We delivered
71.5% ROI while
coaching RSPCA
to CRO maturity
Our work increased the number and size of donations generated by the RSPCA's website. At the same time, our coaching enabled them to bring experimentation in-house within a year.
Client: RSPCA
Sector: Charity
Website: RSPCA.org.uk
Services: CRO Analytics and data, User and audience research, Experience design, In-housing
The RSPCA receives over 1 million emergency calls and rescues more than 50,000 animals annually. This work relies on public support, including online donations, so digital fundraising is crucial to the Society’s long-term animal welfare strategy.
Having begun a process of digital transformation in 2020, the RSPCA needed to grow the revenue generated by existing audiences. Our CRO programme ran throughout 2021 and helped increase the frequency and size of online donations whilst equipping staff with the skills, knowledge, and digital tools needed to conduct ongoing experimentation.
Key project outcomes
The challenge
At the beginning of 2020, the RSPCA faced two significant challenges:
- It needed to attract more donations despite restricted advertising budgets.
- The marketing team needed to address a shortfall in vital digital skills
Tackling both issues at once, the Society searched for a Conversion Rate Optimisation agency that could work with existing staff to increase donations and cultivate in-house expertise.
As one of the UK’s leading marketing agencies for charities and non-profits, with a proven history of growing revenue and building digital teams, Fresh Egg was the Society’s first-choice partner. Towards the end of 2020, the RSPCA’s Digital and Fundraising Team requested our support for a CRO project with the following aims:
- Kick-off a programme of high-velocity A/B tests
- Train the marketing team to bring CRO in-house
- Increase long-term revenue through optimisation
Fresh Egg has driven some fantastic results and completely changed how we look at and understand CRO internally. This project has opened up so many exciting opportunities for the future. The results speak for themselves!
Jon Eserin, Assistant Director of Public Fundraising, RSPCA
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Our project lead, Nicky says
It’s been fantastic to see all the hard work that the RSPCA and Fresh Egg teams have put into developing a CRO framework and the process paying dividends. There’s been such enthusiasm for the programme internally, and it shows in the results - everyone should be very proud of their achievements.
Nicky Moody, Project Director
Our solution
To kick off the project, we implemented Google Optimize 360. Our Analytics and Data team performed a full Google Analytics audit on the RSPCA website, reconfiguring goals and events and updating tags to improve data hygiene.
By integrating Optimize 360 with the RSPCA's existing Google Analytics platform, we could analyse each test from several angles.
Next, our CRO specialists worked with RSPCA staff to establish a backlog of A/B test hypotheses. These concepts drew from quantitative and UX analysis and included insight from user testing on revenue-generating pages. We prioritised these hypotheses using a scoring matrix and built a development roadmap to coordinate the briefing, sign-off and production of tests with internal stakeholders.
Within 12 months, our work had produced some spectacular results:
- Growing average donation values by 8.79%
- Increasing the donation page conversion rate by 10.23%
- Improving the visibility of deeper underlying donation-type pages.
By the summer of 2021, our testing workflow was at optimal velocity, and we switched to focus on the training and enablement of RSPCA’s Digital and Fundraising team. Our CRO specialists delivered training sessions on digital fundamentals, such as A/B testing, web development and QA, personalisation, and statistical analysis.
Our digital expert, Stephen says
Working with the RSPCA has allowed us to use insights from previous charity sector projects and explore new ideas. Combining detailed event analytics with concepts from behavioural science has been particularly exciting.
Stephen Courtney, Senior CRO & UX Strategist
The outcome
As a result of this project, between 2021 and 2022, we completed 12 A/B tests with nine winners ready for hard coding. The revenue uplift from this programme generated a ROI of over 71% above the retainer value in the first year alone.
Within a year of the project commencing, the RSPCA in-housed their CRO activities. We provided documentation and induction materials to assist this transition and remained available to support the Society in the months after our programme concluded.
