Success Story
Christoffel-Blindenmission (CBM)
Control Centre for Data-driven Marketing for a Nonprofit Company
Before the project began, multiple, disconnected tools were in use, and marketing was carried out in a fragmented and ineffective way. Our task was to reengineer company infrastructure and processes to enable data-driven and interest-driven marketing and fundraising. Once the work was completed, we were able to exceed expectations and increase the revenue from annual donations by up to 30%.
Christoffel-Blindenmission (CBM) is a nonprofit organisation with the goal of breaking the cycle of poverty and disability in developing countries and creating a better quality of life and equal opportunities for people with disabilities. Their vision is for a world where people with physical disabilities are given the same rights as everyone else and can live free from disease and poverty.
To achieve its vision and fulfil its mission, Christoffel-Blindenmission (CBM) works with local partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These partners provide preventive, medical, rehabilitative and educational services of high quality - in 51 countries and across 540 projects.
CHALLENGES
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Email communication via the Mailingwork tool
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Mailingwork and Salesforce are two separate systems that do not communicate with each other
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Therefore no automation or recording of donor behaviour is possible
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High personnel effort required for manual import and data reconciliation between Salesforce and Mailingwork
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Content is statically provided to everyone in an email list, even though each subscriber has different interests
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No overall view of marketing activities possible
SOLUTIONS
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Migration to the Marketing Cloud
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Dynamic Custom Preference Center
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DSGVO/GDPR-compliant DOI process with a form handler to match website registrations of any existing contact directly and in real time in the Nonprofit Cloud
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Linking of the website using a specially developed form handler web service, which is also used for other forms (e.g., sweepstakes, rate cards, contact forms)
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Automated welcome campaigns dynamically targeted by theme for new subscribers and donors
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Dynamic content - content is played out based on interests, needs, additional distributors, etc.
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Total overview of a donor's marketing activities in Salesforce
RESULTS
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Reduced manual effort: only 1-2 people required to reconcile data for 2 hours per month and maintain it in Salesforce/Mailingwork
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Improved CTR thanks to targeting of newsletter contacts with dynamic content
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Functioning and stable DOI process: 2,250 new contacts automatically created in Salesforce
Initial situation
Fragmented system landscape, low data quality, static marketing
Before the project began, several unrelated tools were in place but only partially in use: Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and the marketing automation tool Mailingwork. Due to the lack of connectivity and a configuration that took full advantage of these tools’ technical capabilities, manual effort was high and work was error-prone.
Incoming donations and donor information were not automatically matched or updated with existing data. This meant that it was not possible to see what preferences a particular donor had and to present them with relevant fundraising campaigns via email marketing. In Mailingwork, selection was done manually, so each field had to be created individually for selection.
Most registered donors were kept in a static email list. As a result, everyone received the same content regardless of their interests and donation behaviour. The marketing team was therefore unable to act on the basis of data.
Due to the use of two disconnected systems - Salesforce and Mailingwork - the subscription and unsubscription of users to newsletters had to be done manually to a large extent, which was suboptimal in terms of data protection.
Solution
Migration and implementation of the Marketing Cloud as an online marketing tool
After evaluating the customer's requirements, the Marketing Cloud was implemented in conjunction with the Nonprofit Cloud, which was already in use. Due to the existing possibilities in the functional scope of the Marketing Cloud, the objective was to do away with the Mailingwork tool.
A bespoke web service was developed to transmit form submissions on the CBM’s website to the Nonprofit Cloud in real time using a Marketing Cloud landing page. Existing contacts are matched and updated via their email address. The Salesforce Rest API, server-side Javascript and APEX triggers, and Marketing Cloud AMPscript were used for this.
The data now resides primarily in the Nonprofit Cloud and no longer needs to be manually reconciled through manual imports and exports.
Results
Synchronised tools, data-driven marketing, increased donation revenue
After linking and configuring the Nonprofit Cloud with the Marketing Cloud, the Mailingwork tool could be eliminated. All functions could be implemented using the existing Marketing Cloud, thus saving costs. At the same time, automations and synchronizations were introduced that made time-consuming manual data maintenance obsolete. Furthermore, the Marketing Cloud offers the additional option of not only sending out email campaigns, but also campaigns via SMS or as push notifications in apps.
The workload required from personnel for data reconciliation was greatly reduced.
By linking the website and fundraising box to Salesforce Clouds, marketing was finally able to work in a data-driven way and target fundraising campaigns based on the known interests of donors. As a result, the main fundraising newsletter achieved up to 45% donation growth in 2022. Overall, donation revenue via the newsletter increased by more than 30% compared to 2021.
The main factors for this were:
- Continuous improvement suggestions to send time through Einstein Send Time Optimization
- Continuous A/B testing of newsletters based on subject matter or content elements
- Better targeting based on dynamic content elements
Through the introduction and configuration of a custom Preference Center, subscribers and recurring donors can manage their newsletter preferences and change their contact information themselves.
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