertise - Jon who helped us shape the strategy, Chris who trained us in how to use our Google grant more effectively, Rachel who helped us learn how to make our email programme more responsive and Jean who worked with us to build scale, response and engagement in Facebook.
Gemma says ‘After many years in the non-profit sector, it’s been a refreshing change to work with an agency partner which isn’t closed off to working with other experts and most importantly does not create a cycle of long-term over-reliance on their support. A core facet of our work together is that we identify the gaps in our knowledge and operations so as we deliver improvements, the team is also upskilled to do this work ourselves moving forward. This makes it much better value for Peace Direct, much more fulfilling for the team, and crucially we will be able to continue delivering really impactful digital engagement work in the long term’.
Seeing the cumulative impact
A year and a half down the line, with Rally’s help, Peace Direct have not only created the foundations for long term sustainability, but have already made tangible strides forward in their digital engagement approach.
The email file has grown by over 600% since January 2019 and it continues to grow at an extremely cost effective rate.
We’ve increased reach and engagement in Facebook by over 400% and successfully converted this engagement into action through more effective paid social strategies.
The quality of web traffic has significantly increased as we have focussed on our use of the Google Grant. Traffic from this source has increased by over 150%, with an incredible 1,000%+ increase in the conversion of this traffic to our engagement goals.
We’ve launched Facebook fundraising campaigns that have delivered significant income through the use of virtual events.
A new dynamic for the future
These are the first steps in a long journey to transform how Peace Direct engages the public at scale digitally, but we are all excited by the cumulative impact of our efforts so far. And based on what we’ve learnt to date we’ve set goals for the next 12 months to keep on growing scale and improving engagement.
And this success is sustainable because the Peace Direct team is empowered to keep evolving and refining the approach using the skills, confidence and knowledge they’ve acquired - all with an unrelenting focus on their shared goal and with the tools to measure their progress.
Gemma said, ‘Peace Direct’s work with Rally has been transformational. It’s provided us with knowledge, ambition and a real focus on delivering results which will ultimately allow us to shine more of a spotlight on people building peace around the world and give them the support which works for them. We no longer seek out small wins - in a niche sector which has struggled to cut through with the public, we are now seeing that with the right strategy people do believe in our cause and are willing to support us. Rally has given us the confidence to know we can and should be striving for growth and scale.’
So while Rally is still very much part of the next chapter, thanks to how we’ve worked together our dynamic has changed. The Peace Direct team is firmly in the driving seat. And we couldn’t be happier about that. Because that was the initial plan.
Photographs are supplied by Peace Direct and were taken by Greg Funnell.