As the CEO of World Encounter, a non-profit that helps women in rural Tanzania become entrepreneurs, Emily Conroy had some lofty goals. Unfortunately, her outdated and cumbersome website created significant challenges.
Using Leadpages, she was able to easily create a new website that was key in helping her overcome those obstacles and accomplish in a month what previously took years.
Since its founding, World Encounter has distributed nearly $2M in microloans to over 4,000 women entrepreneurs in rural Tanzania, helping them build businesses that transform communities and make a lasting positive impact on people’s lives.
As the organization’s leader, Emily wanted to build on WE’s mission by growing the brand, hosting events that engaged donors, and increasing funding. Like small businesses, results are everything for small nonprofits—they often exist on razor-thin margins so their efforts need to make an impact.
Despite WE’s previous successes, there were obstacles to overcome.
The global pandemic took its toll on so many non-profits. Many of them closed their doors for good and most of WE’s funding disappeared overnight.
World Encounter didn’t have a marketing budget—never mind a team to keep the website updated. It was built in WordPress and managed on an inconsistent, pro-bono basis. It lacked a clear objective; the design was dated and the messaging missed the mark. Simply making changes to it required contacting their volunteers, providing them with the information, and waiting until they had the time to make the update.
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This presented a problem when Emily wanted to promote her International Women’s Day Virtual Summit. This event was a key driver for raising World Encounter’s profile, growing her audience, and generating leads for other events. The event’s success required a bigger marketing effort than her volunteers could handle, and she only had a few weeks to pull it off. So, she looked for a different solution.
"We had these big goals, and everyone was really excited. But deep down I was truly concerned about our ability to reach them"
Emily turned to Leadpages to build World Encounter’s new website and promote her event. But instead of simply transferring the content from their previous website builder platform to Leadpages, she opted for a strategic, less-is-more approach. The new website focused on two things: communicating the organization’s purpose and accomplishments, and promoting the upcoming virtual summit to capture more leads and generate awareness.
Starting from scratch and rebuilding a website is a task that can take months. But with Leadpages, Emily was able to make it happen in less than a week.
After creating her account, the first step to reaching her goal was simply picking a template. With dozens of different template options, she easily found one that aligned with her brand and only required a few small tweaks to fonts and colors.
She used the Leadpages Drag & Drop Builder to move page elements around, drop in her written content, and bring World Encounter’s new online presence to life. The template helped her identify what kind of content needed to go where.
“We finally have a website that reflects the value we bring to the women we serve.”
To create urgency and persuade website visitors to sign up for the event, she used the Leadpages countdown timer widget and pop-ups to gather registrants for the virtual event. Recordings of the event were available for download in exchange for an email address.
As often happens with events, the need to promote comes long before all of the details are ironed out and confirmed. Leadpages allowed Emily to publish quick updates to the event page as they became available. This gave her more runway to start capturing leads. And the updates were quick and easy to make.
As World Encounter’s email list grew, Conroy was able to easily check the details of everyone who registered for the International Women’s Day Summit event with the Leads Library feature. She could also properly segment all of those leads using Mailchimp and communicate with people that opted into the event instead of every single person on World Encounter’s list.
A brand-new website with a strategy that focused on conversion, and the ability to properly promote the virtual summit that engaged donors, led to an immediate 38.5% increase in revenue. Even better, their Q1 revenue exceeded the previous two years.
In hosting the International Women’s Day Virtual Summit, World Encounter was able to generate 150 new leads, with 31 recurring donors in just three weeks—results that would not have been possible using their old website builder. This also helped them bolster the success of their paid ROSE fundraising event. The larger audience of engaged and qualified leads and donors will help them increase their reach in future fundraising events
Previously, website updates were handled by well-meaning but busy volunteers. The promotion of content, events, or important news was slow to happen which made it difficult to ramp up any campaign efforts. Now, changes and updates can be made quickly by virtually anyone in the organization—no time-strapped volunteers required.
“Leadpages provided us with easy-to-use tools that helped us not only keep the doors open and the lights on, but put all our focus on our core mission of making a positive impact in the world.”
Building awareness around World Encounter’s brand and mission, plus promoting the online summit, meant a new website. The Leadpages Website Builder allowed Emily to launch a new website in just days—without the help of developers. And she continues to enjoy the ease and flexibility of being able to update the site on her own whenever she needs to.
To create a sense of urgency around events, Emily puts countdown timers on the event pages, letting web visitors know that time is running out on the registration. When the clock hits zero, the widget automatically updates the page with a section that allows anyone to register for an on-demand replay of the event so she doesn’t lose the lead.
Pop-up forms are used alongside countdown timers to allow people to register for online events (like the virtual summit). They’re also used to prompt website visitors to sign up for the World Encounter newsletter—a major source of donations—and even volunteer for the organization.
As people registered for the International Women’s Day Virtual Summit, Emily needed a way to connect with those new leads about the event—without emailing World Encounter’s entire list. She used Mailchimp tagging to identify which leads came through that event, so that news about speakers, times, and other details were easily communicated to the right people.
2021 was a pivotal year for World Encounter. While other non-profits struggled to generate the interest and revenue that would keep the doors open, World Encounter experienced growth in the form of new leads, new donors, and new efficiencies.
That success is setting the stage for more events that will help elevate their profile locally, engage more ongoing donors, and most importantly, focus on their core mission of supporting entrepreneurship and making a positive impact in Tanzania and beyond.
Experience the only online website builder that lets you easily create a high-converting website with code-free customizations.
Here’s what we suggest:
→ How The Simplicity Habit Used Leadpages to Grow Their Customer List in a Big Way
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→ How Vanessa Turned a Job She Loathed into a Career She Loved
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