10th Annual Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence

By Sean Norris

Multichannel Acquisition Annual Operating Budget Under $10 Million

Magritte Online Advertising Campaign
Art Institute of Chicago
Submitted by The Lukens Company

The Numbers
Recipients: 4,926,428 (impressions)
Response Rate: 4.79 percent (conversion rate); 75.87 percent (purchase rate)
Total Cost: $45,813.52
Income Generated: $68,982.00
Average Gift: $88.10
Cost to Raise a Dollar: $0.66
Cost to Acquire a Donor: $29.59 (net CTA)

Why It Won
“Gorgeous creative. Inspiring and thoughtful!” “Compelling art. Easy to read!” “Love this. Huge creativity!” These were just a handful of the superlatives our judges piled on to this multichannel marketing effort from The Lukens Company for the Art Institute of Chicago. The campaign garnered perfect scores across the board, making it an easy choice as winner of an already competitive category.

It’s easy to see why. A tightly coordinated promotion for the museum’s “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938” exhibit, the campaign utilized several digital channels—website lightboxes, Google Search, display ads, Facebook ads and more—and beautifully leveraged the exhibit’s subject matter in the creative. Everything from the lightboxes (designed to capture organic traffic the museum’s website) to the display ads featured simple, clean, consistent design and large, colorful images of Magritte’s work. The ads directed users to a listbuilder that captured names and email addresses, required to redeem a 20 percent membership discount. The museum also employed a “Final Days” lightbox designed to boost membership transactions in the typically slow period at the end of a campaign.

In all, the campaign served 4 million digital ads and generated 783 membership purchases. The $1.50 ROI was highest in The Lukens Company’s history with the Art Institute of Chicago.