Most campaigns get bigger by getting less efficient. This one grew seven and a half times and got more efficient.
In July 2020, Islamic Relief Worldwide’s Arabic fundraising team set out to grow online Qurbani giving across the Gulf and Egypt, under the hashtag#أضحيتك_رحمة(“your udhiya is mercy”). Our team led the campaign as executive consultant, shaping the strategy, the market priorities, the budget moves and the cultural detail alongside Islamic Relief’s in-house team. Islamic Relief has delivered Qurbani since 1986 and by 2020 was reaching families in more than 37 countries. In 23 days, we helped it raise seven and a half times the online Qurbani giving in Arabic of the year before.
Islamic Relief · Qurbani 2020 · Results
Islamic Relief Worldwide campaign report, Qurbani 2019 and 2020. Return on ad spend is income from the campaign divided by advertising cost.
The mandate: grow income, in Arabic, in 23 days
The objective was unambiguous: increase income. The campaign spoke only Arabic, ran in seven countries (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt) and sent every visitor to Islamic Relief’s Arabic website. The window was the 23 days before Eid al-Adha, when the decision to give is made and the competition for it is fiercest.
We built a full-funnel plan across Google Search, Google Display and Discovery, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube, supported by seven promotional videos, banners, five email designs and ten social boosts. Nineteen working sessions, twelve online and seven in person, kept strategy and execution moving as one.
Scale without losing efficiency
Online Qurbani giving through the Arabic website grew to 7.5 times the 2019 total. Investment grew at almost exactly the same pace, and that is the achievement: most campaigns lose efficiency as they scale, because every extra dollar reaches people who are less ready to give. Ours did not. Return on ad spend held at 6.9x, against 6.8x the year before, on a budget more than seven times larger.
Donors grew even faster than the money: 9.4 times as many people gave. 974 of them, 58%, had never given to Islamic Relief online before. Acquisition was not even the target; it came as a by-product of reaching the right people with the right message.
The strategic bet: Saudi Arabia
Every Gulf market grew, but we identified one market that could change the shape of the whole campaign, and we backed it. Giving from Saudi Arabia grew more than elevenfold, and the Kingdom went from about two fifths of online Qurbani income to three fifths of it.
Kuwait grew fastest from a very small 2019 base. Saudi Arabia grew more than elevenfold and became the campaign’s engine.
Shares computed from the report’s income by country.
The bet paid off twice. Saudi Arabia was not only the biggest market, it was the most efficient: every dollar of advertising there brought back 7.5 dollars, the best return in the campaign. The UAE came second.
Income by country divided by advertising cost by country, from the campaign report.
Reading the market: reach is not giving
On a dashboard, Egypt looked like the campaign’s star. It took 30% of all the people reached and sent more visitors to the website than any other country, because attention there is cheap. But only 0.25% of Egyptian visitors donated. In the UAE, 3.65% did, about 15 times the rate.
Egypt
- Share of people reached
- 30%
- Visitors who donated
- 0.25%
UAE
- Share of people reached
- 8%
- Visitors who donated
- 3.65%
Visitors who donated: transactions divided by website visitors from each country.
This is the discipline at the heart of how we work: judge every market by gifts, never by reach or clicks. Large, cheap audiences make a report look busy. The money comes from the audiences who are ready to give, and that is where we put the budget.
Budget that follows intent
The plan spread the budget across six platforms. As results came in, we moved money to where donors were already looking for a way to give: Google Search, which ended up with almost two thirds of the spend. AdRoll’s share was never spent. With returns holding, the final budget grew to about twice the original plan.
Shares of the planned and the final advertising budget, from the campaign report.
Search wins at Qurbani because the decision to give is usually made before the search. A donor looking for an udhiya online has already decided to give and is choosing where. Our job was to make Islamic Relief the first trustworthy answer.
Cultural intelligence, in the details
Numbers tell you what happened. Culture tells you why. These are the details we insisted on, the kind that only matter if you truly know the audience, and that cost real money when they are missed.
The insight that unlocks the next campaign
Our sharpest finding came after the campaign closed. When we added up every donation donors had attempted, 47% of the value had failed at payment, almost as much money again as had come through. In Saudi Arabia, the biggest market, 36% failed.
Islamic Relief Worldwide campaign report: succeeded and failed payment values, all markets.
Donors were not the problem. They wanted to give, tried, and could not complete the payment. That means the demand we created was larger than the result shows. Our recommendations were direct: show bank transfer details on every campaign page and bring in a regional payment partner. For any charity raising money across borders, the payment page is part of the fundraising strategy, and it deserves the same attention as the ads.
Who came to give
Google Analytics visitor data and the campaign report’s income by country.
Phones dominated, so we built the creative and the donation journey for a small screen first. And the Arabic content travelled further than the targeting: donors in Europe, North America and Africa found it and gave, without a single ad being shown to them. Content that speaks to the community in its own language finds the community wherever it lives.
Brand signals: exposure, search and recognition
Islamic Relief is a known name, so the brand question was not awareness alone. It was whether a 23-day Arabic campaign could put the name in front of millions, send people looking for it, and win the trust of donors who had never given to it online before. On all three, the signals moved.
Islamic Relief campaign report (reach, interactions, donors). Google Trends via DataForSEO, Saudi Arabia, web search, weekly, 2018 to 2021, pulled November 2026; the Arabic name is partly shared with a Saudi organisation, so some searches may be for it. No controlled brand-lift study was run, so no brand-lift percentage is claimed.
The first-time donors matter most. A Qurbani gift is an act of trust: the donor will never see the animal or the family who receives the meat. When more than half of the donors in a campaign are new to you, the brand has done its work.
The playbook we bring to every Qurbani campaign
- Speak the donor’s word. Adahi in Arabic, Qurbani in the UK, Qurbani or udhiya in the US. Names shape trust.
- Judge markets on gifts. Reach and visitors are a cost, not a result.
- Let budget follow intent. Move money to search and to the markets that convert, week by week.
- Fix payments before you buy traffic. Test cards, wallets and bank transfers from every target country before launch.
- Respect the audience in the details. Vocals-only sound, local currency, flawless Arabic, a verified account.
Planning Qurbani or Ramadan for Arab or Muslim donors? Book a call and we will show you how we would build it for you.
About this case study: our team worked on this campaign as executive consultant to Islamic Relief Worldwide’s Arabic fundraising team in July 2020, before Wusul was founded in 2026. Figures come from Islamic Relief’s internal campaign report and are shown as rates and multiples. Return on ad spend means income from the campaign divided by its advertising cost. The report does not break income down by platform, so this case study makes no claim about which platform raised what.
