The Client
The Yellowstone Park Foundation (YPF) is a 501(c)3, non-profit organization and has been the official fundraising partner of Yellowstone National Park since 1996. A group of concerned citizens, working with the National Park Service, started the Foundation in order to protect, preserve, and enhance Yellowstone National Park. The Foundation works to fund important projects and programs, many of which are beyond the financial capacity of the National Park Service. The Foundation receives no annual government funding; it relies instead upon the generous support of private citizens, foundations, and corporations to ensure that Yellowstone's great gifts to the world will never diminish. Since its inception, the Yellowstone Park Foundation has successfully funded more than 150 projects in Yellowstone.
The Problem
Although YPF was happy with its website, not enough people were visiting it to find out more about the foundation's work for the historic park. Sending email newsletters sounded promising — but somewhat intimidating— and sending more frequent direct mail would cost too much, while detracting from the organization's conservation message. Foundation staff had been actively collecting email addresses for several years, but hesitated to take the plunge with regular online communications.
How We Solved It
As a key component of Convio's Go! Program, YPF concentrated early efforts on compiling good content for the launch of their first email newsletter. Meanwhile, their Go! Program consultants designed and produced an email newsletter template that incorporated best practices, including fully-branded styles compatible with popular browsers, recipient personalization, and trackable "forward-to-friend" functionality. After a joint review and revisions, the Go! team created and tested the first email newsletter, and launched it to YPF's list upon approval.
The Outcome
With positive feedback from supporters, YPF institutionalized their email newsletter writing process for delivery on a regular basis, and took over HTML production using their custom Go! Program template and easy email message composition software. The short, best-practice "excerpt-style" format for the email newsletter means that recipients click links to the website to read full articles, which increases the foundation's website traffic while ensuring staff can track and measure which articles get the most clicks, and from whom.
Convio products used: Email Marketing, Fundraising
