CASE STUDY
Donate Life America
ABOUT
Donate Life America is an alliance of national organizations and state teams committed to increasing the number of donated organs, eyes, and tissue available for transplant to save lives. In 2016, the organization partnered with Apple to bring organ donor registrations to the iPhone Health app for the iOS 10 release.
SERVICES PROVIDED
- Website Design & Development
- Content Marketing & SEO
- Google Analytics & Cross-Domain Tracking
- Google Ad Grant Strategy & Management
- A/B Testing & CRO
- SMS Strategy
OVERVIEW
Whole Whale has worked closely with Donate Life America since January 2016. The partnership began when DLA was pushing critical initiatives forward, including a groundbreaking partnership with Apple to bring organ donor registration to the iPhone Health app, but lacked the measurement infrastructure to understand their digital impact. DLA also needed a new, modern website before the Apple partnership launch.
Whole Whale built DLA a new website and optimized their digital presence for impact using Google Analytics, Google AdWords, A/B testing, and more. The result was a comprehensive digital strategy that connected the dots between awareness, engagement, and real organ donor registrations.
Big Wins
- Organic organ donor registration rate increased by 85% through SEO and content optimization
- Achieved #1 Google search result for “what is organ donation”
- Donor registration rate improved by 89% through A/B testing of registration button placement
- Brought Google Ad Grant spend to 100% within one week and secured GrantsPro within six months
- Implemented cross-domain tracking across donatelife.net and registerme.org for full user journey visibility
- Built and launched SMS strategy for 60,000 registrations in support of world record attempt
What We Did
Whole Whale partnered with Donate Life America across website development, SEO, advertising, analytics, A/B testing, and SMS strategy to build a data-driven digital presence that drives organ donor registrations at scale.
AWARENESS
Boosting Organic Visibility with SEO & Content
Using SEO best practices and building out new organ-specific content pages, Whole Whale prevented traffic from dropping after the launch of DLA’s new website. Organic traffic actually increased 5% in the following month, and the organic organ donor registration rate grew by 85%. DLA became the #1 Google search result for “what is organ donation,” driving consistent, high-intent traffic to their site.
INTERESTED
Tracking the Full Donor Journey with Analytics
Whole Whale updated DLA to Universal Analytics and implemented cross-domain tracking so the team could see the entire user journey from donatelife.net to registerme.org. We also created Google Analytics goals for organ donor registrations and social media shares of those registrations, enabling the team to analyze the most effective sources of conversions and allocate resources accordingly.
ENGAGED
Maximizing Reach with the Google Ad Grant
Whole Whale secured the Google AdWords Grant for DLA within days, brought their Ad Grant spend to 100% within just one week, and obtained GrantsPro within six months. We continually improved campaigns, ad groups, and keywords to drive more registered organ donors. We also created an affiliate strategy presented at the Donate Life America 2016 Annual Conference so local chapters could replicate this success with their own grant accounts.
Improving Conversions with A/B Testing
Whole Whale began A/B testing the new DLA website immediately after its launch. Testing revealed that adding a second registration button at the bottom of specific organ pages improved the donor registration rate by 89%. Ongoing testing continued to drive incremental improvements to the registration funnel.
COMMITTED
Driving Registrations at Scale with SMS
Whole Whale worked with DLA to build out an SMS initiative in their effort to break the “most organ donor registrations in a day” world record. We created and implemented an SMS strategy to allow 60,000 people to sign up via their mobile device, making it as easy and simple as possible to register to be a donor.
A/B Testing for Maximum Impact
By systematically testing registration page layouts, button placement, and calls to action on the new DLA website, Whole Whale identified changes that improved the organ donor registration rate by 89%. This testing-first approach ensured that every design decision was backed by data, turning the website into DLA’s most powerful conversion tool.
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
Key Insight
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