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About

Rebuilding Together’s mission is to repair homes, revitalize communities, and rebuild lives with the vision of safe homes and communities for everyone.

Helping Neighbors in Need: Growing Rebuilding Together’s Online Network

Rebuilding Together was looking to increase their network of online donors to support home repairs across the country. They were also eager to learn how to better utilize their Google Ad grant to respond to disasters at a moment’s notice, and how to improve the user experience of their site overall.

Big Wins

From 2019-2020:

93% increase in traffic to website from the Google Ad Grant
38% decrease in cost per acquisition for new email supporters using Facebook ads
176% increase in email signups year-over-year

What We Did

Building a solid foundation in Google Analytics

Whole Whale audited and reconfigured the Rebuilding Together Google Analytics account so the team could track key performance indicators, such as email signups, conversions from Facebook advertising via the Facebook pixel, and social shares. Whole Whale also built a real-time Data Studio dashboard to allow the Rebuilding Together team to better review, analyze, and report on website traffic internally.

Addressing community needs with the Google Ad Grant

Whole Whale built out new ad groups and keywords to increase traffic and conversions from the Rebuilding Together Google Ad Grant account. Whole Whale also worked with Rebuilding Together to craft a Disasters campaign template that could be turned on when disaster strikes a particular community to help them have immediate access to Rebuilding Together’s valuable online resources and on-the-ground support. The template included an easy-to-use keyword generator so that the Rebuilding Together team didn’t need to spend more than 10 minutes to create dozens of disaster-relevant, high-volume keywords in their Google Grant account.

Traffic from Google Ads

The results:

93% increase in traffic to rebuildingtogether.org from the Google Ad Grant year-over-year
218% increase in email signups from the Google Ad Grant year-over-year
67% increase in grant utilization from the Google Ad Grant year-over-year

Acquiring new supporters with Facebook advertising and pop-ups

One of Rebuilding Together’s main goals for the project was to increase the acquisition of new potential donors. Whole Whale crafted an email acquisition strategy that included landing page updates, pop-up A/B testing, and lead generation advertising campaigns on Facebook. We utilized Facebook’s advanced targeting to find audiences who have demonstrated interest in organizations like Rebuilding Together or who have attributes similar to existing supporters, but who aren’t already in the Rebuilding Together network. In just a few tests, wins included:

2,400+ new leads from Facebook at an average CPA <$2
38% lower CPA month over month through audience and message optimization
176% increase in email signups year-over-year

In May 2020, Whole Whale helped Rebuilding Together launch pop-ups and a tailored welcome series to drive new leads to support the COVID-19 Emergency Repairs Fund. These updates contributed to a 518% increase in email signups and 206% increase in donations month-over-month.

Training the team

The Rebuilding Together team was eager to skill up on digital strategy to implement Whole Whale’s recommendations and run their own tests. In addition to layering in training in all our strategy presentations, Whole Whale also led custom training on digital advertising, email marketing, and using the pop-up tool OptinMonster. Each training was recorded for the Rebuilding Together team to refer back to and share with future hires.

PEOPLE ARE SAYING…

“The Whole Whale team took the time to immerse themselves in the work of our organization and learn about our priorities. With their help, we made significant changes to our digital marketing approach and in just a few weeks significantly grew our reach. Their ‘teach someone to fish’ approach has given our team new skills to master and will undoubtedly lead to audience growth for our marketing efforts in the future.”
— Max Gouttebroze, Vice President, Marketing and Communications