As a global group, Experian powers data-driven opportunities for businesses worldwide. In Australia, Experian works with Caritas Australia, the international aid and development organization of the Catholic Church. With over 50 local partners across 18 countries, the organization works closely with local communities in Australia and overseas to provide support to those most vulnerable and tackle the root causes of poverty and social injustice.
Situation
In 2018, Caritas Australia experienced data quality issues which affected their ability to communicate with donors and resulted in higher costs for their fundraising campaigns. With 370,000 records in their CRM system, the Fundraising team recognized that donor contact data needed to be cleaned and tools put in place to capture accurate data across their donor touchpoints moving forward. Caritas Australia reached out to Experian to discuss their challenges and invested in the solutions needed to future-proof their data management strategy.
Challenge
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Caritas Australia needed to transform their approach to donor engagement and fundraising. Many of the traditional community donation channels were suddenly closed due to stay-at-home requirements, making contact data and their website more important than ever. With valid and complete contact data for donors to hand, the Fundraising team were well prepared to make the pivotal shift and focus on direct marketing. This activity included shipping postal donation packs as well as digital tactics such as email and SMS campaigns.
Solution
Since 2018, Caritas Australia has used Experian’s real-time data validation solutions for addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers within their Salesforce CRM and website. It was important to have comprehensive data quality checks in place across the various platforms where contact data is captured. This included the Salesforce CRM, marketing preference center, and donation website.
Results
Caritas Australia has:
- Increased donor retention rates and overall active donors in the database by 5%
- Increased supporters’ appeals response rate by 6%, due to the increase in active, contactable donors in their database
- Delivered more effective direct marketing campaigns, resulting in a 76% increase in donations from their direct marketing appeals alone
- Streamlined the user experience on donation forms on their website, which increased overall donations by over 30%.
What's next?
Caritas Australia is continuing to evolve its donor fundraising strategy, keeping donor data at the heart of everything they do. The fundraising team will work closely with Experian on future data initiatives that will enable greater insight into its donor base.
