Since 1953 Diabetes Australia - Victoria, an organisation providing support to almost 300,000 Australians living with diabetes or pre-diabetes, has been the leading charity and peak consumer body in the state working to reduce the impact of diabetes.
The charity spoke to AdNews about its latest business challenge, how it overcame it and what the results were.
The Challenge
Before implementing Oracle Marketing Cloud, Diabetes Australia – Victoria was using outdated mailing systems and multiple databases to “batch and blast” its membership.
Without a clear digital marketing strategy, Diabetes Australia – Victoria was struggling to engage with its audience in a meaningful way as it did not have insight into who its members were and therefore the type of content they’d find useful. With a community made up of people in a range of demographics, relying on generic email communication led to minimal renewal rates and low levels of engagement. The organisation was also challenged with nine different donor, subscriber and membership databases which caused confusion and required significant administrative hours to keep updated.
“With limited resources and insight it was impossible to personalise information, and we were really struggling to provide a meaningful customer experience, which was severely impacting our renewals and engagement,” said Michael Goldman, deputy chief executive officer for Diabetes Australia – Victoria.
The Solution
Diabetes Australia – Victoria chose to partner with Sydney-based Marketing Cube to implement Oracle Marketing Cloud, which it selected because of its flexibility in comparison to other solutions that were in the marketplace. With Oracle Marketing Cloud, Diabetes Australia – Victoria was able to have a single customer view of its donors and members, enabling it to segment its supporters based on their individual needs and provide highly relevant content.
By using the Oracle cloud application for nearly all of its email communication, Diabetes Australia – Victoria has seen the penetration of its messages quadruple. With 80% of its online members over the age of 60, the previous disjointed cross channel interaction led to confusion and poor brand recognition.
“We were being lost in the white noise of email. We provide critical advice on how to live your life positively with a chronic illness, so any communication missed means our members could be missing potentially life-saving advice,” said Goldman.
The Results
Using Oracle Marketing Cloud, Diabetes Australia – Victoria has been able to gain a 360 degree view of its business and learn more about its supporters through their digital body language. By connecting its communications strategy to a single database approach and sending more of its exchanges through the Oracle Marketing Cloud system, Diabetes Australia – Victoria is connecting in more relevant ways with its audience. As a result, membership and donor databases are growing "significantly". “Since implementing the solution and taking this new approach to our community we’ve experienced an extraordinary period of membership growth,” said Goldman.
One of the key highlights of Diabetes Australia – Victoria’s success since implementing Oracle Marketing Cloud, is the creation of an online membership renewals program, which has led to increased revenue at almost no additional business cost. Prior to implementing the new solution, Diabetes Australia – Victoria used the time and resource-heavy process of manually compiling data for monthly direct mail renewals. With Oracle, Diabetes Australia – Victoria was able to create a three-step online auto renewal campaign, freeing-up a significant amount of time – a critical resource in a non-profit organisation.
This campaign alone enabled the organisation to increase online program renewals from 74 per month to 882 per month, an increase of almost 1200%. Online membership sign ups increased by 190%. Goldman said, “With Oracle Marketing Cloud, we’re reducing not just resources required across the department, but also time spent on labour-intensive activities. We haven’t had to spend anywhere near as much time on manual processing as we used to.”
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