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Measurement Case Study

The ASPCA Uses Web Traffic to Connect Press Coverage and Donations

Shonali Burke, Vice President, Media & Communications at the ASPCA, is a true measurement maven. (In fact, we chose her for our Measurement Maven of the Month Award in August of 2006.) She loves data and uses it wisely to make better decisions. In short, she's the perfect client. And when the perfect client also has terrific results, it's a story worth sharing.

As you might recall, the ASPCA has had more than its fair share of big news in the past year. All this coverage has provided excellent data with which to do some exciting research on the connections between website traffic and donations to the organization.

They kicked off the new year by launching ASPCA® Mission: Orange (tm), a new initiative designed to reduce unnecessary euthanasia of pets. Major efforts took place in five target communities across the country.

Then there was the little matter of the recall of Chinese pet food. Fast action on the part of Shonali and her team, and the cooperation of the ASPCA's toxicology experts, put the ASPCA on the front lines of the crisis. It was to the ASPCA that millions of people turned for advice on how to care for their poisoned pets, as well as how to determine if they'd been poisoned.

On the heels of that crisis, of course, there was the dog fighting scandal that came crashing down on the head of Michael Vick, star quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons.

Clearly animal welfare was a hot topic all year and the ASPCA benefited from the attention, with unprecedented headlines and huge spikes in share of discussion.

But Burke wasn't happy with just counting "HITS" and column inches, she wanted to better understand the impact that her efforts had on the mission of the ASPCA. So she brought together web analytic data to explore changes in the ASPCA website traffic, particularly the frequency of visits and the growth in new visits. And, since many donations are made online, she could look at the revenue stream as well.

She provided both data sets to her account team at KDPaine & Partners, so that they could run a series of tests to determine if there was in fact a connection between the media coverage and the increase in donations. As it happens, there was a very strong correlation between the two. More importantly, there was a strong positive correlation between the increased media coverage and the number of new members registering on the website. This is particularly important because the ASPCA knows that, on average, every increase in web traffic of 100,000 visitors results in 7,000 new registered users, and that those 7,000 are ultimately worth about $175,000 total net to the organization over their lifetime.

So Burke is now able to demonstrate what tactics worked and didn't work, as well as the ultimate value that her efforts bring to the Society.

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