Case studies
A Wildlife Trust wanted supporters to get communication that was relevant to them, and wanted its staff spending less time on the admin around events and more on conservation. I mapped the supporter journey end to end, then worked out which touchpoints were worth automating and which needed a person. The recommendations covered centralising website, social and email onto one platform, connecting the CRM so supporter data actually informed what people received, and automating the responses that were being typed by hand.
A Wildlife Trust exists to inspire, educate and mobilise supporters, and its communication was not doing that job well. Supporters received the same things regardless of what they cared about or how they had engaged before.
Behind that sat a staffing problem. The administrative load around enquiries, event registrations and donation acknowledgements was being carried by hand, by people whose actual job is conservation.
Three objectives were set at the start:
The work started with the supporter journey rather than with the tools, because you cannot decide what to automate until you know what the touchpoints are.
One platform rather than several. Website, social media and email marketing were centralised onto a single digital engagement platform, with the CRM integrated so supporter data could inform what people actually received rather than sitting in a separate system.
Content aimed at the journey. Videos, infographics and interactive maps, made to educate supporters about specific conservation work rather than to fill a schedule.
Automation at the touchpoints that deserved it. Email workflows deliver targeted messages at key points in the supporter journey, and the responses that had been typed by hand, enquiries, event registrations and donation acknowledgements, are now automatic and immediate.
Supporters started receiving communication matched to what they had shown interest in, rather than the same thing as everyone else. Event attendance and volunteer participation both rose, and the Trust could see supporter sentiment in time to act on it rather than after the fact.
The administrative time that had been going into enquiries, registrations and acknowledgements went back to conservation work. Centralised reporting gave the Trust a view of supporter behaviour it had not had, which is what makes the next round of planning an argument from evidence.
I should be straight about the limits of that: none of it is quantified here. Retention, attendance and engagement are all described as improving, and I have no figures to put against any of them.
Automation earns its place at the touchpoints where a human adds nothing: an acknowledgement, a registration confirmation, a receipt. It earns nothing at the touchpoints where the relationship lives. Mapping the journey first is what tells you which is which, and doing it in that order is the difference between automation that frees people up and automation that puts a robot between a charity and the people who fund it.
This is digital strategy work. A wider digital review for a different Wildlife Trust is in Devon Wildlife Trust digital review.
The ones where a person adds nothing: enquiry acknowledgements, event registrations, donation receipts. Those were being typed by hand. The parts where the relationship actually lives should stay human, and mapping the journey first is what tells you where the line falls.
Because a supporter is one person and three disconnected systems treat them as three. Centralising them, with the CRM connected, is what lets what someone has already done inform what they get next.
Most clients begin with a conversation. No pitch, no hard sell.
Just a straightforward discussion about where you are and whether I can help.
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