Our strategic investment in digital marketing has resulted in improved performance across a wide range of metrics. We increased our digital marketing spend in 23/24 to drive awareness, increase brand recall and support both short term and long-term income. More people than ever have seen and interacted with our brands online as a result. In combination with our marketing activity across business as usual and integrated campaigns (synergising with Direct Mail asks, OOH, Radio), our digital marketing has contributed to increased brand awareness, donor volume and income via the website.

The underlying theme is that we’ve strategically invested across both ‘above the line’ marketing and fundraising, as there needs to be a discovery phase which allows branding to get a foothold, so we can create longer relationships and ensure when we do have big appeals we benefit from that uplift. As a result, consistently across the FY we have seen a per month YoY increase in our key KPIs: sessions, donations, and revenue. There is a linear correlation between our strategic use of the investment and YoY uplift across the site.

As our charity brands are in their infancy, historically they have had limited brand exposure and therefore limited brand recall amongst a wider digital audience. Therefore, to facilitate the growth of income and donations, we invested tactically, and ‘front-loaded’ investment in both traditional paid media and scalable new ad tech (AdSmart) – which has enabled us to ‘punch above our weight’ and appear on TV screens, in households we never have before. A key investment has been our ‘always-on’ activity which has uplifted the baseline of activity for our brands digitally. Both areas will see increased investment in new FY, as per the growth plan.

The planned goals for uplift were not determined by income growth alone, but also by the engagement and awareness of our brands. Fortunately, this has been reflected in YoY growth in Social Media audiences (17% uplift YoY) and our email subscribers (32% uplift YoY) – both of which will feed future income activity around retention and cross-sell (fundraising strategy).

We forecasted for ROAS to be lower than prior years (but still positive), using CPA to aid benchmarking – we planned to take a measured ‘acceptable loss’ as we had to front load brand activity, to activate the fundraising potential in our new engaged audiences. Therefore, we have spent substantially more than previous years – but considering the sequencing of an acquisition/growth strategy - we can't simply switch the income tap on, without going through the brand recall phase.

This also meant, as per standard with new products/brands, our strategy was not fixated on achieving a positive year 1 ROI. Due to the above but also as the true ROI will be easier to gauge when we have a fundraising strategy to deliver on retention and lifetime value.

Fortunately, as you will see below, we were able to still achieve growth targets, whilst maintaining a positive ROI.

Across our three brands we had a 153% increase in website sessions, with Guy’s Cancer Charity having the largest increase of 298% YoY. YoY variances in key KPIs: traffic, donation volume, income were consistently positive for almost every month (exceptions being Oct and Jan for revenue). There is strong growth – exception being GSTC.

When the digital marketing strategy was developed there was little precedent for the activity within the organistion, with digital marketing being very limited to specific activity and not part of an overarching strategy. Given this, we targeted YoY growth of approx. 15% as a benchmark for our acquisition strategy. This figure however is quite arbitrary, and in the absence of fundraising targets – we used the general financial practice of anything between 15% and 25% annual growth being healthy.

As accounted for by the sequencing of our strategy - our CPA has also naturally increased, an inevitable side effect of investing in growth during our infancy.

We have two figures for CPA:

However, despite the increase, the CPA of £57 is healthy, particularly when considered against the ‘trade-off’ in growth and average gift value of our donors - which ranges between £30 – 60 depending on brand. Ideally these figures would be underpinned by a fundraising strategy/retention plan, to better inform the viability of this CPA. However, in the absence of this, we can realistically forecast these newly acquired digital donors to break even within their next 2-3 follow up asks, based on average gift (a year 2-3 break even most likely). Again, the follow up fundraising retention plan is paramount here. Regardless, we always will benchmark acquisition opportunities/investments using CPA – when this figure is too high, we will review if trade off is worth the financial hit.

As explained above, we forecasted for ROAS/ROI to be lower than prior years, however this was inevitable as we must front load brand activity, to activate the fundraising potential in our new, and growing, engaged audiences. Therefore, we have spent substantially more than previous years – but considering the sequencing of a growth strategy - we can't simply switch the income tap on, without going through the brand recall phase.

Despite the increase in media spend, the variance of a 25% increase in ROAS is acceptable considering the trade-offs:

Revenue has increased by 64% with actual donations via the website increasing 50% YoY. Meaning we rose from £214k and 2220 donations in the prior FY, up to £353k and 3381 donations. It’s worth noting that Dec we saw our biggest spike in site giving on record, and this correlated with AdSmart activity.

Ultimately for every pound we spend on advertising we receive £2.46 – which is still a healthy return and proves this is one of the safest channels to scale for growth.

There is a clear correlation between revenue performance and the additional eyes on our brands/mission via the increase in upper funnel/reach.

When we consider the true ROI (this includes ad spend and ALL agency fees for management/delivery of paid media) – we are at £1.82. As mentioned previously, at this stage in an acquisition/growth strategy we didn’t account for a positive ROI until end of year 2 (as per standard), so it is encouraging to see the investment in digital marketing activity paying off earlier than forecasted.

The areas for development are the handling of the GSTC brand, as although this adds to the overall pot, in its current state our activity doesn’t seem to be meaningfully contributing to uplift in performance across key KPIs.

The investment in the proposed growth strategy is working, considering the consistent YoY growth (in traffic, donation volume and revenue), the trade-offs and ultimately the infancy of the brands. Our priorities next year are to continue to build off that uplift from our always-on activity (across brand and fundraising) to tactically upscale new ad tech that worked for us and to use the increased team to plug gaps around email and website conversions. We are also exploring using the effective tactics for our digital cash asks, as a foundation for testing regular giving asks, as increasing RG income is a strategic pillar for the long-term growth of unrestricted income.

It's also worth mentioning that this year’s steep growth will likely not be replicated as we were embarking on new initiatives, this year priority is scalability, and our target is set at 15% of our forecasted revenue figure last year.

Despite a 29% increase in Media Spend YoY for the GSTC brand it witnessed a 2% decline in the number of donors and only a 7% increase in revenue (too dependent on outlier gifts). The current trajectory doesn't align with our overall growth strategy, and we have reassessed where our resources are allocated to ensure media spend is optimised, whilst we review the proposition for GSTC (content strategy work).

Despite the positive ROI for this activity, we are still exploring opportunities to lower operational costs and will be exploring agency options later in the year. This aligns with the wider organisational goal of lowering operational costs and maximising impact. We will also be developing work on the Wifi lead generation project via the Trust, utilising the footfall from the trust as a cost-effective way to deliver lead-gen with an engaged audience (this will require it’s own very considered supporter journey, being worked on with the Fundraising Team).

Over the past year, we have seen significant year-over-year growth across all key metrics, with web traffic increasing by 165% and donations rising by 59%. As per our financial projections, this surge in traffic has substantially boosted donation income, resulting in a total gross digital income (including Gift Aid) of £201,994.

As previously assessed, ELCC stands out as our most sustainable digital fundraising brand, consistently demonstrating broad appeal with supporters located nationwide.

GCC has had a very successful year. Our digital strategy has led to remarkable growth across all our core KPIs – web traffic has surged by 298%, donations have seen an 83% increase, and income has grown by 223%.

Among our three brands, GSTC has shown the lowest growth this year, despite an increase in web traffic, indicating that our audience may find it less compelling to donate to compared to children's and cancer charities.

The only consistent growth for GSTC has been observed in site traffic, which has increased by 114% year-on-year. However, there was a 2% decrease in the number of online donations, making it the only brand to experience a decline in this aspect. Nonetheless, GSTC managed to achieve a 7% increase in income year-on-year, raising a total of £67,648 (including Gift Aid).

Despite a 29% increase in media spend year-on-year, GSTC witnessed a 2% decline in the number of donors. This deviation from our growth strategy trajectory necessitates a reassessment of resource allocation to ensure optimal media spend.

As previously noted, GSTC was the sole brand to register a decline in donations, with the only consistent growth for GSTC has been in the form of site traffic, which has increased 114%.

Although our paid media campaigns were allocated higher budgets, they failed to meet projected expenditure levels due to underperformance. This was indicated by reduced click-through rates on our ads and fewer conversions among users who clicked on them.

The GSTC audience was the most London-centric of our brands with 47% of donors located in London, in contrast to 31% for ELCC. This compounds the theory that GSTC lacks the broad appeal experienced by ELCC and GCC.