An MBA project in which we developed an online marketing strategy to increase awareness of the ASPA and increase funding.

1. ASPCA Digital
Strategy
MBAK 619 – Week 8 Written Assignment
March 1, 2012
Colleen Weiss-Ramirez and Diana Wood
Regis University

2. ASPCA Situation
• ASPCA Structure allows
all programs to flow from
three core areas:
– Community outreach
– Animal health services
– Anti-cruelty initiatives
• These three core
areas make up ONE
ASPCA.

3. ASPCA Situation
• Specific programs dependant on donors
include:
– ASPCA’s Meet Your Match™
– www.ASPCApro.org for animal welfare professionals
– Onyx and Breezy Shefts Adoption Center
– Animal Behavior Center
– Animal Poison Control Center
– Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital
– Other services: disaster readiness, humane education,
mobile spay and neuter clinics, pet grief counseling,
veterinary outreach, field services, government
relations, and humane law enforcement
– Funding to other organizations, agencies,
shelters, and advocacy groups

4. ASPCA Problem
• Many website needs:
– Consumer education
– Brand recognition
– Animal adoption
– Organizational donations
• Dueling messages lead to
donor distraction and
confusion.
• Must make it easy for
the consumer to donate
and increase the
understanding of the
impact of the gift.

5. ASPCA Solution
• Digital strategy and promotional plan should be created
to improve communications to donors and increase
giving back and donation to the organization.
• The key to the ASPCA’s
success is generating
sufficient funds to
support the multitude
of programs the
organization supports.

6. Competitive Overview
• ASPCA compared their digital
strategy to that of:
– Petfinder Foundation
– Humane Society
– PetSmart Charities
• ASPCA has the broadest
goals of all the compared
organizations:
– Advocacy
– In-depth support for shelters
– Adoption
– Animal health services
– and more

7. Digital Behavior: Kit Tee
Visits the website to read in
depth articles
She will search for specific
topics and events
Participates actively in
About Kit Tee: social media and uses it as
a fundraising tool
• Donates time and money to
animal causes frequently. Watches and shares
videos frequently
• Loves animals and wants to
help protect them. Donates money online as
• Has a lifelong dedication to a monthly sponsor, also
donates in person
the cause.

8. Digital Behavior: Kay Nyne
Visits the website
occasionally for regular
organization updates
Searches by organization
name for specific events
About Kay Nyne: Is active in select channels
social media
• Donates time and money to
animal causes occasionally. Will share digital media if
the message is powerful
• Loves pets and wants to
make a difference in other
Donating online is the
animal’s lives. preferred method
• Has a dedication to this
cause among many others.

9. Insights From Kit and Kay
• How can the digital strategy make her life better?
– Maintain convenient and mobile communications.
– Make the campaign messages easy to share and contribute to
actively support the desire to help animals.
– Provide easy access to monetary and physical donation
opportunities.
• What can be done to improve brand perception?
– Demonstrate the regional relationships and contributions of
the ASPCA.
• Why would she want to engage
with the ASPCA?
– Communications demonstrate the
local and national benefit to the cause.

10. Objectives and Measurements
• Acquisition – Increasing the individual monetary donations
made on the ASPCA website by 3% each quarter through promotion
of multiple social media channels.
– Benchmark: $46,742,377 contributions based on 48% of 2010
contributions.
• Awareness – Increasing the unique pageviews to the donation
specific Web pages by 10% (or 3 pageviews) throughout the 12
months.
– Benchmark: average unique pageview per user is 2.13 on
www.donate.aspca.org.
• Knowledge – Increasing the acknowledgment and
understanding of Facebook and YouTube messaging through a
10% increase in Facebook likes, YouTube views, and click-through
to the website from these channels over a period of 6 months.
– Benchmark: 1,071,933 likes on Facebook.

11. Objectives and Measurements
• Advocacy – Increase active members and donors by increasing
numbers of shared message about ASPCA benefits and programs
through emails, shares, and tweets by 10% in 2012.
– Benchmark: 19,465 talking about this on Facebook.
• Participation – Increasing awareness
by improving the quality of dialog
between the organization and
followers on a monthly basis,
increase engaged users by 5%,
and decrease negative comments
by 5%.
– Benchmark: 50,000 engaged users
and 250 negative comments as taken
from Facebook Insights dashboard data.

12. Legal and Ethical
Considerations
• The ASPCA as a brand is well-know and highly
recognizable and therefore must take extra care to
maintain its authenticity and legitimacy.
• Legal: • Ethical:
– Copyright – Financial disclosure
– Accessibility – Accurate information
– Domain names – Integrity, privacy, and
– Must consult with legal team equality
– Trust

13. Implementation
• To meet the organizations objectives online
communication should speak directly to potential
donors about topics most relevant to them.
– 93% percent of respondents prefer to support local organization.
– 48% of supporters prefer to donate online .
• Promotion tactics are explicitly below-the-line and aimed
at individual audience members.
– Leverage the existing audience and encourage them to donate
more and through online channels.
– Maintain frequent donors and using their stories of
engagement to drive more donations from the infrequent
giver.

14. Promotion and Distribution
• Digital tactics: engagement and retention.
• Research has shown:
– Donors are more likely to be engaged by messages speaking to
the local benefits.
– Acquiring a new donor is at least three times as expensive as
keeping a donor.

15. Promotion: ASPCA eNewsletter
• Four geographic regions.
• Provide a direct message.
• Bi-weekley mailings.
• Calls to action are tangible and
stories can be shared through
Facebook and Twitter.
• Links to the main website.

16. Promotion: ASPCA Charity
Contest
• Monthly contests will feature stories from local
organizations supported by the ASPCA.
• Viewers will have the opportunity choose their favorite
story and then the winner is awarded money or products
from a sponsor.
• An additional $500 will be given to
the story that was shared by the
most website viewers.

17. ASPCA Charity Contest
• Promotion will take place
through eNewsletter and
social channels.
• Voting takes place on a
specially designed Web
page.
• An annual contest
between regional finalists
will help drive
competition.

18. Budget
Annual Budget $250,000
Pre campaign testing $3,000
One full-time employee to manage the eNewsletter content and distribution $50,000
One full-time employee to assist with the eNewsletter content and distribution $36,000
One full-time employee to manage the monthly charity contest $50,000
One full-time employee to assist with the monthly charity contest $36,000
Newsletter service expense $15,500
Website development with custom voting tabulation and maintenance of contest website $30,500
Paid advertising, Google Adwords and other online expenses to support the charity contest $15,000
Monthly metrics, data analysis and evaluation $2,400
Legal fees $8,000
TOTAL COSTS AND EXPENSES $246,400

19. Promotion Metrics & ROI
• ASPCA eNewsletter:
– YouTube video comments about regional activities.
– Facebook posts and likes from regional accounts.
– Twitter tweets and re-tweets from regional accounts.
– Donation portion of the website.
• ASPCA Charity Contest:
– Monthly website votes.
– Social sharing as mentioned previously.
• Based on our main objective of acquisition:
– ($47,000,000 annual goal X 15% of donors acquired through
these promotions) / ($250,000 expenses) = 28% return

20. Unintended Consequences
• Negative:
– Complicated nature of donations and sponsorships could
produce a complicated tax or financial situations.
– Sponsors and donors could potentially use charitable
contributions in unethical ways.
– Opening up to negative comments and criticism.
– Potential for hackers or spammers to abuse email lists under
the guise of the ASPCA.
• Positive:
– Overwhelming amount interest from shelters and programs to
participate in the contest maximizing staffing and technology.