Save the Children Netherlands grows monthly income by 500% with Salesforce
Learn how it influenced 80% of its private donors to give monthly.
3.8 min read
For any nonprofit, every donated penny counts. For Save the Children Netherlands, they change lives. Whatever children need – from clean water, nutritious food, and support for parents to education, mental, and psychosocial support – donors make it possible for the organisation to advance children’s rights and help meet their needs around the world.
Seven years ago, Save the Children Netherlands relied primarily on foreign aid for income, but it wanted to attract more private donors. It launched a multichannel marketing strategy, with face-to-face fundraising, TV ads, SMS appeals, and more. But to grow monthly donations from €300,000 to €1.5 million via direct debits took more than great communications.
“We needed more control and transparency over our marketing operations. Salesforce was the most important building block to help us get smart about fundraising,” said Jeroen Beelen, Data and Solutions Architect at Save the Children Netherlands.
Using Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and an AppExchange payment solution called FinDock, the organisation identified common pain points and developed automated journeys to address them. And initial results were impressive:
- 500% increase in monthly direct debit income over seven years
- 80% of income now coming via monthly direct debits from 185,000 regular private donors
- 60% fewer failed direct debits in the last three years resulting in:
- €61,000 recovered payments
- €7,000 lower bank charges
Let’s take a closer look at how better data, smarter processes, and personalised journeys are helping Save the Children Netherlands to raise more and build loyalty with donors.
“With Salesforce, we’re doing fundraising the smart way.”
“With Salesforce, we’re doing fundraising the smart way.”
Data and Marketing Automation Manager, Save the Children Netherlands
Table of Contents
How to Raise More Funds by Increasing Direct Debit Collection with Intelligent Journeys.
Lay foundations and you can process 2 million direct debits.
To take fundraising from simple to structured, Save the Children Netherlands needed the right platform, processes, and data. Previously, the team captured only basic donor details and manually downloaded paperwork from the bank to track online donations in the previous CRM system. They only had the bandwidth to send generic email newsletters, weren’t taking advantage of SMS marketing, and didn’t have enough data to segment leads.
The first step of its digital transformation was to set up a data warehouse to improve data quality and make it actionable. Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud were implemented and integrated to create a single source of truth with omnichannel capabilities.
With automated workflows, the system scaled to handle more than two million direct debts in 2022 from 450,000 in 2015, and today the organisation can connect with donors on multiple channels. For example, SMS is used to get messages to contacts quickly during urgent appeals, helping the marketing team launch a simple and effective campaign in response to a crisis.
But it’s not just the marketing team who need to be responsive. “We do as much development as possible in-house, learning from an ecosystem of partners that Salesforce introduced us to,” explained Gerjan Schuttert Data and CRM Manager at Save the Children Netherlands. “They are real partners for us, not just suppliers.”
The team also uses Trailhead to gain certifications so they can grow and maintain the platform whatever the future brings.
“With the right data we have more control over marketing processes, which helps to support our core mission.”
“With the right data we have more control over marketing processes, which helps to support our core mission.”
Data and CRM Manager, Save the Children Netherlands
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Recover €68,000 with intelligent workflows.
The marketing operations team is responsible for the platform, automations, and journeys that help their colleagues in Acquisitions and Retention, Partnership and Philanthropy, Brand Marketing and Campaigns, Donor Services, and Legacy Fundraising to be productive. Each of these groups has different needs, so Schuttert and his team created custom workflows, dashboards, and guided prompts in Salesforce to support them and guide them through tasks such as changing an address or handling a complaint.
“There’s a lot of logic behind the user experience, which delivers quality control as well as a smoother experience. Data revealed that cancelled or failed direct debits were causing rising banking costs and missed opportunities with donors. Now, if a donor sets up a new direct debit through one of our channels, the system validates whether the data is correct. If a direct debit doesn’t work for any reason, we can promptly reach out to solve the issue,” said Schuttert.
Findock connects to payment providers to collect real-time updates. If a donor has filled in a webform and does not complete the payment process, it automatically triggers a journey in Marketing Cloud to help them complete the transaction – similar to an abandoned cart journey for an e-commerce website.
With 60% fewer failed direct debits over the last three years, Save the Children Netherlands has an additional €61,000 in recovered payments – not to mention avoiding €7,000 of bank fees for recurring unsuccessful direct debits.
60%
fewer failed direct debits
in the last three years
+€61,000
in recovered
donations
+€7,000
bank fees
avoided
“By tailoring Salesforce to support the unique needs of different teams, our marketers can handle much higher volumes of work.”
“By tailoring Salesforce to support the unique needs of different teams, our marketers can handle much higher volumes of work.”
Data and CRM Manager, Save the Children Netherlands
Build donor loyalty and boost monthly income by 500%.
With a great platform in place, Save the Children Netherlands turned its attention to an important growth area – the donor journey. During the economic downturn, people may be tempted to give a one-off donation. But by nurturing those relationships, the team can demonstrate the impact that long-term donations – even if it’s a small amount – have on children’s lives.
Currently, the marketing team uses financial data to segment donors based on the amount they give. They then create mailing lists in Marketing Cloud to send relevant campaigns targeting each segment with different messaging. For example, a one-off donor receives different messaging than a contact at an organisation that regularly donates.
“Dynamic email templates automatically adapt for each target group, all we have to do is select the template,” explained Beelen. “We cherry pick high-potential donors for account-based marketing and they get emails from a named manager, for example.”
Data is crucial, and Marketing Cloud makes it simple to test messaging, calls to action, and landing copy to make sure it hits the right note with donors.
“We track everything to see how different segments respond to different tactics, what the best times of day are to send emails, and how open rates reduce over time. We’re looking at how we can use Einstein to predict the best time to reach out,” said Beelen. “The first three months of the donor journey are really important. People who don’t drop out are far more likely to become long-term donors. Now, we can identify when that’s likely to happen and reach out.”
This helps the team to maximise income per campaign and build long-term donor relationships – making sure to only send relevant information and not over-saturate anyone with too many emails.
By encouraging more donors to commit to giving monthly, there’s been a 500% increase in income from direct debits. In fact, Save the Children Netherlands’ income from the private sector is now more than a third of the organisation’s overall income, with 80% of that coming from 185,000 regular private donors.
“Data gives us richer insights into how to have the biggest impact on our donors.”
“Data gives us richer insights into how to have the biggest impact on our donors.”
Data and Marketing Automation Manager, Save the Children Netherlands
Create lifetime value with a frictionless experience.
Building lifetime value with donors is one of the biggest challenges for marketing teams in the nonprofit sector. Save the Children Netherlands is addressing this by removing any barriers – however small – to giving.
This is particularly important for the organisation’s multichannel strategy. For example, donors who are already in Salesforce can scan a campaign QR code that will populate forms if they want to donate to that particular campaign, giving them a more personal experience regardless of the channel that is used to communicate. Donors can also send an SMS in response to TV campaigns to receive a personalised URL prefilled with their information to donate quickly.
To boost retention rates, the organisation is testing a chatbot that integrates with Salesforce to manage cancellations. It generates an SMS the donor can click on to connect to the cancellation team, making it easy for them to carry out the action but also giving Save the Children Netherlands a chance to try and retain the donor or understand why they want to cancel.
“Behind the scenes, Salesforce automatically notifies the account manager if a major donor has triggered the cancellation journey,” explained Beelen. “With the entire donor relationship in front of them, the account managers can then have a more productive conversation with that donor to try retain them or simply give them our heartfelt thanks for the support received so far.”
“Salesforce gives us a better chance of showing donors how much impact they have and increasing retention rates.”
“Salesforce gives us a better chance of showing donors how much impact they have and increasing retention rates.”
Data and Marketing Automation Manager, Save the Children Netherlands
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