Hitting the Jackpot: Dementia UK’s Winning Strategy with Meta Ads

Dementia UK is a leading national charity committed to supporting families affected by dementia. Their mission is to ensure everyone facing dementia has access to the specialist care and support they need whenever and wherever they need it.

Dementia UK wanted to pilot a new Lottery product as an engaging way for supporters to help the charity while winning fantastic prizes. Participants can enter the lottery for a small one-off or regular donation, allowing them to win cash prizes while supporting Dementia UK’s mission.

The challenge

Dementia UK recognised the opportunity to reach a wider audience, attract new long-term supporters, and increase their lottery income.

The main challenges included a competitive online lottery market for charities, low awareness of Dementia UK’s lottery among supporters, and low participation rates due to unfamiliarity with lotteries as a form of supporting the charity.

We knew we would also need to comply with guidance from the Gambling Commission, Code of Fundraising Practice, GDPR and other relevant gambling legislation/regulations.

What we did

We chose to run the pilot on Meta Ads to leverage its powerful advertising tools and vast audience reach.

By utilising Meta Ads’ extensive targeting options, including demographic information, interests, and behaviours, we made sure our campaign reached the right people at the right time.

Our target audience was adults over 18 across the UK, as they can legally participate in the lottery. We also included existing supporters of Dementia UK who might not have been aware of the lottery and individuals interested in charitable giving, health and wellness, elder care, and dementia-related topics.

We produced the ad copy and visuals. We planned tests of:

cause-focused messaging against prize-focused messaging
images featuring people against illustrated graphics
different copy variants by length, inclusion of emojis and price handles.

The pilot ran for four weeks, and we monitored and optimised the campaign daily to maintain a low CPA.

We sent Dementia UK daily reports on performance with a weekly check-in to discuss performance, planned changes and next steps.

The results

The pilot was incredibly successful for Dementia UK with Meta proving an effective channel for lottery acquisition.

The campaign achieved a CPA that was a stonking 70% lower than the target. The CPA was also significantly lower than benchmarks from similar charities.

We reached over half a million people with higher than average conversion rates and a return on ad spend of over 1.0.

We ran another phase that was also highly successful and Dementia UK has decided to move ahead with an always-on approach for lottery campaigns.

“As always, it was a pleasure to work with the team at Platypus,” said Charlotte Webb, Individual Giving Manager at Dementia UK.

“They really took the time to understand our lottery and the motivations of our supporters to help us create a campaign that delivered results.

“What I really appreciated was their flexible and adaptable approach. It meant they were always looking at ways to help us optimise the campaign and make it an even greater success.”

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