Nonprofit Marketing

3 HubSpot for Nonprofit Case Studies

Jen Richardson | Aug 09, 2023
In this Post:

Almost half of nonprofits report that their biggest challenge is simply having enough people to do all the work that needs to get done. Which is why if you work at a nonprofit, you’ve probably had to get good at a lot of things — some of them outside your wheelhouse.

In that situation, it’s crucial to have software tools that let you do as much as you can with a limited staff.

Enter HubSpot. Platforms like HubSpot have made it possible for organizations to accomplish things they never could have before with software that organizes, coordinates, and automates tasks for managing relationships. Yet many nonprofits have been slow to recognize the benefits of adopting a robust platform like HubSpot into their workflow.

That’s why we’ve compiled three case studies showing how HubSpot can help your nonprofit fulfill its mission.

Collage of a HubSpot watering can tending to growing flowers that represent a nonprofit.

How does HubSpot for Nonprofits work?

HubSpot for Nonprofits allows eligible 510(c)(3)s to access all the same tools as the standard version but at a 40% discount and with an onboarding process specifically geared toward nonprofits’ unique needs. You can find out if your organization is eligible to apply here.

HubSpot is a powerful CRM (“customer relationship management”) platform that allows organizations to

  • keep track of contacts
  • segment them into audiences
  • automate outreach
  • build templates for emails and landing pages
  • generate leads
  • coordinate different internal teams
  • Integrate other software platforms
  • monitor analytics

What are the advantages of using HubSpot for Nonprofits?

In the hands of a nonprofit organization, these features mean:

3 HubSpot Nonprofit Case Studies

But that’s just an overview. Let’s get into specifics! Here are three short case studies that demonstrate what HubSpot can do for nonprofits.

Full Funnel Marketing Strategy for Stetson Law

Founded in 1900 and located on a historic campus in Gulfport, FL, Stetson University College of Law is the oldest law school in the Sunshine State. The College has over 40 full-time faculty and enrolls over 900 students in its Juris Doctorate program. The school is ranked #1 in the nation for Trial Advocacy and #3 for Legal Writing by U.S. New and World Report.

In 2015, Big Sea began working with Stetson Law’s admissions department to develop strategies for attracting new prospective students. Beginning with optimizing Stetson Law’s website for conversion, we worked with the College to develop a series of applicant personas on HubSpot with a corresponding workflow for each.

Depending on their point of contact or the information prospective students submit, they’re segmented into applicable persona workflows that automate a series of touchpoints with the student geared toward factors such as their interests, identity, or geographical area. For instance, students can receive invitations to alumni events in their area or notifications about happenings in their intended area of legal specialization. With the analytics HubSpot compiles, the admissions department is also able to perform A/B testing for different messages and templates to evaluate their effectiveness.

HubSpot enables the admissions department to keep track of every point of contact a prospective student has had with the school. Marketing Hub has helped them focus on and attract better qualified candidates over time, raising the average LSAT score of applicants overall and improving their competitiveness even as other schools have seen declining admissions applications. When Big Sea began working with Stetson in 2015, they were averaging about 1,650 applicants per year with an average LSAT score of 154. Last year they hit 2,350 applicants, and achieved an average applicant score of 158.

All law schools have access to the same lists of people who take the LSAT, and they all market to that group. But through using SEO and lead generation, Stetson consistently nets over 500 new contacts each year that didn’t come from that list. This lets the admissions department get a headstart on building relationships or targeting prospective applicants who may have sat out a semester or a year before applying.

Stetson has also used HubSpot’s predictive analytics to understand which prospective students to pursue and with what materials. Before they apply, prospects generally download at least one premium content piece (such as the school’s LSAT tip sheet), engage with at least 3 marketing emails, and read at least 2 blog posts. HubSpot plays a key role in advancing interested students through that marketing pipeline.

WWF Raises Awareness for Climate Change

The nonprofit organization WWF (The World Wildlife Foundation) used Hubspot’s CMS to organize and launch their Earth Hour 2020 campaign.

Founded in 1961, the WWF works with companies, governments, and local communities in over 100 countries to further the goals of environmental preservation. They work toward protecting and restoring endangered species and their natural habitats.

The Earth Hour campaign calls on people to spend an hour performing a task to help the planet and then share what they did online. For the campaign, WWF needed a CMS that could handle a high volume of online traffic from the sudden influx of visitors to their website without requiring them to scale up their systems for the event.

As new users came pouring in, WWF also wanted to gather information about how users were interacting with the content on their site. The goal was to gain insight into user journeys on the site so they could segment different user paths to increase engagement.

In partnership with an additional design agency, WWF was able to use Hubspot to create new templates, features, and custom modules for their site that could be seamlessly integrated with Hubspot’s Marketing Hub, which the WWF already used. The platform’s robust reporting capabilities gave WWF an overview of users’ actions across email, web, and social media channels, allowing them to manage a large amount of user information with one tool.

Managing Outreach for Nonprofit Life Insurer KSKJ in HubSpot

KSKJ Life is a not-for-profit fraternal benefits society based out of Joliet, IL that provides life insurance and annuity products for its members. Founded in 1894 to protect the families of Slovenian Catholic steel workers in Chicago, today the organization is licensed to provide financial products in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Member-owned and community-focused, the organization sports a robust network of members organized around lodges who volunteer in their local communities across the country from California to Washington DC.

KSKJ Life manages diverse networks of customers as well as independent agents who sell their products, making communication across audiences a challenge. In 2022, they launched an engagement campaign to inform agents and members alike about lesser utilized benefits that come from KSKJ Life membership. Big Sea helped KSKJ Life harness one of HubSpot’s most powerful tools — audience segmentation — to create marketing messaging unique to their two very different audiences: agents and their customers. This campaign also combined traditional and digital marketing tactics.

The campaign began with a direct mail piece with a QR code. Members and agents who scanned the code and filled out the landing page form were placed into segmented Hubspot workflows that initiated a personalized and targeted four-part email drip segmented for their unique audiences.

Members received promotions and offers; agents received prompts and reminders to include these benefits in discussions with new potential customers. Even better is that the team at KSKJ Life can monitor open rates and click-through-rates on their emails and landing pages to determine which parts of their campaign are having the widest impact.

We Know HubSpot and Nonprofits

HubSpot is a powerful tool, but you need to know how to get the most out of it. That’s why it’s important to find an expert marketing team that understands the tools you’re using.

Whether you’ve never used HubSpot before or you’re using it currently and want to get more out of it, Big Sea’s 11 years of experience as a Gold HubSpot partner mean we know how to utilize the platform to get more bang for your marketing dollar.

Chat with us and learn what we can do for your nonprofit. You’ll be surprised how much more you can accomplish.