What we did

In less than 2 months Tušti narvai collected more than 33,000 signatures for the Fur Free Europe ECI. That is 1.2 % of Lithuanian population and more than 425 % of the threshold for Lithuania. If every country had collected 1.2 % of their population, we would have 5.2 million signatures at this point. If every country had 4 times the threshold number of signatures, we would have 2.1 million signatures*.

We have also collected 16,500 euros in donations dedicated to advertise the ECI and more than 1,900 euros from new regular donors will be coming each month. And we have more than doubled our contact list.

* thresholds are not based on population

TUŠTI NARVAI

Why should you care?

⏳⏳ (If you have only a few minutes right now, this is the part you want to read) ⏳⏳

Imagine what your organization could be, if you had financial security. Go on, imagine. I will wait.

Imagine the opportunities that would open up for your organization, if for one day your project was the story of the day in your country?

Imagine, that you have the freedom to decide what your next campaign is going to be about. It is no longer up to grant givers to dictate that, it’s up to you.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

You can have it all. You can get the signatures AND the donations. You can gain recognition and more support. And the best part is that you can get there by doing one project well.

With this website I aim to show you how.

But before that, let me tell you why I care about helping the ECI and helping you.

Right now we have an opportunity to ban the most disgusting industry in the world. It's one of the greatest things in life, if you think about it.

But it’s not obvious that this ECI won’t fail. It can fail and it will fail, if people like you and me don’t do everything in our power to make it the most successful ECI in the history of ECIs. If it fails, however, it will damage the efforts to get national bans in the countries where the industry isn’t banned yet and active campaigns are going on (like Lithuania). It will set the animal protection efforts back. And the fur industry will have an amazing victory which we – the animal protection people – handed to them.

If you think you don’t need me to tell you this, maybe you are right. And still, at this point we are below the daily target of 3800 signatures (which we need to have 1.4 million signatures by the end of it). If that is not causing you stress yet, you have a higher tolerance for it. But what if it is the same situation in 2 months? Or in December? What if the story of the animal testing ECI repeats? This is what keeps me up at night. So here I am writing this.

Another thing that is important to me is making the animal protection movement better. For many years many people have helped my organization with everything. Now we are able to help others. We know what we are doing, we know why it works, we know how to replicate it.

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be successful, to have resources, to be free. It's not easy to put in to words the excitement you get from this. The energy with which you work. The ideas that come to you. It's a game changer. But it would feel much better if more organizations were in this position.

Everything in this website can be copied and adapted to your needs. I am here to help you succeed.

It’s going to be hard and scary but only when you embrace the suck, the best things can happen. And you are not alone in this.

How we did it

There are 2 key parts of this campaign. The first one is the website designed to get contacts, signatures and donations. The second is reaching beyond one's audience to get traffic to the website. For the 2nd part we cooperated with the famous people and influencers of Lithuania.

The website

For us each website visitor brings 0.38 euros in total income and each signature brings around 1 euro.

With this website 80,000 visitors for us meant:

- 40,000 new leads

- 30,000 signatures

- 1200+ single donors

- 200+ regular donors

All statistics (updated daily) are here: ECI fur campaign 2022 daily statistics (or below 👇)

NOTE: here I am talking about 2 months of running this campaign. The data in the sheet might look different when you are looking at it since it is updated daily.

Automated emails

The website sends reminder emails to people who have left their contacts but didn’t sign. Users are recognized and if they haven't signed, they get an email 10 minutes, 30 minutes and 24 hours after leaving their contacts.

Another email, asking to increase the power of the signature, is sent to those who sign. The email asks to donate, donate regularly or share the ECI.

Automated emails: after 10 min, after 30 min, after 24 hours, after signing.

Ads

We have tested 5 different texts and 4 different visuals (using the winning text). We have also tested two Instagram stories.

The golden rule of ads: TEST, TEST, TEST SOME MORE!

You don’t know what is going to work. Your favorite photo might perform worse than those photos you don’t like. The copy you wrote in a rush might be better than the copy you put your most effort into. What worked for us might not work for you and what worked for you two years ago might not work now. Test.

All the texts + visuals we tested, Instagram stories ads

Telefundraising

All the single donors get a call from our telefundraiser asking to become regular donors. If you don’t do telefundraising your total regular donor conversion won’t be as high. Still, you can do a lot with emails. Or maybe it’s time to start your telefundraising department?

Emails (aka newsletters)

Emails work hand in hand with telefundraising. Sometimes we don’t know where the new regular donor came from. They get a call, a few days later they get an email and they start the donation. Maybe they wouldn’t have, if they didn’t have that conversation. Or maybe the email worked as a reminder. Whatever the case may be, we are getting regular donors.

The best emails for us were these:

• Most signatures: Launch email

• Most donors: Cannibalism #3: investigator’s story

The soft launch

To start the campaign we launched the website organically, using our audiences. The initial donations came from our mailing list and followers on social media.

After a few days we started running ads and were changing the budget depending on the donations.

If you have a huge audience or do a launch in a better way, you will get way more money from your existing supporters. That means more traffic and more donations to bring more traffic.

We didn’t have the result we expected (or wanted) on our soft launch day. That means you can have a much better result from the beginning.

The video

We have copied the concept of the video Jakub Jahn & Jolana Haismanová made for Svoboda zvířat. We filmed famous Lithuanians watching footage from fur farms and cooperated with them to reach the widest possible audience.

On Instagram the video has more than 1 million views (if we add views from all accounts on which it was shared as a reel). Instagram has about 900,000 Lithuanian accounts. That means we have probably reached everyone on the platform.

After the Czech video, many other organizations copied it. But only us and Bulgarians were so successful. There are 3 main reasons why their video and our video worked. In the sections below these reasons will be explained in detail.

If you would like to copy the concept of the video and social media strategy, please contact Jolana Haismanová directly: jol.haisman@gmail.com. She will help you with the process of communication with influencers and the launch as she has helped us. It’s also necessary to use the proper credits.

Getting the video right

Getting the influencers

This part requires to have the right mindset and good process.

The mindset

To get famous people to work with you, you need confidence, persistence, and to treat them as partners.

Shoot for the stars. Literally. Choose the biggest stars and reach out to them. Use every instrument in your networking toolkit. Get the phone numbers of your biggest celebrities. Call them.

That requires confidence. When you are speaking with one of the most well known people in your country, you might get nervous. Especially if you are also their fan. But the key lesson for us from working with the influencers was: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Mathew 7:7). Before we got all those people to agree to be in the video I didn’t think it was possible. In reality it was easier than I thought before I started doing it.

See them as people. They are people who also care about animals. They are people who forget things. They are people who have a lot of other people demanding their attention. If you don’t get a reply immediately, it’s not because they don’t like you or don't care about the animals. It can also be because they have other things going on. If they are replying quickly at first and then don’t reply for a while, it’s not personal. If they said they will write to you and they don’t, maybe they forgot. Influencers are people too. So be persistent.

Treat them as partners. This is not going to work if the influencers are not behind the project. You want them to promote it to their audience in their own voice. They are not a means to the end, they are your partners. That means that you should keep them updated on the project. You should let them know how their participation changed the game (if that is the case, of course).

If you look at this as a long term thing, it will be easier to create a real partnership. You want to make sure that this experience is good for the influencers involved. Think about what you want them to say when someone asks them how it was working with you? Or when you ask them to be a part of another project 2 years from now? Same goes for the influencers that declined this time. Do you want them to have a pleasant experience before they have declined? Do you want them to see the video and think “damn, I could have been in it”?

Prepare for rejection and surprises. Many people will say no to you. Some won't even say it, they will just ignore you. Or they will say maybe, then ignore you for a week, then finally decline. And some will treat you like shit. It can also happen that you need to hear 5 people in a row rejecting you to get one to say yes. That's part of the job and you have to be able to take it to succeed.

One way to deal with it is looking at it as an information gathering mission. Everything that is said to you is information that you now have and can use in the future. Next time you won't have to spend energy on the people who don't want anything to do with you. Another way to deal with it is by allowing the rejection to light a fire under you. Be-so-good-they-can't-ignore-you type of thing.

And then other people will surprise you in the most wonderful ways. They will say and do the kindest things, they will make your day or week with one action or a sentence. Again, famous people are people.

Good process

Make a list of influencers in your country. Or get it from someone who has such a list. Research the influencers and divide your list into 3 (or 4) lists.

We did it this way:

🟢 Green: people who are likely going to agree because we have already cooperated with them or we know they are pro animal protection

🟡 Yellow: people with the biggest audiences (a.k.a. those you want the most) and who are also more likely to agree because they are not posting selfies with fur coats

🔴 Red: people with big audiences

⚪ White: people you are not going to contact because you don’t want them or you know they cannot do it

Decide how many people you want and start contacting them. Green first, then yellow, then red.

Don’t write 20 emails on the first day because if you are reaching out to your warmest contacts, many can say yes.

Give them a deadline on when you expect to have an answer. If they don’t reply by then (after a reminder email or call), they are most likely a NO.

Agree in the beginning that one of the conditions of being in the video is that they will have to upload the video on their social media. It’s better that someone drops off in the very beginning than to later find out that they have quit social media or the video you made doesn’t fit their style (talking from experience).

We have contacted 33 people, 15 agreed, 3 dropped out last minute so 12 were filmed, 9 shared the video, 7 did it the way we asked.

However, one person who got sick before filming later agreed to do the voiceover for the video. His voice is one of the most recognizable voices in Lithuania because he has done voice overs for thousands of movies (Harry Potter series among them!) So in the end we had 13 famous people in the video.

Bulgarians contacted 150 people, 9 agreed, then 3 dropped out then they got 3 more people. Czechs contacted 15 people, 8 agreed, 8 got filmed. Depending on where you are, it can take reaching out anywhere from 15 to 150 people so start planning this early.

How to decide how many you want?

Your decision has to be based on audiences. Calculate the audiences of the people you invite (the audience numbers should be in your list). Try to have people with different audiences. For example, a 27 year old female lifestyle influencer will have a different audience than a 50 year old male actor.

Remember, that some people will cancel at the last minute. Some will get sick, some will have a sudden change of plans. Not because they don’t want to be in the video, they just can’t. So get more than your ideal number.

Some people might not have strong reactions, that’s another reason to have more. 4 people out of 12 we filmed didn’t show such strong emotions. Imagine having 7 people and 4 not reacting strongly.

Don’t bet everything on one person who has both a huge audience and is going to have a strong reaction. One of our influencers was like that and she got sick the day before shooting. She had half of the audience (about 400k on Facebook and Instagram combined). All the other people combined had about 500k followers.

The BIG launch

This is the day you have been working towards for the last 2 or 3 months. It is not something to leave up to chance.

Your entire organization has to be involved in the launch. Get the volunteers and staff on board. This is the day for them all to shine.

Don’t expect the video will just magically get the reach and views without you doing anything. It won’t. Don’t let all the work you put into it go to waste because you forgot to run the last mile of this marathon.

How to increase your chances of success?

1. Prepare to write to other influencers asking them to share it.

2. Send out the press release. Put the video embed code in it.

3. Boost the posts with videos.

4. Write an email to all the people in your mailing list asking them to watch the video and leave a comment.

If you are successful, you will get a lot of messages and comments. Someone has to be ready to reply to them all. Both on Instagram and Facebook. Both on your accounts and all the influencer accounts. Influencers might get hate. So be there to show support and answer the technical questions.

Obstacles to overcome

There are some caveats to succeeding with this model. It would be dishonest not to mention them. Especially because it seems, if you don’t embrace the hard things about it, you are not going to succeed.

You are going to have to put in a lot of work at first

We have done many things you won’t need to do, you can just translate. But if your mindset is “better done than perfect”, you might want to save time and effort on details which bring you results. For example, skipping automated emails because it’s hard to code might cost you 20 % of signatures (and donations).

You are going to have to spend money for this

The website will cost you, the video will (most likely) cost you. You can fundraise before the launch (Czechs did that, we did that) and get enough money to start. The initial investment pays off but it can seem scary, if you don’t have the money or have never paid for websites or videos.

You might also need to challenge your thinking

The biggest obstacle to succeeding is a wrong mindset. If you think you cannot do this, you are most likely right. For you to succeed you have to be persistent, courageous, open to testing new things and willing to work hard.

How to overcome this and why does it matter?

“If you need inspiring words, don’t do it” said Elon Musk. I don’t have a recipe on how to motivate a person who doesn’t have internal drive. The good news is that people in the animal rights world are some of the most motivated people one can find.

I bet you already have the drive to work hard, you are courageous and committed. You are probably also quite open to testing new things, especially, if the old things are not working well.

It is possible to collect signatures AND make your organization stronger. This campaign (or any other campaign, for that matter) doesn’t have to drain your resources, it can increase them.

For us learning better ways to campaign, communicate and fundraise was the best thing. It made us excited, it made us free, it made us more ambitious. More important than that, it made us better at helping the animals.

You can get there too, the recipe is tested, the help is available. All you need to do is to overcome some obstacles.

What's next?

If you are interested and determined to replicate this, I am offering a call. In the call I can answer questions and go into more details. Depending on your needs and wishes, we can discuss further cooperation.

You can have the website we used and I can get you a programmer who will adapt it to your language and needs for approx. 1000-1500 euros. The price will depend on your donation gate, email delivery provider and other integrations (CRMs, other marketing platforms), if you have any.

You can copy and use all of our materials provided on this website and in this case study.

You can contact me at gabriele@tustinarvai.lt.

If you have any questions or feedback on this website, please reach out to me or leave anonymous feedback.

Acknowledgments

All this wouldn't have been possible without two amazing people: Jiri Krupa and Jolana Haismanova.

Jiri is the brain behind the successful fundraising and campaigning in Tušti narvai. He has been in this position for the past 3 years and everything we did well we did because of him. He has a website on an analogous campaign in Czechia and Bulgaria. You should really check it out. It has a lot of useful content you can copy and adapt to your needs. If we could clone Jiri so he would be able to work with every organization who needs him, the world would be a much better place. However, he is one person and he is in high demand. You can find more information and try to get in touch with him here.

Jolana is the expert on work with influencers. The video concept is hers. If it wasn't for Jolana's willingness to share her tips and tricks, we wouldn't have succeeded. She is also a master of social media.