Located in Grand Rapids, John Ball Zoo is one of West Michigan’s leading cultural institutions, welcoming over 700,000 guests annually. Rendezoo is John Ball Zoo’s largest fundraising event of the year, supporting its mission to inspire the community to actively engage in the conservation of wildlife and the natural environment. Proceeds from the event directly benefit the Zoo’s conservation and education initiatives, as well as the care of the 2,000+ animals that call John Ball Zoo home.
With just two weeks until the event, 180 tickets had been sold, with a goal of selling at least 400. As the Zoo’s agency of record, the Acorn team was tasked with developing and deploying a short-term paid media strategy to help stimulate ticket sales in the final two weeks leading up to the event.
Acorn developed a dual-channel strategy targeting affluent audiences in the Grand Rapids metro area with interests in culture, arts, entertainment, and nonprofit giving. A data-driven programmatic display campaign reached potential attendees in the awareness stage, while a paid Meta campaign reinforced consideration and drove traffic to the event landing page.
On Meta, we ran a combination of traditional paid ads and boosted organic posts to create variety, increase reach, and give the campaign a more natural, community-driven feel.
The campaign launched on May 30, 2026. By June 9, John Ball Zoo had surpassed its goal of 400 tickets sold, ultimately selling 475 tickets by the day of the event.
The display campaign generated 326,700 impressions and 168 clicks. The Meta campaign delivered 129,865 impressions, 10,161 clicks, and an impressive 7.5% click-through rate. Over the course of the campaign, the Rendezoo landing page saw 6,549 visits, representing a more than 360% increase over the previous period.
As a result of John Ball Zoo and Acorn’s combined efforts—including advertising in the local business journal, community publications, digital advertising, organic social media, and email marketing to past and prospective attendees—nearly $300,000 was raised in support of the Zoo’s mission of conservation and community education.
