March/April 2004

Convio Software Offers Fully-Integrated Solution for Coordinated Constituent Communications

Today, nonprofit organizations can choose from a wide range of products and services that help turn the Internet into a channel for interacting with constituents. However, the multiple products and services can be confusing, especially for organizations still defining their needs.

Finding an online solution does not have to be complicated. A truly comprehensive solution for using the Internet to build constituent relationships has a few basic building blocks:

• E-mail tools that allow organizations to create customized newsletters and reliably send targeted messages to many different groups of constituents.
  
• Content creation tools for easily creating Web pages specifically targeted to donors, activists or other constituent groups. (Often, different groups within a nonprofit organization will need to create and manage Web pages themselves, instead of relying on a Webmaster or technology department. Easy-to-use content creation tools allow any staff member to create or update Web pages quickly.)
  
• Online tools that let constituents take immediate action through the Web site or email. For example, constituents can make a donation or respond to an action alert immediately.

Historically, implementing these building blocks has meant purchasing or building them separately. Many organizations, though, already have experienced the pain associated with custom-built solutions -- particularly the total cost of maintaining custom-developed software. The alternative to custom-built solutions, "point" tools (so named because they address a single purpose, such as sending an email) avoid the custom-built trap, yet they have their own challenges. Consider the following:

• Many point tools require their own databases, resulting in disjointed "silos" of constituent data that hamper coordinated communications. For example, consider a constituent who signs up for a newsletter, then makes a donation. Her email address is stored in one place, while her donation may be stored somewhere else, resulting in uncoordinated information that prevents the organization from using her data effectively. This simple example gets far more complicated if a nonprofit is involved in multiple activities online, such as newsletters, fundraising, advocacy and surveys.
  
• Visibility into the total involvement of a given constituent is limited because constituent information is not collected in a single place. Are donors also advocates? Are advocates also volunteers? With separate tools, most organizations will never know.
  
• The problem of combining online and offline data is complicated. Trying to synchronize different pieces of online data is complex, much less synchronizing those pieces of data with offline data.
  
• Staff members are required to learn several different tools. This can result in unnecessary specialization, frustration and higher training costs.

eCRM: An Integrated Approach
An integrated approach to online tools solves the problems associated with custom-built and point tools. Convio offers Internet-based Constituent Relationship Management, or eCRM, which differs from point tools and custom-built solutions in several important ways:

• All tools share a common marketing database (Convio Constituent360^TM) that maintains a complete, centralized profile of all constituents. This approach simplifies the online/offline data synchronization challenge, since only one online source needs to be synchronized with the offline database. (Convio offers DataSync, a database synchronization program to further simplify this task.)
  
• Constituent data is coordinated across all Internet tools, resulting in more effective online campaigns and a better online experience for constituents. For example, constituents may receive special content on Web pages or in emails based on their donation history, advocacy participation, geography or other information.
  
• All tools share a common interface, so nonprofit staff members can comfortably move between creating emails, Web pages and campaigns without needing to learn an entirely new tool. This results in higher overall productivity.

Important Considerations
Consider the benefits of an integrated approach when choosing Internet software solutions for managing constituent relationships. Understand the difference between a point tool and an integrated software suite to ensure that the solution meets the needs of your entire organization.

For more information on Convio's products and services, visit www.convio.com/solutions.