From Awareness to Action with AIDS-Fondet

How the NGO amplified brand awareness and engaged with supporters with gamification marketing.

About AIDS-Fondet

AIDS-Fondet (the AIDS Foundation) is an organisation that works for a world without new cases of HIV. They work both in Denmark and internationally and focus on the population groups that are particularly vulnerable and exposed to HIV. AIDS-Fondet works to ensure access to both prevention, care, and treatment for everyone, and to make sure that people living with HIV can live free from prejudice and discrimination.

Main challenges: fundraising, developing brand awareness, and engaging with supporters

Some of the biggest challenges facing NGOs and non-profit organisations around the world are fundraising, developing brand awareness, and retaining and engaging a strong base of supporters. This is also true for Copenhagen-based NGO, AIDS-Fondet (the AIDS Foundation), a non-profit organisation that works locally in Denmark as well as internationally to educate and ensure access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment. AIDS-Fondet also runs Checkpoint, a series of clinics around Denmark which offer HIV and other STD testing as well as counselling services.

After working with Scratcher on previous interactive campaigns, AIDS-Fondet decided to connect with their audience on the important (and taboo!) topic of inheritance.

Mette Willenbrock Hattens, Chief Consultant – Communication & Fundraising, explains that:

“it is important to educate people [on the laws around inheritance] so that they can secure each other and secure their partners, because regardless of how many years you’ve been living together, but are not married or registered as a partnership, you won’t inherit anything without a testament.”

As a small organisation without government funding, AIDS-Fondet relies on private donations and smaller grants to remain active—and this was one of the main goals of the inheritance campaign. Gamification allows the NGO to approach difficult topics in a simple, yet engaging way to educate people about what they do and why they rely on supporters to help financially.

“When we looked into the statistics, we have quite a lot of engagement and the conversion rate across all of our Scratcher’s campaigns is quite high. The actual numbers might be a bit lower [than others], because we don’t have a huge target audience—but for the Inheritance Quiz, we were pleasantly surprised to see a conversion rate of 60% and almost 3000 participants!” — Mette Willenbrock Hattens, Chief Consultant - Communication & Fundraising, AIDS-Fondet

Results

• 2,935 unique participants
• 60% conversion rate
• €0.80 cost per click, with Facebook lead ads and Google ads driving traffic directly to the quiz

The solution

Using the Quiz format, AIDS-Fondet’s Inheritance Test had two goals: to develop awareness of the topic for their target audience and, for the NGO’s longer-term goals, to generate new leads that could be converted into donating supporters.

With knowledge development as its basis, the campaign posed questions about the Danish inheritance rules and offered participants a free guide with information and guidance for creating a will. Participants were also added to an email flow that included additional information and links to the organisation’s “Inheritance School” video series.

In addition to a prime spot on the front page of their website, the NGO used Facebook lead ads and Google ads to reach their target audience. They employed a burst approach for the first two months of the campaign, followed by a drip campaign that will continue for the remainder of 2023.

The results

“We had some KPIs at the beginning of the Inheritance campaign,” Mette explains. “And, to be quite honest, it was just a guess, because we had never approached this topic in depth before. [Our goal] was that 50 people would download our free Testament Guide. And now we’re actually close to 100 downloads [after four months]—so, 50 was for the whole year!”

With an average monthly spend of €400 and only four months of activation, the inheritance campaign has garnered almost 3,000 participants, with ads converting at a rate of 40.75% and the test itself converting 60% of visitors!

“Scratcher has been a great part of [activating customers to download the Inheritance Guide], both in terms of reaching out and spreading awareness. And also as a lead generating tool, Scratcher has been very helpful [for adding to our email list].”