AFIPO integrates Raiser’s Edge NXT with Feathr to boost donations

When you find something that works, you don’t let go. Inflation, by definition, means we’re paying more for the same old stuff. So if we do find that rare deal that’s worth the price, we go back for seconds.

Emily Weddle is the chief digital content & communications officer at the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (AFIPO). And she’s been using Feathr for her digital marketing and email long before she started in her current role.

She said, “I first signed with Feathr when I was at a previous organization, another symphony orchestra. And I loved it so much, I brought it over here.”

Taking matters into her own hands

When Emily started at AFIPO, she began with an assessment of their current marketing activities — of which they were outsourcing a majority. And she understood the pros and cons, but she felt that her job was to tie together these loose threads.

Example of AFIPO digital ad

She said: “My personal philosophy is if you have an individual within the organization who's spearheading all of your marketing, you have a much better sense of the organization's priorities and their voice and their brand.” 

Emily knows the place and time for working with consultants and agencies. Especially for the smallest of teams, the added lift can feel like a requirement. But with Feathr, Emily got the needed lift along with the visibility and ownership that better aligned with her perspective.

She said, “When I came in, I already knew that Feathr would work like an extra staff member. And so immediately I brought us onto the platform. I've really felt like I've been able to do the work of two people in one because everything is centralized, it's easy, and it's shareable.”

Emailing smarter, not harder

At the heart of many nonprofit marketing plans is the age-old, well-timed email. Whether it’s a fundraising ask or an impact story, the one-to-one feel goes a long way in continuing the conversation. And this was no different for Emily and the team at AFIPO.

But an email is only as effective as the people who open it, which is why it was essential for AFIPO to find a product that seamlessly integrated with their CRM, Raiser’s Edge NXT. 

This is why they had initially been running email through Luminate, another Blackbaud product. And although Emily was fully sold on Raiser’s Edge NXT as their CRM, there were a few things that she wanted to add to her team’s email marketing capacity. 

And fortunately for Emily, Feathr and Raiser’s Edge NXT are fully integrated.

She said, “Any time one of my fundraisers updates something in Raiser's Edge — whether that’s someone's contact information, preferred salutation, or they logged a gift — all of that is synced directly into Feathr. And I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to think about it.”

The only thing she has to worry about now is making use of that precious first-party data. Whether that’s updated birthdays in Raiser’s Edge that immediately refresh in Feathr, where Emily sets up automated emails to send well wishes – or pulling data on who hasn’t made a donation in over a year, and then scheduling a quick reminder inviting them back in.

Learning, learning, and then after that, learning

In the digital age, learning about your audience is often as much about using technology honestly and effectively as it is asking your people the right questions.

One of the ways that Emily learns about her community is by filtering AFIPO’s large email lists through Feathr.

She said, “I filter a lot of email lists through locations, especially states. So for example, we're doing an event in Florida. And we have a small number of emails that we flagged as Florida from Raiser's Edge. But there's probably a lot of people that are in Florida, but we don’t yet have that information.”

That is until today. Now she goes into Feathr, looks at her whole email list, and then filters for the state of Florida. And now she knows just a little bit more about her audience.

She said, “It brought in about a thousand people from our list that we didn't know were logging in from Florida.”

But learning where a person is logging in from is only step one. Emily has a million questions that she wants to learn about her audience.

She asks, “What links are they clicking on in our emails? What emails are they even opening? Which ones are they ignoring? What calls to action are they clicking through from our display ads on the web? Or where are we reaching new audiences?”

And again, she’s found Feathr to be the answer to not only her demographic questions, but also the behavioral ones.

She said, “Feathr has this magical mix of basic information that you have about people like demographics and geographic location and things like that, but also over time, psychographic insight into how they’re responding to these campaigns.”

Example of AFIPO mobile ad

And this learning doesn’t end with knowledge, it ends with action.

Emily said, “The more time we’re on Feathr, the more information we can gather. And we now customize and target these individuals with the content that we know they want.” 

And all that hard work led to stellar results. Emily ultimately brought AFIPO over 1,200 unique donations for more than $200k in revenue! She wasn’t wrong when she believed she was the right person for the job.

Happiness is shared

In life, happiness is shared. And the same is true for marketing. It’s great to have success and see it for yourself. But the momentum grows the moment you can show someone else how marketing is impacting fundraising, or ticket sales, or volunteer sign ups.

“I share reports across departments from all my campaigns. So not only with the email marketing, but with any of our advertising campaigns that we run,” Emily said. “My staff, they really do look at it, and it truly is incredible from a visibility perspective.”

Tech stacks are often built brick by brick, solving individual problems with specific software solutions. But the best tech stacks take into account the most important element: adoption. 

It’s great to have the best CRM on the market, but if it isn’t integrated with email, digital advertising, and reporting, it’s likely going to become burdensome to use the software for all it’s worth.

Emily has seen firsthand the impact of choosing the right platform. And this isn’t the first time.

She said, “In my previous role when I was using Feathr for event marketing, we absolutely saw an increase of people attending our concerts and a decrease in our ad spend, which was fabulous — and any board loves to see that. And now I’m at a predominantly fundraising organization with a relationship building focus, and we’re seeing Feathr works there too.”