Feature blog: How ActionAid Ireland secured 9,700 leads at a CPL of just €0.94

December 13, 2019

This week, we feature a blog describing our successes in Digital Fundraising for 2019. Nina Jerez, ActionAid Ireland’s Digital Marketing Executive, describes the journey she undertook with the support of RaiseThru

The background

ActionAid Ireland joined the RAISETHRU 12 week programme in 2019. They asked for RAISETHRU’s help with their 2019 summer campaign, which aimed to acquire leads through petitions.

The challenge

ActionAid Ireland had previously run Facebook campaigns but had difficulty generating leads that they could convert to meet their income targets. This was their main challenge, and they had an ambitious target of a projected income of $33,000 over five years.

“We had run campaigns which were successful in building engagements with posts, but not with acquiring new leads for regular donors and cash givers.”
– Lady Nina Jerez, Digital Campaign Executive, ActionAid Ireland

The solution

ActionAid Ireland went through RAISETHRU’s four stages of support throughout their campaign.

First, was the foundation stage. RAISETHRU worked with ActionAid Ireland to look at the strategy behind their campaign and how they planned to generate leads.

The plan was to use RAISETHRU’s Value Exchange Threshhold theory: we’d ask people to sign a petition first, which is relatively easy for people to say yes to, before asking them to become a regular giver.

Second, was the creative hacking stage. ActionAid Ireland decided to focus on child marriage as the main theme for the petition as they had lots of existing assets available to them.

They then worked with RAISETHRU on a creative hack for ad videos, and three types of concepts were shortlisted: Abigail’s story, Christine’s story and general facts/stats (using kinetic text) about child marriage and FGM. Within those concepts, different copies were tested, leading to 11 ads in total.

After following RAISEHTRU’s creative hacking process, ActionAid Ireland were able to create videos for their ads within two weeks. These videos are easy and fast to produce, affordable, and most importantly effective in generating leads with donors.

Third, was the planning stage. ActionAid Ireland planned their campaign using RAISETHRU’s proven process. This allowed them to have much more control over the campaign, and enabled them to put more budget into high performing ads, therefore keeping the CPL low.

Fourth, was the building, launching and optimising stage. ActionAid Ireland received twice-weekly support whilst executing the campaign, including direct tactical support where needed.

“It was really nice to have that support from Chris. He’s always available, so we’re really happy with that. We learned a lot about the technical side of running Facebook ads.
The peer network was really helpful too. This is what makes RAISETHRU different. I think it’s good to have everyone’s different perspectives and get good feedback, and an idea of other charities’ work as a benchmark.”

– Lady Nina Jerez, Digital Campaign Executive, ActionAid Ireland

The results

ActionAid Ireland received 9,700 petition signatures (excluding duplicates), most of them email-able for further appeals, with a cost per lead of €0.94.

In the first phase of their campaign, they acquired 51 regular donors from a target of 25, and 53 one-off donors from target of 50. The ROI from these donors is projected at 1:2.69 within 5 years, allowing for attrition and tax-back.

Their 5-year income is now projected at €35,160, against the €33,000 target.

“We’d recommend the RAISETHRU 12 week programme to any charities who want to acquire leads through Facebook ads, but aren’t sure where to start.”

– Lady Nina Jerez, Digital Campaign Executive, ActionAid Ireland

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.