+75% more in Giving Tuesday donations. Two years in a row.

A segmentation strategy and donor journey built in Mailchimp turned a broad, one size fits all email list into Oakville Hospital Foundation's strongest fundraising channel, two Giving Tuesdays in a row.

GROWTH+75%Increase in Giving Tuesday donations, repeated two years in a row.

CAMPAIGN GOAL+26%$126,252.50 raised against a $100,000 goal.

TOP CHANNEL+69%Email became the single strongest source of donations on Giving Tuesday.

DONATION VALUE+35%Higher average donation value via email compared to every other channel.

The Challenge

Working with NVISION is fantastic.

“A strategic partner that goes above and beyond what is asked, driving our needle forward in terms of marketing and communications.”

— Julia Tompkins, Associate Director, Marketing, Oakville Hospital Foundation

Oakville Hospital Foundation had a sizable email list and a real fundraising need behind it, but no way to speak to that list as anything other than one audience. Every donor received the same message, whether they gave last week or hadn’t given in years.

That meant missed opportunities everywhere. Lapsed donors got the same appeal as active monthly supporters. Major donors received no distinct message that reflected their giving history. And the foundation had limited visibility into which donors were actually responding, or why.

Ahead of Giving Tuesday, a global fundraising day, the foundation needed a way to turn a broad list into a channel that could carry real weight for the campaign.

OUR APPROACH

How we solved it

Step 01

SEGMENT THE LIST

We built four donor segments based on giving behaviour and lifecycle stage, then mapped the journey and barriers for each.

Friends (non-donors), Occasional, Active, and Major donor segments
Donor journey mapping to identify what was holding each group back
Real time tagging so donors moved out of sequence once they gave

Step 02

BUILD THE CAMPAIGN

A 13 email campaign across four sends, each written to match what a specific segment needed to hear.

Distinct messaging and CTAs per segment
A $50,000 matching gift offer woven into major donor messaging
Deeper email segmentation using dynamic content blocks, tailored to each donor’s characteristics and giving history with the foundation

Step 03

MEASURE & PROVE IT

Custom reporting tracked donations by channel, segment, and individual email in real time throughout the campaign.

Full performance breakdown by segment and by send
Year over year comparison to validate the strategy
A repeatable model applied again the following year with the same result

The Work

What we built.

A segmented email strategy inside Mailchimp that gave every donor a message built for where they actually were, not a single blast to the whole list. Friends received a first ask, lapsed donors got a reason to come back, active donors saw their ongoing impact, and major donors were met with a matching gift built around their giving level.

The result carried the campaign. Email drove 69% of all Giving Tuesday donations and produced a 35% higher average donation than every other channel combined, at a click through rate 2x the industry benchmark for the major donor segment. The foundation cleared its $100,000 goal by 26%, closing $37,000 of that goal in the final 24 hours on the strength of a single, precisely targeted send. The following year, the same segmentation model was run again. Donations grew by another 75%, proving the first result was a strategy, not a spike.

AS FEATURED IN

RECOGNIZED BY MAILCHIMP

“For nonprofits like Oakville Hospital Foundation, personalized donor engagement isn’t just nice to have. It’s essential for driving real fundraising impact.”

– George Arabian, CEO, NVISION

NVISION’s work with Oakville Hospital Foundation was featured in Mailchimp’s Marketing Library as an example of donor engagement done right.

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