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’s 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 did not generate
valuable engagement results.

“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.
The tools in Luminate Online “ensure 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—
performing even better given they had refined their campaign strategy.
“We learned that having more addresses is not necessarily better, and we
were able to turn around our results thanks to Blackbaud,” said Potin. “We
sent half as many emails but over three times as many emails were read.
This makes a huge difference in fundraising effectiveness.”

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.”