Professionals appreciate the value of joining a group offering networking and development opportunities. It’s not a decision made lightly. Non-profit professional associations know that they have to appeal to the sensibilities of their current members, as well as sponsors and prospects for either group.
One South African membership-based professional body, a thryve client, creates platforms and opportunities for its members to collaborate, network, learn, share knowledge and expand their horizons. It approached thryve to help improve its insights into members and sponsors, catering to their expectations while still running an effective and solvent non-profit organisation.
The challenge
The customer needed to enhance its abilities and develop additional value, crucial for attracting new members and revenue, as well as reducing churn and costs. Its development team needed better insight into sponsors and prospects. But any potential was being limited by the body’s reliance on manual spreadsheets to manage member profiles.
It needed a more robust solution that established a single view of the truth for all authorised personnel to access and leverage.
The requirement
The customer wanted a central database of member and sponsor information that is easy to maintain and access, secure, and rich in insight and detail. It expected to tailor communications and explore historical interactions with members, such as courses they took or events they attended. The information must also enrich the work of the association’s programme team, and similar requirements surrounded its pool of prospects.
Revenue growth could extend from growing the membership pipeline, raising the number of conversions from prospects and increasing retention. The system needed to accommodate that and also enable the customer’s staff and processes – including flexible templates, email integration, marketing automation and social media interactions.
The solution
After studying and discussing the association’s requirements, thryve deployed Salesforce’s Sales Cloud CRM (Customer Relationship Management) service in June 2018. This CRM covers the key customer requirements, including support for the establishment of a mobile-first workforce. It maintains a history of customer interactions and funnels prospects through the various personnel and processes towards membership. An added perk is that Salesforce makes a certain number of licenses available for free to nonprofits, for which thryve’s customer could qualify.
Salesforce is a cloud-native service: it scales and shrinks per the association’s demands, thus freeing up resources for other IT projects and innovation. Suited for straightforward integration, the deployment took only 5 months to complete. Highly secure, authorised personnel can access customer profiles from anywhere on a mobile device or computer.
Functionality has shifted from basic member information to rich, complete, dynamic and secure profiles. These changes weren’t forced onto staff but could align with their needs. The Salesforce interfaces are customisable without creating complexity – these could be aligned with the customer’s processes and enable automation. It helps staff be more productive, with access to resources such as templates and histories.
The Salesforce AppExchange enables thryve’s customer to expand the CRM’s functionality as desired. Social media and other data sources were integrated to give greater insight on current and future members as well as sponsors.
The result
thryve’s teams set out to fully understand and meet the customer’s wishes and concerns. The deployment of Salesforce was customised and integrated around the association’s needs. It also won staff buy-in and made a massive difference in how communications were affected. Above all, it was designed and deployed in a short timeframe. The customer soon experienced the benefits of its investment.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is feeding into this professional association’s strategic planning, impacting everything from enticing prospective members to programme design. Its staff can now access relevant, single-truth customer information where and when they need to, delivering much richer engagements with current and future partners.
thryve’s designed solution reduced cost, opened resources and aided the customer’s people to be even better and faster. In a non-profit landscape where every cent counts and engagement matters, this has been revolutionary.