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About

The Salvation Army is an international, faith-based charitable organization with a simple mission: to help those in need without discrimination.

The Challenge

The Salvation Army had received a grant to support Mayor De Blasio’s Universal Pre-K program in New York City for several of their field locations. By the summer of 2014, they were behind target recruitment numbers and needed to accelerate a digital marketing effort in a short amount of time.

What we did

Whole Whale was brought onboard in early August 2014 and immediately assessed the landscape to identify internal and external challenges.

Digital Strategy + Web Development

Within one week of project start, we modeled the user flow of registering parents, rebuilt the website landing page for the NYC Pre-K program, and setup a campaign URL tagging strategy to track online and offline marketing efforts. WW built out and executed a multi-channel marketing campaign and adjusted it weekly based on the data and changing requirements from the field locations.

Based on the available tracked data, WW’s efforts led to a 100% increase of parents enrolling in the program. In the wrap up process WW identified a clear plan for how the next year’s outreach could be improved, combined with a larger vision for integrating constituent data.

Google Analytics + Impact Mapping

Whole Whale set up Google Analytics to properly track parent registrations for the Universal Pre-K program and determine the sources of traffic that were working. Custom dashboards were created to help the team better understand how the site and marketing efforts were performing. We built out a clear marketing funnel that helped the team understand the relationship between traffic and their business objectives.

Digital Advertising + Google AdWords Grant

Whole Whale helped leverage the Google AdWords Grant to target parents in the NYC area. In addition, we created hypertargeted ads that drove additional registrations for the Greater New York Salvation Army Pre-K programs.

Testimonial

“Within a week of hiring Whole Whale to help with our Pre-Kindergarten recruitment efforts, our enrollment had increased tenfold. They were very attentive in monitoring our progress, and they strategically adjusted their marketing strategies to most effectively reach our goals. The best part is, they didn’t stop working for us when our recruitment deadline was up. After the recruitment process was over, Whole Whale met with representatives from all of our departments, explained what strategies they used, and discussed how we could use those strategies to develop a comprehensive enrollment strategy for the years to come.”

Zach Blodgett, Associate Counsel & Contract Manager, The Salvation Army – Greater New York Division. (Nov 2014)