A.Y.E. and GEF: from paper forms to 25,000 applications
In 2017, applying to the empowerment programme run by Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs (A.Y.E.) meant buying a paper form, handing it in at the office and attending three interviews in person. We moved the whole process online. Applications went from about 1,000 to more than 25,000 in the first year.
This case study covers that work, the events that followed, and how the organisation’s festival, the Global Entrepreneurship Festival (GEF), runs its contacts on Socianet today.
At a glance
| Client | Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs (A.Y.E.), an entrepreneurship network, and its Global Entrepreneurship Festival (GEF) |
|---|---|
| Sector | Non-profit and events |
| Where | Nigeria, with events streamed to members in other countries |
| When | From 2017. The results below cover the first five years. |
| Our part | Online registration and interviews, email marketing, social media and the digital side of each event |
| Who did the work | Socianet’s agency team, which worked as Socialight in Nigeria, before we built the Socianet CRM. GEF’s contacts run on the CRM today. |
The starting point
Most of A.Y.E.’s processes were on paper. Its empowerment programme, AYEEN, ran once a year. To apply, a person had to:
- Buy a form.
- Fill it in and submit it at the office.
- Come back in person for a three-stage interview.
A process like that only reaches people who can get to one office, several times. The organisation wanted it simplified.
What we did
- Put registration and interviews online. Applicants no longer had to buy a form or travel to submit it.
- Went back to the people who had applied before. We gathered the applicant databases from earlier years and sent an email series with personalised messages.
- Built up the social media pages the organisation already had.
- Added partners when demand grew. We introduced partnership and sponsorship campaigns, and a reality TV show was created around the programme. Fidelity Bank, PlayTV, TVC and MTV came on board.
- Ran the digital side of the events, year after year.
The results
- Applications rose from about 1,000 to more than 25,000 in the first year.
- Over five years we managed 8 events with more than 50,000 attendees in total.
- Those events drew more than 3 million livestream views.
- The campaigns reached about 500 million impressions over the same five years.
- Handling applications took less staff time and cost the organisation less than the paper process.
The eighth event, in Ondo State, ran for 24 hours with about 10,000 attendees. It led to a new state agency, which is the subject of our ONDEA case study.
Where it stands today: GEF on Socianet
The festival now manages more than 20,000 contacts on the Socianet CRM, with automated booking for its E-Village locations. A process that began with paper forms at one office now sits in one system the whole team can see.
What a sales team can take from it
- The way in decides how many people come in. When enquiring is hard work, you only hear from the most determined. A.Y.E. had far more interested people than its paper form let through.
- Your old lists are worth a message. The first campaign went to people who had applied in earlier years. Most teams have a list like that sitting in a spreadsheet. Our guide to importing contacts from Excel to a CRM covers how to clean one up.
- Volume needs stages. Nobody can interview 25,000 people from a pile of forms. Each applicant needs a stage, an owner and a next step, which is what pipeline stages are for.
Have a list that deserves a better process?
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