Blakely Boosts Fundraising Initiatives with Syniti
Delivering Accurate, Faster Direct Mailings & Operations with Syniti Match
About the Company
Blakely Inc. is a full service marketing and fundraising agency that works exclusively with nonprofits to increase revenue through individual giving programs. They contribute significantly to the nonprofit sector, raising over $63 million among their nearly 40 clients in the past year alone. The core of their operations involves sophisticated integrated campaigns and is a large source of crucial fundraising dollars their clients depend upon.
Project Background
Seeking improved data matching capabilities, Blakely decided to shift this crucial aspect in-house. Prior to adopting Syniti, Blakely faced challenges with slow processes and missed duplicates when relying on lettershop partners.
Deduping and cleaning up names is a standard service or process nearly every lettershop offers, but there were often shortcomings in the processes. With Syniti Match, ”We realized that by doing this, we could bring a portion of the work in house and make the process better, faster, more cost effective and more reliable,” said Winston Van Schilt, Chief Financial Officer at Blakely. Looking to improve match rates while reducing rework and accelerating project timelines, Blakely was determined to bringthis data prep work in-house and find a more effective matching solution.
Syniti Match especially helps with getting mailings out on time… it gives us more time for other stuff that naturally occurs to happen and still be able to deal with it, get the product out, and get the mail out on time, which is really, really important in our industry.”
Implementation
Blakely’s developers identified the Syniti Match solution as a cost effective and reliable alternative to building an extensive in-house matching algorithm.
“Once we understood the value of Syniti Match, it became a core part of our data execution process and gave us the ability to develop a broader solution that used Syniti Match to do the matching process,” said van Schilt. Blakely mapped out a customized process, efficiently integrating Syniti Match into their workflow. The implementation of the matching library allowed Blakely to focus on other aspects of data preparation for their direct mail processes, contributing to a significant reduction in project turnaround time.
“Blakely’s clients consist of nearly 40 charitable organizations, each with their own unique needs, so the ability to run different types of matches (individual, spousal, household, address only) is important. Being able to tweak the settings to optimize the match accuracy is also important,” explains van Schilt.
The agency transitioned to an in-house data execution process, incorporating Syniti Match to handle various matching types (individual, spousal, household, address only). The adoption of Syniti Match not only streamlined their data mail-prep process but also provided a competitive edge by eliminating reliance on external vendors for matching and de-duping.
The incorporation of Syniti Match into their data execution process took approximately three months, while continuous refinements and customizations are always at their fingertips.
Results
Blakely’s ability to run different types of matches and optimize settings for match accuracy has provided flexibility in catering to the unique needs of nearly 40 charitable organizations. The agency now has more control over the matching process, addressing issues internally and significantly reducing the time required to process jobs—from one week with external vendors to 2-3 days or less, even during non-peak seasons.
The in-house matching process has not only improved efficiency but also facilitated smoother collaboration with other vendors. Blakely now has the freedom to work with a variety of lettershops based on specific project requirements.
“One of the other benefits by taking the matching process in house is that it allowed us to work much more seamlessly with other vendors,” said van Schilt. “That was another big advantage to us; now we use a multitude of different lettershops depending on the capabilities of each.”
“Syniti Match especially helps with getting mailings out on time,” stated van Schilt. “There’s often many moving pieces right up until the actual mail date, so if we can take some time out of that process, then it gives us more time for other stuff that naturally occurs to happen and still be able to deal with it, get the product out, and get the mail out on time, which is really, really important in our industry.”
“Now a lot of that is internal, so issues can be dealt with much, much faster and that provides more time in the system to deal with other challenges that might occur…. we’ve been able to save time and make it more efficient and effective, [which] allows for more things to pop up and not derail the whole thing. We have more control over that part of the process than we did before.” Using the solution’s matching library gave Blakely a competitive advantage over their suppliers in that they no longer needed to rely on them to do the matching and de-duping work.