Guiding Light cuts costs by telling their own story

Erin Ledy and Liv Antoniolli are a part of the small team at Guiding Light focused on sharing their mission with their city. But even though it’s a small team, they have great expectations around what they can achieve.

Erin is the associate director of development & communications, so she knows about all the projects they have their hands in. 

She says, “We do email, direct mail, newsletters, all those things. I pull a lot of the content directly from our programming — the stories and statistics — and really make sure the focus of our communications, as a team, is about the change our work is bringing to our community.”

And Liv, as the development coordinator, knows better than anyone the day-to-day work of digital outreach. 

She says, “One of our primary goals is to make our campaigns as cohesive as possible. I do a lot of our digital stuff and then Erin does a lot of our written content, and so we’re always working to align those efforts.”

Bringing it all back home

Like a lot of nonprofits, Guiding Light used to outsource the bulk of its marketing. When the organization first got started, it simply didn’t have the resources to try to take it on itself.

Erin says, “We used to outsource everything, and the costs added up. Our agency’s reporting was fine, but for long stretches, we really had no idea what was really happening. But it felt overwhelming to try to do it on our own. We didn’t exactly know where to start, but we understood the benefits of bringing it all in-house.” 

There were two things that ultimately pushed them over the edge and made it clear that this was a risk they were going to take. First was the lack of meaningful data coming back. Erin put it like this, “We were paying for it. So why can't we know what’s happening?” 

But the second might have been more important: messaging. Erin said, “With other people creating our messaging, it wasn't as authentic as we needed it to be.”

She first ran into the Feathr team at the Virtuous Conference, and she did something she usually didn’t — she signed up for a demo. But she’s so happy she did. 

She says, “It’s been a really good fit. We've been able to keep the same digital budget and cut our total cost in half. But what we’re building is also more authentic and genuine, which has increased our stewardship. With a small team, it’s all about doing the best we can with what we have — and for less!”

Where everyone knows your name

Liv says, “We’re pretty local. I think a lot of the people in our community know about us. So it isn’t as much about finding new people as it is about directing them to specific messaging.”

Much of that question has been answered through Feathr’s retargeting ads. These ads serve to people who have already visited the website, or even visited specific pages on the website. This ensures that every dollar of ad spend is going to go toward someone who’s already interested.

Erin says, “We weren’t able to do this before, but now we retarget page by page on our website. And we’re learning more and more about our website visitors through the process, which is allowing us to send more targeted messaging based on these audience segments.” 

And Liv, from the development side of things, immediately thinks about how this connects to donor communications.

She says, “Our Lightkeeper page is where we house everything related to monthly giving. And now with retargeting campaigns, we’ll serve ads to people who visited that page but didn't sign up or people who recently made a one-time gift.”

Plus Feathr’s ability to pull in data from their existing CRM makes it easy to create even more touchpoints.

“We run our email efforts in Virtuous, and we have been able to serve display ads to those on our email lists using Feathr’s email mapping campaign type,” says Liv. “This is a great way for us to create consistent touchpoints for our engaged donors subscribed to our emails, and break through the noise in their inbox.”

Building on past wins

A lot of nonprofits have big years and then bad years. But the ones that create consistent and steady growth are the ones who learn from their wins (and losses)!

Erin says, “It’s fun to be able to go in and say, ‘Oh, this person went to our website. He looked at Liv's profile and he looked at this person's profile and then he went to this page and then went to this page and then he donated.’”

This ability to dig deep on campaigns has given Guiding Light insights into what’s working and what isn’t. And this means that over time they’re building campaigns with more accurate expectations. Nothing’s guaranteed in life, but by listening to the results year over year, they’re beginning to see a little more clearly what lies ahead.

The house always wins

The story of Guiding Light started with them bringing everything in-house. But what really happened was that the house added a few rooms.

Erin says, “Feathr is a definite standout in terms of customer service, knowledge, and capacity. We haven’t had similar experiences on other platforms. It can feel like nobody delivers on what they say they're going to do, but it's the exact opposite with Feathr. They’ve delivered on it all.”

Guiding Light is first and foremost a testament to the power of change. But their willingness to grow into digital advertising has led to increased impact in their city.

Erin says, “It's absolutely essential to be online. Things are changing and you have to change with them. We’ve already seen a decline in our direct mail ROI. And so, the money we spend on Feathr Digital ads, it's a lot less than what we spend on a mailer, but it’s bringing in outsized results.”