Woodgreen Pets Charity have been evolving from a well-loved regional organisation to a nationally recognised brand. With only one site providing care for rescue animals, they needed to scale their Christmas fundraising campaign digitally, while maintaining the same, or better return on investment (ROI) year on year. manifesto helped them build visibility, broaden reach, and convert new audiences, delivering a campaign that outperformed both scale and ROI expectations two years running.
Challenge
Last year Woodgreen saw an 18% rise in demand for its services. The charity wanted to scale up its Christmas fundraising efforts to position itself as a national charity to be better able to provide care to the rising numbers of pets needing their help. Historically reliant on offline channels like direct mail and email, their digital strategy had started to reach an ROI ceiling by 2022. With advertising costs continuing to rise, the challenge was to unlock new revenue streams and build an engaged, scalable digital audience, without letting return on investment slide. manifesto's role was to help bridge this strategic gap and enable growth without waste.
Solution
We designed digitally-focused campaigns structured around a full-funnel strategy, with a keen eye on performance at every stage. The approach focused on:
- Audience building: Targeted spend on awareness to reach new, relevant audiences, avoiding overspending that could dent overall ROAS.
- Creative testing: Each journey stage used multiple creative variants, imagery, copy, and format, all monitored and iterated in real-time.
- AI-driven optimisation: RevealBot was deployed to monitor micro-trends and act faster than manual intervention could allow, pausing underperforming content and doubling down on winners rapidly.
- Mid-campaign evaluation: An optimisation sprint helped sharpen the campaign with updated creative and messaging based on live data.
- Sponsorship gifting: New offerings like digital sponsorship gifting were introduced, generating strong LTV ROAS, especially on Meta platforms.
- Platform adaptation: Tailored strategies were implemented for TikTok, Meta, and Search, recognising the strengths and limitations of each.
Our test-and-learn ethos allowed us to continuously apply insights, from seasonality trends to channel-level learnings, maximising effectiveness throughout the limited campaign window.
Impact
The 2023 Christmas campaign landed between our “Good” and “Best” forecast, with over 2,870 donations and £170,000 in lifetime income. By 2024 we scaled further, driving over £200,000 in lifetime income, with a 4% ROI uplift despite a huge increase in advertising costs. This uplift was driven by smart media balancing and improved targeting using CRM data, alongside conversion rate optimisation tactics and nudges to increase average gift size.
In addition, rapid creative turnaround of new ads when a dog was abandoned at Woodgreen during the Christmas period enhanced creative resonance, creating urgency and immediacy. The most successful period came just before Christmas Day itself, validating our planned spend strategy and refreshed creative drops. Learnings from this campaign are already fuelling smarter, stronger planning for next year.
I'm really impressed by the manifesto team and how they approached the campaigns and working with the Woodgreen team. Their hard work across all of our marketing has paid dividends for us.”
Emerson PoveyHead of Marketing and Digital Engagement, Woodgreen Pets Charity