Marketing and Communications

Nikki Tremann:

WHAT PROBLEMS ARE WE TRYING TO SOLVE?

Your organization needs to market to donors in a manner that is consistent and coordinated across all of your fundraising programs and channels. Blackbaud CRM currently provides limited marketing options for some types of communications (such as receipts, reminders, event invitations, etc.) and more sophisticated options for other types of communications (such as sponsorship, direct response, etc.). However, in some cases, the simple options are too simple and the sophisticated options are too complex. Because not all of these processes have the same ability to track marketing details to a donor, you cannot analyze marketing response data consistently to cross-market your programs and move away from program-by-program success metrics to donor journey success metrics. Furthermore, the CRM marketing tools are currently broken out into separate areas in the program and are not consistent in process or look and feel.

Ultimately, your organization needs to send the right message to the right donor at the right time in a way that minimizes your costs and maximizes the engagement from the donor. You want to be able to analyze your data to integrate program and channel offers and target donors in the manner that will gain the best response. Therefore, we need to build a tool that provides a consistent way to market to donors while supporting marketing of multiple programs of varying complexity in the same way. This tool needs to be easy for campaign analysts to use so they can efficiently execute marketing efforts.

 

WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS?

To solve part of the problem, we will consolidate the disparate marketing features currently in our system into one comprehensive, scalable marketing and communication tool.

The template builder will allow your organization to set up a marketing effort that is:

 

Specific to your fundraising program.  

Your organization will be able to create the communication tools you need to support the fundraising programs and channels you use. The program will no longer lack options for a particular communication type. For example, we currently do not include the ability to create “Sustainer Upgrade” marketing efforts in the program. Rather than wait for us to add this functionality to the program, you will be able to build this missing communication type using the new communication templates. Moreover, you can name these marketing efforts using your organization's terminology. For example, “sustainer upgrade” is common at US organizations, whereas UK organizations would more commonly use the term “regular giving upgrade.”

 

Specific to the program’s complexity level.  

Your organization will be able to make your programs simpler or more complex as needed, while always using the same overall process and set of tools, and tracking the same marketing details for analysis. For example, you could create a “Sustainer Upgrade” communication template that is set to work exactly as your organization needs it to. When an administrator sets up the template, they can define the level of complexity based on the needs of the program. They can define default values and settings for each marketing communication type template and lock and hide options they do not want end users to view or edit. In addition, you will be able to accommodate varying complexity levels within your organization. For example, if your organization has complex acknowledgements but simple sustainer upgrade campaigns, you will be able to manage both of those requirements within the same tool.

 

Consistent in its tracking of marketing data. 

Your organization will be able to access compiled statistics on a constituent across all communication efforts and types. By creating all communications through the same tool, the program can enforce the same minimum data requirements across all communications.

 

Consistent in user experience. 

One common process means fewer tools for users to learn and maintain within an organization.

 

Hey, I wanted to post follow-up with more information about implementing the integrated marketing features. 

1.        What are the known issues?

The communications template builder will be developed incrementally so it will not include all types of marketing efforts in the first release.

For version 4.0, only direct marketing efforts will be template-based. All other communications will continue to work as they do today.

We will add information about specific bugs or missing functionality once they are known.

2.        What changes do we need to make to best utilize this feature?

Once the template builder is implemented, a system administrator will need to set up templates in advance for the end users who execute direct marketing efforts. The program will provide sample/starter templates for some of the common communication types that we will support in the first release of this feature.  The organization can review these templates to see how well they meet their needs and then modify them or create new templates.

This work should be led by the Business Analyst/Systems Analyst role at the organization in conjunction with the Professional Services lead from Blackbaud, the marketing manager, and the end-user (campaign analyst or person that will use the marketing efforts functionality to execute marketing efforts).  Their roles in the implementation of this functionality would be as follows:

Business Analyst/Systems Analyst:

• Work with the subject matter experts (marketing manager and campaign analyst) to gather requirements for the types of direct marketing efforts to be configured
• Configure templates based on requirements

Marketing Manager:

• Provide subject matter expertise for template configuration
• Drive decisions around defaults that make sense based on the program’s requirements

Campaign Analyst:

• Provide subject matter expertise for template configuration
• Validate setup of templates

Blackbaud Professional Services:

• Provide product expertise
• Guide best practice of configuration with the business analyst

For Professional Services:

1.        What changes should be made to our implementation strategy for new clients?

The marketing and communications design process should now start with reviewing the default marketing communication templates provided in the program and building additional templates based on the organization’s fundraising program needs.  With future releases, the new template builder/marketing effort process will eventually replace all other communication options available today in BBCRM (acknowledgements, membership renewals, appeal mailings, etc.).  These features will remain available for use until we have proven that the new feature set has superseded the existing communication types in functionality. 

2.        What changes should be made to our conversion strategy?

None at this time.

3.        What products will include this feature?

BBCRM, BBDM for The Raiser's Edge, Maybe Altru in the future