Case Study: Ambitious Virtual Fundraiser Smashes Goals
COVID-19 changed how the entire world was operating, but that didn’t mean we stopped. When presented with a challenge we rise up and face it head on. So, when Rocky Mountain College started planning their Black Tie Blue Jeans fundraiser Kinetic turned this ambitious virtual fundraiser into a success.
Opportunity
Black Tie Blue Jeans is the biggest and most important fundraiser supporting student scholarships at Rocky Mountain College (RMC), a private liberal arts institution located in Billings, Montana. Like almost everything else in 2020, this event had to be completely reimagined to keep students and attendees safe.
The traditional formal dinner with speakers, student testimonials and a live auction was out of the question, so RMC reached out to Kinetic Marketing & Creative to help them take this highly anticipated event entirely on-line.
While everyone misses gathering together as a community, we recognized that in this new digital format, there were also some big opportunities, such as reaching a broader audience, connecting with more people and strengthening their on-line presence, brand awareness and messaging. Ultimately, however, the driving goal was always to raise money for scholarships and impact the lives of more students.
Actions
We knew that this year it was crucial to infuse the emotional appeal for student scholarships in every aspect of the campaign, as live testimonies and personal interactions with students were impossible. Many assumed this year’s event would be canceled and time was of the essence. The Kinetic team immediately kicked-off what would be a hard-hitting 7-day campaign by developing a general awareness plan that included social media strategy and email sequencing to connect with as many people as possible.
Collaborating closely with RMC administration and students we created an impactful testimonial 3-minute video, which we posted to the RMC website and social media accounts. We also developed five separate emails, each with their own messaging and powerful call to action and facilitated their automation.
Our team then built out the imagery and content for their Live-Auction and Scholarship Challenge pages via the OneCause platform ensuring ease of use, accessibility and clear on-brand messaging. Finally, Kinetic’s Social Media specialists focused on increasing engagement through Facebook. Throughout the campaign we tracked and measured social media and website impressions, engagements and interactions. The Kinetic team also stayed in close contact with RMC leadership and administration to get their feedback and make sure key communications were on-going.
Results
At last, our entire team was thrilled to learn that RMC’s Black Tie Blue Jeans 2020 not only met and exceeded their ambitious $300,000 goal, their social media fan base increased by nearly 6,500 people, engagement went up by a whopping 15060.9% and social post impressions grew by 915.1% over the previous month. In surpassing their goal and building deeper connections with Montanans across the state, more students will have opportunities to transform their lives through education.
Our partnership with Rocky proved to be a huge success and we cannot wait to work with them again. Click here for the PDF of this case study.
