Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through advice, support and legal services. And they campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to them for help.
They’re here so no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own.
One aspect of Shelter’s fundraising work comes in the form of their long-established chain of charity shops, a familiar sight on high streets everywhere and reliant on contributions from the general public. But Shelter wanted to take this one step further and expand their offering from these stores. They wanted to start taking donations of larger pieces of furniture, think sofas, wardrobes and dining tables, to then be sold on from their new furniture shops.
But how could they compete with the van removal companies and other recycling services bidding on these keywords and phrases for furniture donations? They needed a strategy that would enable them to use their hard-earned PPC budget and have visibility on what was working for these new stores.
And phone calls were the answer.
Using ResponseTap is nothing new for Shelter. In fact, they have been using the platform for several years and in various ways.
In 2016 Shelter wanted to understand the volume of calls to their housing advice helpline and to pinpoint which campaigns and web content were helping to encourage those in need to contact them. They were quickly able to build a much clearer picture of the journey of those using their helpline, tracing them back to the web pages they had first visited. This provided Shelter with valuable insights during the campaign and enabled them to target campaigns to help the most people access the information and advice they need.
So, having seen success in using ResponseTap previously, they decided to implement ResponseTap phone numbers for their new furniture shops opening around the country. Promoting donations to the furniture stores was key if the stores were to be a success. So a paid search strategy was put in place, with phone calls at the center.
Local furniture donation is a new area for Shelter, and using ResponseTap they can optimize their PPC campaigns.
In order to arrange a furniture delivery, members of the general public need to make a phone call, as seen in the image here. So using unique ResponseTap local phone numbers, the Digital Marketing team at Shelter can now track how many calls their PPC ads in that area are generating, and then attribute an ROI based on the value of the goods donated.
The team at Shelter are now able to clearly attribute and evaluate their marketing spend, closing the measurement gap.
Search Marketing Manager at Shelter Alastair Ball says “to be able to see phone call data segmented by channel is really useful for us. To see how many phone calls have been generated from Facebook, Google or Bing for each shop means we can now optimize our campaigns based on this insight.”
The team have also put tracking numbers on offline marketing material so they can determine what has worked, and what hasn’t.
“ I would certainly recommend working with ResponseTap, to help you bring ROI into a marketing funnel that involves phone calls too. ”
Most recently they have also been using ResponseTap’s Smart Match feature, to tie call outcome, and ROI, back to their marketing efforts. Smart Match allows the team to feed in income generated from the shops linked to specific calls and donations, so now they can tie ROI back to channel, even down to keyword level. This has been particularly useful to assess which keywords are driving the highest value donations.
Alastair continues “the best thing about ResponseTap for me is the reliability of the data; it’s really user-friendly and accessible.
“And, importantly, it just works and I don’t have to worry about it.”
For an organization like Shelter that is dependent on donations and support from the public, optimizing campaigns to make every single penny work as hard as it can is paramount. And ResponseTap enables them to do this.
With flexible call tracking prices, you only pay for what you use. With straightforward license fees and transparent call costs, we’ll keep your call tracking simple.
Want to see what ResponseTap can do for your business? Let’s get this conversation started.
877-630-7286
