Feeding Tampa Bay

Email Marketing, College-Aged Advocates

Prepared By Group 7:
Rayann Albashir
Jordan Freeman
Gracianna Hall
Victoria Perez
Opportunity
Utilization of diverse digital marketing capabilities provides Feeding Tampa Bay to reach
new individuals each day, which allows them to set a digital reputation. The Feeding Tampa
Bay’s website is consistent, organized, interactive, and informative, providing direct links to
“Stand with Feeding Tampa Bay” and others on how to find food, how you can help, and ways to
donate, as well as their response to COVID-19. The website also includes their mission
statement, so that those who are unaware of their movement can better understand what they
advocate, and information to show what they’ve achieved and plan on achieving. It is mobile
friendly, allowing you to access all these resources with no additional steps, however, their
social media accounts have a big following but lack interactions from their followers. Regarding
advertising, Feeding Tampa Bay does not have many TV commercials, instead they have a
wide range of display ads1 and local news story features2.
Feeding Tampa Bay’s main opportunity in their digital marketing capabilities is having
their followers interact more and become more engaged with their posts to increase their
network, and changing their email strategy to attract more action from subscribers.
On Twitter, Feeding Tampa Bay has an account with 2,575 followers. Their page consists
of sharing their podcast platforms, informative specifics, details, and facts that allow users,
customers, and supporters to stay up to date. Each post receives about 1 retweet and 5 likes.
The Feeding Tampa Bay Facebook account has 16,148 check ins, and 17,989 page likes. Their
page is interactive with multiple links that direct you to their shop that has their personal gear,
supporter’s personal fundraiser, upcoming and past events, and an about page that consists of
their location, email, Instagram and website link.
Feeding Tampa Bay’s Instagram page has 6,325 followers with multiple highlights in their
bio which contains find food, podcast, ways to help, shop, across the country informative, and a
donation link. They have a decent interaction from their followers and receive about 70 likes per
image. On LinkedIn, Feeding Tampa Bay has two accounts, one consisting of a foodbank. The
food bank account only has 126 followers and zero interactions. On the other hand, their main
page on LinkedIn has 3,156 followers and contains an overview of what their company
represents and has completed within the last year. The Spotify account only consists of their
podcasts also known as “Stick A Fork in It”.
Emails coming from Feeding Tampa Bay are mainly personal stories from their clients,
plus interactive links at the bottom to learn more, help now, and how to use your voice
connecting back to the personal story they shared in their email.

Google Analytics
Feeding Tampa Bay’s Google Analytics reports provided some useful information to
review and a good starting point for areas to focus for improvement. The 1-month acquisition
report for January of 2021 showed that conversions peak on Mondays, which shows that
Mondays are a key day to convert. It also showed that most conversions come via email,
referrals, and direct channels. Over the 18-month period report, conversion rates for those three
channels were 19.26%, 3.61%, and 2.89%, respectively. Additionally, this report showed that the
general order of channels stays the same across the full 18 months, with only a few switching
places, and thus proves that the majority of traffic comes from direct and organic channels, with
social media being around the middle of the list and email being at the bottom. All bounce rates
are too high, the average ranging from low to mid 40%, which combined with the user
acquisition data, exemplifies that the content is not compelling enough to hold interest and that
some of the most important forms of communication (social media and email) are not optimized.

1
“Feeding Tampa Bay.” ChappellRoberts, www.chappellroberts.com/work/feeding-tampa-bay/. Accessed 2 April 2021.
2
ABCActionNews. Feeding Tampa Bay | Morning Blend. 9 Nov. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Xw5Eb8-Ew. Accessed 2 April
2021.

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 The audience report provided that across 18 months, 71.4%-79.9% of users were new,
and that there was a significant increase in users just a few months into 2020, coinciding with
the global pandemic crisis COVID-19. Moreover, there is less traffic on the weekends than
during the week, which brings into question the timing of posts, ads, commercials, and the like,
to see why there is traffic during the week but not on the weekends and if there is a connection
there. More data confirming the insight that the website is not attractive or interesting enough to
hold attention and compel users to dig deeper into the site was provided in this report where it
shows the average session duration being only 2 minutes and 53 seconds and that the average
pageviews per person were 3.73.
The behavior report added to this knowledge by showing the average pageview bounce
rate to be a high 41.35% and a normal exit rate of 26.79%. The most important insight from this
report came from the amount of pageviews on specific pages; “find food” and “find a pantry” sat
highest in views across the whole 18-month period, followed by the calendar page. More
importantly, the volunteering and donating pages remained lower in the list than they should; the
volunteer page held 4th place in the 1-month report, then moved to 7th, 8th, and back to 7th for
the 6-, 12-, and 18-month reports.The donation page held 7th in the 1-month, 6th in the
6-month, and in the 12- and 18-month reports it held 10th place. This means that Feeding
Tampa Bay is only hitting one of their target markets, the people in hunger, and not reaching the
other, the people they need for help (i.e. donors and volunteers).

Customer Insights
The target audience is service-minded people who have a passion for helping and
volunteering at community events. They are college students between the ages of 18-25 who
wish to get involved by giving time through volunteerism. These students want to serve as
student leaders and gain necessary experience in the community services workforces. For a
whole semester, they will also use their voice through social media. Keeping in mind the
audience, the two personas created are Linda Widner and Joseph Smith, who are both USF
students with a passion of being involved in the community and helping others, while gaining
professional experience. Visualizations of these personas can be found in the appendix3.
The first persona, Linda Widner, can be found in the appendix under Figure 2. She is a
22 year old college student majoring in Digital Marketing. She runs her own blog and plans to
use it to bring awareness and share information on how to help, donate, and volunteer at
Feeding Tampa Bay’s events. Since Linda has experience running her own brand and is
comfortable with sharing things on social media, she is a great fit for an advocate.
The second persona, Joseph Smith, can be found in the appendix under Figure 3. He is
a 19 year old college student majoring in Exercise Science. He volunteers at his local church by
running the fundraiser events and wishes to be more involved with the community. He is fit to be
a college advocate due to his experience with volunteering and desire to help more.

The Customer Journey

Feeding Tampa Bay is dedicated to fight against hunger and currently provides aid to
people who are suffering in West Central Florida. Feeding Tampa Bay offers many avenues of
aid to those in need of food assistance in the Tampa Bay Area. They have two full restaurants in
which the hungry can go and get a 3-course meal or take one to go, they operate food pantries
and mobile food pantries all over, including in schools and universities, to give those in need
access to healthy groceries, and they operate a workforce development program designed to
teach skills necessary to get a stable job in the culinary, warehouse, and truck driving industries.
Along with working with local schools, they help determine eligibility and assist with the process
of application to state assistance programs such as SNAP, collaborate with hospitals and clinics
3
Persona visualizations created with Piktochart, https://piktochart.com

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to give patients with specific conditions healthy food through their FoodRX program, and are
first responders in disaster relief situations. Thus, there are many ways in which those who need
food assistance may become customers of Feeding Tampa Bay.
A channel that plays a significant role to help customers find diverse ways to support and
volunteer is Feeding Tampa Bay’s website4. The website is where customers can find FTB’s
history and purpose, and they can read testimonial stories on how Feeding Tampa Bay has
impacted individuals and families who suffered from food insecurity. The website is easy to
navigate, with individual pages for each event and descriptions for every way people can
support the organization - from volunteering on sites, to giving food, to becoming a voice, to
attending an event. There is also a calendar with all scheduled events and activities. The
website provides a straightforward digital experience for customers looking to access the
information on what FTB does, how to help, or how to get help.

Competition Analysis
A competitor of Feeding Tampa Bay is Meals on Wheels. They are a nationwide program
like Feeding Tampa Bay that helps bring food to those in need. A few other programs they have
are Water on Wheels, Produce on Wheels, and Animeals. Their website includes information on
how to donate, volunteer, get meals, programs and an about us section. There are buttons for
their social media including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Their Facebook page has
5,377 followers and 5,100 likes. They post on average 3 times a week, but a majority of posts
get less than 50 likes. Most of their posts include celebrations, thank yous, and showing off their
work. Their Instagram has 1,724 followers. They also post on average 3 times a week and get
under 50 likes on average per post. Their LinkedIn only has 335 followers. This is their least
active social media account. They have yet to post on Linkedin in 2021. In their 2018-2019
annual report, they reported advertising expenses of $4,967 and $2,4105, which are used on
general marketing campaigns and events. There isn’t an app available and their emails are sent
out a few times a month.
Another competitor of Feeding Tampa Bay is Metropolitan Ministries. They help the poor,
hungry, homeless families in Polk, Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas County. Their website is
very well organized with pages on how to get help, how you can help, what we do, who we are,
stories and donate now. They have a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Their Facebook page has 31,808 followers and 30,847 likes. They post at least once every day,
sometimes up to three times each day. Most of their posts don’t reach more than 50 likes. Their
Instagram page has 4,553 followers and they post four times a week. Their Instagram pictures
come from elongated Facebook posts. On Facebook they post a series of pictures and they’ll
choose one of those to upload to Instagram. These posts get about 50-80 likes and their videos
get between 200-500 views. Their Twitter account has 4,896 followers. The content is almost
the exact same as their Facebook posts. They have little to no engagement on posts on Twitter
and the majority of posts have under 5 likes or retweets. Their YouTube channel has
subscribers set to private so it’s unclear how many subscribers they have. Their video views
range from 2 views to 31,000 views. On average, most of their videos get under 100 views and
they post two to four times a month. Finally, their LinkedIn page has 4,518 followers. They post
here about three to five times a week and interactions range from 10-50 likes and comments.
Metropolitan Ministries has used PPK, a Tampa based advertising agency, for over a decade
now to produce campaigns advertising the business. “On Facebook, the ads have generated a

4
“Because Food Makes Tomorrow Possible.” Feeding Tampa Bay, https://www.feedingtampabay.org/. Accessed 2 April 2021.
5
“2018-2019 Audited Financials” Meals on Wheels of Tampa, Inc. Financial Statements June 30, 2019 and 2018.
https://mowtampa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FY19-Audited-Financials.pdf. Accessed 2 April 2021.

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17% increase in online giving, year-over-year.”6 They do not have an app and their emails are
sent out on a weekly basis.

SMART Goals
Through shifting their email strategy away from spotlights and testimonials toward clear
and informative calls to action that communicate value to people ages 18-25, Feeding Tampa
Bay, by the end of June of 2021, will:
1) increase their email conversion rate by 10%
2) increase the rank of their volunteering and donation web pages to between 3rd and 5th place

Strategy
In order for Feeding Tampa Bay (FTB) to reach the above goals with the college-aged
market and to entice them to use their voice and reach on social media, they need to shift their
email marketing strategy through running a 3-month long interactive social media challenge
campaign. Focusing on encouraging the use of social media is the solution to the issue of
increasing volunteerism and donations in a complex COVID-19 environment because it can all
be done remotely and tailored to individual comfort levels. Additionally, the use of social media
is the perfect way to reach the college-aged demographic because it is so widely used, and
loved, and so many young people care greatly about posting their lives and influencing others.
Moreover, if it has good reach, it has the potential to go viral - virality campaigns are highly
successful. Doing this through email marketing will reach and engage a large audience in the
target market because, as seen in the analytics reports, email is the biggest source of
conversion for Feeding Tampa Bay.
Feeding Tampa Bay will orchestrate a community-involvement social media challenge
that will increase awareness and encourage aid, while providing the opportunity for college
students to get community service hours and showcase their involvement on their resumes. For
3 months, beginning in April of 2021 and ending in June of 2021, Feeding Tampa Bay will send
out one email per week with 3 food-related community service challenges for students to
complete and post about. They will be advised to post a specific picture for each challenge on
either Facebook or Instagram, and use the hashtag #FTBchallenge in the caption. For those
who want to participate but do not have those social media, they have the option to email their
photo to Feeding Tampa Bay. Once 5 challenges are completed the student will receive a
triggered email that congratulates them and provides a link to fill out shipping information for
their reward of an “I am ending hunger.” FTB t-shirt7. Once 10 challenges are completed the
student will receive a similar triggered email but will instead be rewarded with a “We’re ending
hunger.” FTB tote bag8 filled with a water bottle and stickers. Also included is a feature on the
FTB website, social media platforms, and in a spotlight email sent to their subscribers. This is a
sustainable marketing strategy because it can be recurring, as there are many different
interactive challenges FTB can come up with and they can run this campaign multiple times (i.e.
annually) with new challenges.

6
“PPK Helps Metropolitan Ministries Reach New Creative and Fundraising Milestones”.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ppk-helps-metropolitan-ministries-reach-new-creative-and-fundraising-milestones-3004
43914.html. Accessed 29 March 2021.
7
“I Am Ending Hunger Crew.” Feeding Tampa Bay Swag, www.ftbstore.org/product/imendinghunger/2?cs=true&cst=custom.
Accessed 29 March 2021.
8
“We're Ending Hunger Tote Bag.” Feeding Tampa Bay Swag, www.ftbstore.org/product/totebag/17?cs=true&cst=custom.
Accessed 29 March 2021.

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Value Proposition
In order to increase awareness and reach of Feeding Tampa Bay’s services to those in
need, and their need for help from the community, they will provide value to attract involvement
through this social media challenge campaign. Through creating these challenges, Feeding
Tampa Bay will be able to provide a fun interactive experience that will provide positive
engagement and esteem to the college-aged target market as well as the ability to showcase
this achievement through community service credit and resume experience. Moreover, because
social media has so much use and reach, this will provide value to the community through
increasing the amount of donors and volunteers that help get more meals distributed and
increase awareness of Feeding Tampa Bay’s locations and offerings to help get those meals to
reach the people who need them. Lastly, a social media challenge campaign distributed via
email adds value in a pandemic-ridden world. It provides the flexibility to only complete
challenges that advocates are comfortable with, spread awareness and interactivity remotely,
and still be able to help and be involved in the community without organizing in large groups or
events while COVID-19 remains prevalent.

Action
Feeding Tampa Bay’s goal with the email marketing strategy is to increase brand
awareness and engagement with college-aged students through a social media virality
campaign. These challenges would benefit Feeding Tampa Bay, the college student, and the
Tampa Bay community of those in need of food assistance. An email will be sent out every
Monday with 3 new challenges to complete in the span of the 3 months the campaign runs. The
3 emails created9, located in the appendix, represent the first email announcing the challenge
(Figure 4); a triggered email a recipient will receive after finishing 10 challenges (Figure 5); and
the last email sent at the end of the challenges thanking the students and providing them with
statistics on their accomplishments (Figure 6).
The infographic created can be found in the appendix under Figure 7. Its purpose is to
give the audience a brief explanation of the challenge they will be participating in. The top of the
infographic features the “#FTBchallenge” hashtag (using Feeding Tampa Bay’s primary graphic
elements) since it is what the whole challenge is about. The hashtag is followed by facts and
statistics about food insecurity, provided by Feeding Tampa Bay10. These facts and statistics
were placed there so the participants are aware of Tampa’s current situation and to make them
realize how important their help is to end food insecurity. Under the facts and statistics is a 3
step description of the challenge, starting by stating the duration of the challenge and how they
will be contacted, followed by an explanation on how to participate and use the hashtag on their
socials, and finishing with the benefits of participating and the prizes they could win. At the
bottom of the infographic is Feeding Tampa Bay’s logo.
Every part has visual elements to make the infographic more engaging and help the
participants create a personal idea of what they will be doing, and every visual element was
created following the brand’s color palette. The pictures used as references are from Feeding
Tampa Bay’s website11, and the graphic elements are from FTB Brand Elevation Guidelines.

9
Emails created with Mailchimp, http://www.mailchimp.com
10
From “FTB Stats & Facts (6).pdf” course document in Canvas
11
“Use Your Voice.” Feeding Tampa Bay,
https://feedingtampabay.org/how-you-can-help/use-your-voice. Accessed 31 March 2021.

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Appendix

Figure 1.

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Figure 2. Figure 3.

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Figure 4. Figure 5.

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Figure 6.

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Figure 7.

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