NIC Marketing Automation Case Study
Marketing Automation Research
About the NIC
The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) is a nonprofit whose mission is to support access and choice for America’s seniors by providing data, analytics, and connections that bring together investors and providers. NIC’s events provide networking opportunities between capital seekers and capital providers, as well as other personnel within the senior housing and care ecosystem, allowing attendees to get a pulse on the industry, facilitate networking, and enable industry collaboration.
Executive Summary
NIC contracted us to provide an alternate solution to HubSpot as their marketing automation platform. NIC presented to us many issues with HubSpot including one significant issue pertaining to HubSpot's engagement policy which permanently added a sizeable percentage of NIC member emails into purgatory. This flaw in HubSpot made it impossible for NIC to communicate by email to their constituents. NIC tasked us to explore alternatives to better align with their organization.
The NIC marketing team has reached out to us, seeking viable alternatives to HubSpot that can accommodate critical features currently not supported by our existing platform. These essential functionalities include the synchronization of custom Salesforce objects, the implementation of a "No engagement" policy to prevent email sending, the flexibility to have more than one email associated with a single contact, seamless native integration with Salesforce, the capability to differentiate between leads and contacts within the CRM, a real-time bi-directional synchronization process with a maximum 15-minute delay, and the utilization of validation rules for data synchronization. Identifying a platform that can meet these requirements is pivotal to enhancing our marketing efforts and efficiency.
The solution involved a comprehensive assessment of 17 marketing automation platforms through a multi-faceted approach. Our evaluation process included an analysis of customer reviews to gauge user satisfaction and feedback. We also delved into platform functionalities by reviewing tutorials and participating in system demonstrations and webinars to gain a deeper understanding of their capabilities. Furthermore, we engaged in conversations with each platform's technical support teams to assess their responsiveness and expertise. Technical documentation was thoroughly reviewed to ensure compatibility with our requirements.
Long-Term Goals & Projected Results
Of the 17 platforms, we narrowed the list to two platforms which met over 85% of NIC requirements with one platform achieving 100% of the requirements. Most of the platforms did not meet the requirements of the client due to their limited capabilities including poor API integration functionality, ease of use, integration limitations with Salesforce, data syncing delays, and scalability. NIC was able to quicky and easily select a replacement email automation platform and quickly implemented the new solution.