Insights
Our free #BeMoreDigital Marketing Day takes place on 20 May 2021 with a jam-packed schedule full of digital marketing sessions and workshops
It’s been an exceptionally difficult year for so many charities. We have seen sweeping changes across the sector, which altered almost every element of day-to-day operations. Charity workers moved from office blocks to homes, service delivery became entirely virtual, and fundraising went online.
Arguably the biggest changes came in the realm of marketing. Everything went digital. Social media, websites, and emails took on new significance, as physical and in-person marketing became less impactful at best, obsolete at worst. Raising awareness in the digital realm became vital to a charity’s existence. And, following that, charities noticed the increasing importance of brand recognition.
Charity Digital’s #BeMoreDigital Marketing Day will be held on 20 May 2021. The schedule consists of five sessions and two workshops, all of which will broadly discuss changes in marketing and comms over the past year and show why digital marketing matters now more than ever.
We hope to reach as many people as possible, so the #BeMoreDigital Marketing Day will be completely free of charge. All you need to do is sign-up and join us on the day.
We would not be able to bring you our varied programme of free content without the partnership of our sponsor, GetResponse, who have provided so much help and support to the UK charity sector.
Below is more information about what’s on offer to help you plan your day!
The #BeMoreDigital Marketing Day kicks off 09:00 with an introduction from our Head of Marketing, Chris Hall. The introduction will welcome our guests and briefly discuss the events of the day.
Then we hand over to 15 Square at 09:05–09:45. Louise Troy, Digital Marketing Manager at 15 Square, will present their session, which examines how smaller charities often struggle to market themselves.
In 2020, 15 Square hired a digital marketer and they immediately saw benefits. Within ten months, the charity witnessed a strong return on investment. Their social media following drastically increased, for example, and their content reach, website traffic, and member sign-ups grew significantly, too.
15 Square will discuss why small charities should invest in a digital marketer. They want to help other charities understand how a marketer can transform their services. The session will also cover the hiring process, the main changes they have seen, and so much more.
We are particularly excited for this one! As mentioned above, GetResponse have kindly sponsored the event and have agreed to run a brilliant session from 10:00–10:30.
Irek Klimczak, Content Project Manager at GetResponse, will run the session, which tackles the mysterious realm of automated marketing. Automated marketing is one those terms often spoken yet seldom understood. But it’s a term that charities should know about – or will know about soon.
GetResponse’s session provides some much-needed clarity. It explains that automated marketing refers to technology that allows you to manage multiple marketing channels, processes, and tasks all in one place, automatically.
The session will cover, among other things, the basics of automation and how it works in practice, how automation helps to target and retain your audience, personalisation and segmentation in the context of automated emails, and much more.
In between each session, you will be given the chance to meet with peers, network, and perhaps even talk to the speakers. We use Remo to make that happen, giving our attendees a chance to table hop and swap virtual business cards in between sessions.
After a short break, we turn to charity branding at 10:45–11:25. Helen De Soyza, Head of Brand and Communications at Blood Cancer UK, and Liam Toyne, Digital Marketing Manager at Blood Cancer UK, will look at how charities can make brands instantly recognisable.
They will run through the basics of a re-brand, demonstrating the importance of regularly auditing your brand to assess its connection and the importance of re-branding to align with online image.
They explain that branding is more than simply nice logos and bright colour schemes. Your brand is symbolically wide-ranging – it represents your strategy, goals, audience, and community. Blood Cancer UK will use the session to explore their own brand launch, which massively increased their reach and engagement with new supporters.
The session will also explore, among other things, how Blood Cancer UK used paid social advertising to achieve their fundraising and brand goals and how other charities can be agile and audience-led when it comes to defining their brand image.
After another break, and another chance to network, we move onto the session on planning email campaigns, which is run by our friends at Sense from 11:40–12:20.
Adam O’Riley, Product Manager at Sense, and Louise Heath, Digital Communications Officer at Sense, take the audience through the important stages of email marketing planning.
They’ll be discussing, among other things, what makes campaigns succesful, strategies that define successful campaigns, how to track campaigns, and some top tips and key takeaways.
They will also explain the strategy behind their latest campaign, which achieved a 26% open rate and resulted in an extra 43,000 people signing up to their summer school – a huge increase compared to the previous years.
There is one final break before we enter our exciting panel discussion, which takes place between 12:35–13:15. The panel session will discuss how social movements have been created through the use of the hashtag. It shows that, when used well, hashtags can build committed digital communities, form strong and lasting bonds, and ultimately generate powerful vehicles for social change.
We are excited to bring together panellists from two charities that have run successful hashtag-driven campaigns. The panellists come from the following charities:
The panellists will discuss, among other things, how their respective charities built campaigns using hashtags, how hashtags can support campaign goals, the importance of creating online communities, how to attract donors and service users with hashtags, and much, much more.
After our final session, you are welcome to stick around for some post-event networking on Remo, where you can catch up with peers and perhaps have a chat with one of our speakers.
We hope to see you all there on the day!
Register for our free virtual event on 20 May 2021
On 21 March 2024, we will be hosting a myriad of in-person workshops with the aim of giving charities tools and skills to tackle the most important challenges facing charities in the coming year.
The workshops aim to help you transform and thrive 2024 within four key areas: Fundraising, Marketing ,Strategy & Leadership and Artificial Intelligence.