More Than Tripling Donation ROI on Half the Budget for Dogs Trust
A leaner paid search strategy helped Dogs Trust raise more from fewer, better-qualified supporters.
Dogs Trust runs donation appeals year-round, with paid search as one of its most efficient routes to converting high-intent supporters. For the February 2026 “Never Give Up” appeal, the brief was ambitious: match or beat the previous year’s results on roughly half the budget, proving a leaner search programme could outperform a much larger one.
What we did
Audience Layering
Performance Max
Budget Reallocation
Emotionally-Led Creative
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increase in donation revenue
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increase in ROI
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CPA
The challenge
Dogs Trust’s media budget was halved year-on-year, yet the mandate was to grow revenue rather than protect it. That ruled out buying more traffic as a route to growth. With donation volumes expected to stay broadly flat, every pound of extra revenue had to come from converting the right supporters at a higher rate, not from reaching more people.
Our approach
We rebuilt the programme around quality over volume. Warm, high-intent audiences like past donors, previous campaign engagers and site visitors, were layered across Google Search and fed into Performance Max as audience signals, concentrating spend on supporters most likely to give. Budget was continually reallocated toward the best-performing activity, while emotionally-led creative was paired with a consistent landing page to reinforce the appeal.
The impact
The campaign became the most efficient appeal in the programme’s history, beating the original media plan comfortably on both revenue and donations. Average donation value rose sharply too, showing the growth in quality of supporter as much as quantity.
"Working with the Propellernet team has been a genuinely collaborative experience – they have a deep understanding of our cause, and take the time to learn what matter to us as a charity, not just the numbers."
