Brandon Lawson
Director of Content Strategy, Smile Train
“Identifying a critical need to shift away from making subjective decisions about our content and instead prioritize the preferences and needs of our donors, we sought out a content partner to provide us with meaningful, actionable insights.”
Company information
- Smile Train, Inc.
- Industry: 501(c)(3) Nonprofit
- Company size: 171
- Revenue: $145 million
- Location: New York, NY USA
- Knotch products: Content EQ
- www.smiletrain.org
Smile Train, for 20+ years, has been dedicated to addressing cleft lip and palate on a global scale. As the world’s largest cleft-focused charity, Smile Train operates with a unique approach – in recognizing the value of training and supporting local cleft care providers, Smile Train is able to reach a greater number of children and support more comprehensive and sustainable care compared to mission-trip-based organizations.
To date, Smile Train has helped more than 1.5 million children across 90+ countries – each and every recipient with a uniquely compelling story. Content is, in Smile Train’s words, ‘absolutely a strategic enabler for the organization.’ According to Derek Kwait, Senior Copywriter at Smile Train, “Our individual patient, partner, and donor stories form the most compelling argument we have for why our cause matters, making it essential that we diligently curate a deep bench of new stories reflecting the global diversity of our work and of our supporters.
But short of standard content engagement metrics and subjective opinions, Smile Train knew content intelligence was required to prioritize all of the compelling stories that fuel their efforts.
“For the future, success will mean further developing systems to ensure we equitably shine a spotlight on all areas of our work and get them in front of the right audiences in the right places at the right time.”
– Derek Kwait
Senior Copywriter, Smile Train
Reader feedback a gamechanger
Smile Train engaged with Knotch for assistance in content intelligence, leveraging the Content EQ platform. The platform measures individual pages of content and corresponding audience engagement metrics, plus adds a unique brand sentiment layer with multi-part questions of the reader/viewer and how the content is impacting sentiment. Included in Content EQ are tagging capabilities around content types, topics, themes, content length, and more to provide deeper granularity.
“What truly set Knotch apart was their unique feature that allowed direct feedback from readers on each content piece. This added layer of reader feedback was a game-changer for Smile Train, as it provided a valuable perspective directly from our audience” says Lawson.
“It allowed us to better understand their preferences, engagement, and sentiment towards our content. This capability distinguished Knotch from other contenders, ultimately making them the ideal choice for our content analytics needs.”
“Overall, our partnership with Knotch has been highly successful, empowering us to leverage data-driven insights and refine our content strategy.”
– Brandon Lawson
Smile Worthiness
With Knotch’s help, Smile Train has learned that it was abundantly clear their audiences love and want to see more stories about patients. Even further, with the help of these Knotch insights, they are able to confirm what kinds of patient stories they should tell, how many images they should use and where those should be placed, the perfect length for a content piece, how pages are structured, keyword selection, and much more.
Alex Berkowitz, Smile Train’s Associate, Content Strategy, shares that since implementing both the Knotch Content EQ measurement platform and insights derived from the practice, they have seen tremendous growth in:
- Positive Sentiment (now at 72% average for all stories)
- 122,000 additional pageviews in 2022 (a 500%+ increase from 2021)
- 30% response rate (versus 26% in 2021)
These results culminated in a winning entry from the Shorty Awards, given to industry-leading content marketers, with Smile Train’s efforts earning them a win in the Blog & Microblog category.
But the greatest winners are the recipients of Smile Train’s efforts in addressing cleft lip and palate worldwide, through the growing donations inspired by the inspirational content from Lawson and Smile Train’s content team.
