Building a Statewide Educational Movement

Launching a new nonprofit requires more than a website or logo. It requires trust. When the Iowa Coalition for Reproductive Freedom (ICRF) was formed, the goal was to create a credible, fact-based educational resource that could help Iowans better understand how reproductive healthcare legislation affects patients, physicians, families, and communities.

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Black Tie Creatives partnered with the organization from its earliest stages, building every aspect of the public-facing brand while developing a comprehensive communications strategy designed to educate, engage, and grow awareness across Iowa. What began as a branding project quickly evolved into the largest integrated communications campaign our agency has produced.

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The Challenge

Reproductive healthcare is one of the most complex and emotionally charged public conversations in the country.

ICRF needed to:

• Establish credibility as a newly formed nonprofit.
• Present medically accurate information in an approachable way.
• Reach audiences across political, geographic, and demographic lines.
• Build awareness quickly while maintaining trust.
• Create a digital ecosystem capable of supporting long-term education and statewide campaigns.

Every decision required balancing accessibility, factual accuracy, thoughtful design, and measurable performance.

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Building the Foundation

Black Tie developed the organization from the ground up.

Our work included:

• Brand strategy
• Brand identity
• Logo design
• Website UX and Webflow development
• Content strategy
• Copywriting
• Educational resource development
• Blog strategy
• Search engine optimization
• Photography
• Video production
• Social media management
• Email marketing
• Analytics implementation
• Conversion tracking
• Monthly reporting
• Campaign strategy

Rather than treating each deliverable independently, every element was designed to work together as part of a unified communications system.

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Content Strategy

Education became the center of every campaign. Rather than relying solely on awareness messaging, the strategy focused on developing evergreen educational resources that would continue generating traffic long after publication.

This included:

• Long-form research articles
• Physician interviews
• Podcast production
• Educational videos
• Short-form reels
• Infographics
• News updates
• Interactive website resources
• Email newsletters
• Organic social campaigns

This content ecosystem created multiple pathways for audiences to discover, learn, and engage with the organization.

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Website & User Experience

The website became the organization's primary educational resource. Black Tie designed and developed a custom Webflow website that organized complex healthcare information into an accessible experience for patients, families, healthcare providers, and media.

The site includes:

• Educational resource library
• Legislative updates
• News articles
• Storyteller submissions
• Physician profiles
• Interactive content
• Donation pathways
• Email acquisition
• Analytics dashboards

As content expanded, the website continued serving as the central destination for every campaign. By August 2026 alone, the website generated more than 55,000 sessions, with 99% engaged users, substantially outperforming typical nonprofit engagement benchmarks. New visitors accounted for more than 51,000 users during the month.

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Paid Media Strategy

Paid media became one of the campaign's strongest growth engines. Rather than relying on a single advertising platform, Black Tie developed an integrated media strategy combining:

• Meta advertising
• Statewide display advertising
• YouTube
• Google Ads
• Retargeting
• Audience segmentation
• Creative testing
• Geographic targeting
• Conversion optimization

Every campaign was continuously monitored and optimized based on performance data rather than assumptions. By August 2026, Phase 2 campaigns had already surpassed the annual goal of 10 million impressions, generating more than 275,000 website sessions months ahead of schedule.

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Display Advertising

To expand awareness beyond traditional social platforms, Black Tie launched a statewide display advertising campaign through our demand-side platform (DSP). The campaign introduced educational messaging across Iowa's digital publishers, allowing ICRF to reach entirely new audiences while maintaining exceptional cost efficiency.

During its first month alone, the display campaign generated:

• 675,000 impressions
• 2,559 website conversions
• Average CPM of just $4.65, significantly below the campaign's overall CPM benchmark

The platform also allowed continuous testing of creative formats, messaging, and placements to improve future performance.

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Analytics & Optimization

Every campaign decision was informed by data. Black Tie implemented a complete analytics framework including:

• Google Analytics 4
• Google Tag Manager
• Conversion tracking
• Custom KPI dashboards
• Monthly executive reporting
• Creative performance analysis
• Audience segmentation
• Attribution reporting

Performance reviews informed everything from creative direction to media allocation, ensuring resources were consistently invested in the highest-performing content.

Monthly reporting evaluated:

• Website performance
• Organic social
• Paid media
• Email growth
• Creative effectiveness
• Audience behavior
• Conversion trends
• Future recommendations

Rather than simply reporting numbers, each report guided the next phase of strategy.

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Creative That Performed

The campaign combined physician voices, patient stories, educational graphics, research, podcasts, video, blogs, and social media into a unified communications strategy.

Performance data continually informed creative decisions.

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One example was the relaunch of the "Iowans Care" campaign, which became the organization's highest-performing creative, generating more than 129,000 engagements and accounting for 34% of all account engagement during the month while producing significantly higher video completion rates than the campaign average.

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Results to Date

Current results include:

• 16+ million paid campaign impressions
• 358,000+ website sessions
• More than 1,000 new email subscribers
• 4,200+ total email contacts
• More than 495,000 people reached during August alone
• 102,000+ content engagements in August
• 55,000 website sessions in August
• Statewide display advertising launched with a $4.65 CPM
• Millions of educational content views across Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and display advertising