How Platypus helped Islamic Relief UK deliver a 900% ROAS during Qurbani

Qurbani is the second biggest event in the Muslim calendar, making it Islamic Relief UK’s second largest fundraising time of year. 

We ran a campaign in the lead up to, and during, the Islamic month of Dhul Hijjah. During the festival of Eid ul-Adha, which starts on the 10th day of the 12th Islamic month, Muslims are asked to give Qurbani, a religious donation that symbolizes the sacrifice of a goat, sheep, cow or camel. Our campaign for IRUK ran for most of July and the first few days of August. 


The Qurbani campaign had a target of return on ad spend of 2.0.

IRUK wanted to test Qurbani and Eid messaging and imagery as well as other products, such as food, water, and conflict. We also ran a campaign focusing on making a donation towards Eid gifts. We ran these as sub campaigns as we knew that these would need to target audiences with different giving intents.


What we did

Created a campaign strategy

We created an overall campaign strategy. This involved planning the main campaign and sub campaigns.

Planned audiences

We planned a range of warm audiences and utilised the Facebook Pixel to create groups based on past behaviour. We also went to cold groups that included interests that had a high affinity with a typical IRUK supporter as well as lookalike audiences.

Optimised the campaigns

Our detailed knowledge of Muslim communities allowed us to optimise the campaign very successfully, including increasing daily spend in periods of expected high giving. This led to an incredible peak return on ad spend of 13.98 at one point in the campaign.

We also knew exactly when to switch ads off, responding to when ROAS dropped to what we knew would be its lowest level.

The results

IRUK were delighted with the results of the campaign. The Qurbani product alone ended up on an excellent 8.83 ROAS and the Eid Gifts product ended on an ROAS of 6.52.

Overall, we achieved a 5.50 ROAS and IRUK were delighted with the outcome of this campaign, having initially hoped for a 2.0 ROAS.

As well as the income itself, the campaign has led to hugely valuable insights that the paid social team at Platypus can use to deploy even more successful campaigns for IRUK throughout 2020.

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