BHOF capitalizes on data-health strategies and tools to build stronger connections with supporters

Established in 1984, the Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation (BHOF) is the “nation’s largest health organization solely dedicated to osteoporosis and bone health.” BHOF accepts support from a wide breadth of sources, including individuals, foundations, government sources, and corporations.

Senior Manager of Digital & Data Michael Potin explained that upon joining BHOF, he observed that the team hadn’t started using the automated data health tools in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT yet.  Consequently, the foundation’s database had nearly 5,300 unnecessary duplicate records.

Potin saw a better path available to his team with Blackbaud, and data health became a top priority.

“We like to stay close to max capacity to our record bandwidth of 300,000, so saving space lets us have more records without having to archive and delete potentially useful ones,” said Potin. “Because of the automatic data health tools that we now use in Raiser’s Edge NXT, we know our donor and prospect information is current and accurate, and we can maintain a duplicate record count of zero on a daily basis.”

Optimizing Purpose-built Products

Raiser’s Edge NXT’s automated data health tools allow organizations to track the overall health and accuracy of their database and manage updates to help ensure good data hygiene. Potin performed database audits on an annual basis over the next two years and found over 3,400 and 3,330 duplicate records respectively.

Before using Blackbaud’s modern duplicate management tool, Potin needed approximately 40 hours to dedupe his database. Now, with the data heath feature running automatically “behind the scenes,” it takes him about five minutes daily to reconcile duplicate records each time he reviews them. “When our director of development asks me to pull a major donor report, I know they’re getting accurate information, whereas before we started using Raiser’s Edge NXT data health tools, that wasn’t the case,” said Potin.

To further improve efficiencies, Potin took advantage of the built-in integration between Raiser’s Edge NXT and Blackbaud Luminate Online, which they use for advanced online marketing and fundraising. With this integration activated, new and updated constituent records from Raiser’s Edge NXT are automatically available in Luminate Online for email marketing and online fundraising purposes.

This integration, together with regular use of Blackbaud’s data health tools, “has made all our lives significantly easier,” said Potin. “We no longer need to plan for an exhaustive annual duplicate records cleanup project when setting projects and goals for the following year. Our data is clean and current.”

Implementing Savvy Engagement Strategies

Before Potin joined BHOF, constituent engagement strategies were vague and email deliverability rates were low. A general renewal appeal sent shortly after he came on board was a learning experience as it resulted in a poor 8.94% open rate and .64% click rate.

“Thankfully we swiftly received notice from Blackbaud letting us know that many of our emails were bouncing, and our list contained spam trap emails,” said Potin. “Emailing all constituents regardless of their activity and the presence of stale email addresses in our list had resulted in poor deliverability and a bad mailer reputation for us. With Blackbaud’s help, we were able to respond quickly. Our Blackbaud Customer Success manager shared instructions for identifying disengaged constituents in our housefile.”

The Engagement Factors tool in Luminate Online allowed Potin to assign an engagement score automatically to each record. He purged disengaged contacts from their email lists. List segmentation allowed BHOF to send smaller, more precisely targeted email sends, with much improved results. A subsequent general fundraising appeal had a 34% open rate and 3.75% click rate—performance that would continue to climb even higher as they refined their campaign strategy.

“Before using the tools in Luminate Online, we had a D sender rating; within two years we got it up to an A/B rating. This ensures a lot more of our emails get delivered to inboxes,” said Potin. “Blackbaud’s tools shouldn’t be underestimated because you can really do powerful things like cleaning up your e-mail list rapidly with them.”

Seeing the Proof in the Numbers

Luminate Online offers organizations tools that allow them to engage across the entire donor journey and build stronger relationships with intelligent, dynamic, and connected digital experiences via mobile and email. As Potin meticulously grew their email list, he used the Luminate Online tools to ensure the list was properly curated as well. Fast-forward two years later: Nearly 26,000 emails were sent for another general fundraising appeal—this time with a 54.47% open rate and 2.46% click rate.

“We learned that having more addresses is not necessarily better, and we were able to turn around our results thanks to Blackbaud,” said Potin. “The overall annual open rate the year before my arrival was 7.4% and we sent 355,000 emails (with only 26,270 opens). Three years later our annual open rate was 55.9% of 161,000 emails sent (with 89,999 opens). We sent half as many emails but over three times as many emails were read. This makes a huge difference in fundraising effectiveness,” he remarked “The numbers don’t lie.”’

After unlocking more capabilities within their Blackbaud software with the support of Blackbaud Customer Success, the team at BHOF feels they have the tools they need to acquire more constituents, nurture sustainable donor relationships, and have confidence in their data. “While there’s still some work to do, with Raiser’s Edge NXT and Luminate Online, we’re set up for future success.”