UWMCDigital Strategy

The Journey to Enhanced Donor Engagement with United Way McLean County

Project Goals

United Way of McLean County (UWMC) approached us with a compelling vision but needed a concrete plan to achieve their ambitious goals. As a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving lives by mobilizing the caring power of their community, UWMC aimed to increase engagement, amplify storytelling, and fully leverage their Salesforce (SF) and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) systems to advance their cause. They sought to tap into the emotional core of their stories to boost donations and further their mission of community support.

Key Success Metrics

Donor Increase: UWMC aimed to increase the percentage of donors from 30% to 40% in a year. This metric would indicate a broader support base and engagement with their cause.
Targeted Email Metrics: Detailed metrics from more targeted emails would help refine audience profiles, understand donor behaviors, and tailor content to increase relevance and engagement.
Donor Profiles and Journey Builder Reporting: Building detailed donor profiles through email interactions and leveraging Journey Builder reporting would enable UWMC to send the most relevant content and automate touchpoints with their donor base.

To initiate the project, we did a comprehensive discovery of their organizational goals and vision, and strategically identified the best starting point to ensure our initial efforts yielded the highest return on investment. Our focus was on a single, complex journey that could be built upon and launched in alignment with UWMC’s website redesign. We also prioritized the setup of UWMC’s Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) to support the new initiatives and maximize their impact. This strategic approach instilled confidence in the project’s direction and potential for success.

Inside the project

Project Challenges

Big Plans, Small Budgets

UWMC had ambitious ideas but a limited budget, requiring us to determine the most impactful initiatives within their financial constraints. We needed to prioritize and start with something achievable yet significant. Balancing ambition with practicality was key to ensuring progress by spending resources wisely.

Complex Journey Design

The project centered on a single, highly intricate journey with multiple branches and complex logic. This journey aimed to determine what stories donors were most captivated by, and serve follow up content related to their interests. It also sought to capture various donor interactions and behaviors along each step of the journey, making it crucial to ensure proper data synchronization for maximum impact. We needed to manage multiple decision points within the journey, requiring precise planning and execution to maintain donor engagement and achieve desired outcomes.

Limited SFMC Expertise

The staff at UWMC had limited knowledge of SFMC and were eager to grow their knowledge through working with us. Building a collaborative relationship while making the best recommendations for their needs was essential to the project’s success.

Solutions and Outcomes

We designed a sophisticated journey that sent multiple emails to track donor engagement and programmatic interests—this journey aimed to improve interaction and engagement over time.

Key components included:

Building visually appealing email templates to present marketing content effectively.
Creating Data Extensions for targeted audience segmentation, ensuring UWMC’s messages were tailored to specific donor groups.
Collecting metrics to track campaign success and shape future initiatives. Metrics included open rates, click-through rates, donation amounts, and engagement with specific content.

We adopted a phased approach to journey creation, recognizing that learning from the segmented audience(s) was crucial. Like any marketing campaign, the initial journey might not be perfect. With minimal engagement on the first journey, we knew the next phase had to occur. This emphasis on learning and adaptation reassured UWMC about the project’s flexibility and ability to improve over time.

After analyzing the initial phase, we implemented strategic tweaks, such as adding hero images and call to action buttons, to the emails. These changes significantly improved both open and click rates, with an increase of at least 8% in each metric. This successful second phase in our approach demonstrated our ability to engage more recipients effectively.

UWMC’s journey was a testament to the power of focused strategy and adaptive execution. By starting with a single, complex journey and iterating based on detailed metrics, we set the foundation for sustained engagement and increased donations. Our strategic tweaks and ongoing analysis ensured that UWMC could achieve its mission within budget, setting the stage for future successes. The lessons learned and successes achieved in this initial phase provided a roadmap for further enhancing donor engagement and maximizing the impact of their mission-driven initiatives.

As we progress in our work with UWMC, we intend to develop engagement programs for their audiences. We will use their existing and newly acquired data to construct audience profiles, understand their interests, tailor marketing efforts to suit their preferences, and contribute to a more prosperous future for UWMC and its Salesforce systems.

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