IRC has set up an innovative program that combines donor, non-donor and prospect data captured in Salesforce.com and synchs it with Acoustic Campaign (formerly Campaign Automation) to send behaviorally driven campaigns. With its two-way integration, IRC can query based on behaviors and demographics to provide more relevant communications that ultimately drive revenue.
Challenge: Encourage donations with focused appeals
In the nonprofit world, it’s key to capture the attention of your target audience with relevant messaging at the exact time that they want to donate to your cause. IRC understood that it needed a marketing automation solution to help focus its efforts on segmentation and automation to achieve that relevancy.
As a large organization with more than 60 offices, IRC also needed a solution that would be easy to use, be capable of seamlessly integrating with Salesforce.com, and could deliver 15 versions of the company newsletter.
Solution: Automated, behavior-driven marketing communications
Today, IRC has set up an innovative program that combines donor, non-donor, and prospect data captured in Salesforce.com and synchs it with Campaign to send behaviorally driven campaigns. With its two-way integration, IRC can now query based on behaviors and demographics to provide more relevant communications that ultimately drive revenue.
Wanting to implement automated campaigns driven by individual behavior led IRC to design several campaigns using Campaign’s Web tracking functionality. Web tracking attributes visitor behavior to known contacts so that IRC could take relevant actions. Once visitors identify themselves, their Web behaviors are associated with their profile and instantly available for queries, programs, scoring and alerts.
Two IRC automated programs that have been particularly successful using Campaign’s Web tracking capabilities:
1. Remarketing campaign: When a subscriber goes to the website and abandons the donation page prior to making a donation, IRC uses the data collected by Campaign’s Web tracking functionality to follow up with an automated email to the specific subscriber the next day asking if there was an issue and urging the person to return to complete the donation.
2. “Symbolic Gift” cart abandonment campaign: The “Symbolic Gift” program enables donors to make donations on the behalf of others. For IRC, any gifts left in these carts were a lost revenue opportunity. This motivated IRC to use Web tracking to identify those cart abandoners and then email them the following day inviting them to complete these gift donations.
Results: Increased donations and providing more life-changing assistance
IRC’s remarketing and “Symbolic Gift” cart abandonment campaigns have achieved amazing results. Both campaigns’ timeliness and relevancy have led to higher than 50% open rates for these programs. Both have achieved a donation rate 20x that of the rest of the IRC’s end-of-year emails.
“What’s great about these automated campaigns is that they are relatively easy queries we set up, and both have added donation revenue that wouldn’t have been realized otherwise,” says James Porter, email/online database manager, International Rescue Committee.
Another feature IRC finds beneficial is Campaign’s A/B testing functionality. “The inbox is a very competitive place,” says Porter. “Using Campaign’s A/B testing allows us to have quick wins in terms of open rates that we wouldn’t have been able to achieve otherwise. In a recent test, we saw a 2% increase based solely upon different subject lines, which is a huge lift, especially for the effort.”
Campaign, part of Acoustic’s portfolio, powers the delivery of exceptional experiences for customers across the buyer journey by leveraging customer data and behaviors, providing analytical insights and automating relevant cross-channel interactions. The cloud-based digital marketing platform provides email marketing, lead management and mobile engagement functionality to inform and drive personalized interactions in real time.
“The inbox is a very competitive place. Using Campaign’s A/B testing allows us to have quick wins in terms of open rates that we wouldn’t have been able to achieve otherwise.”
James Porter, Email/online Database Manager, International Rescue Committee
About International Rescue Committee
Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in more than 40 countries and in 22 U.S. cities, the IRC restores safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure.
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