brand + product case study

MobileCause

What

I was brought on as Creative Director at MobileCause in 2017. The brand had been established as the leader in text-to-donate back in 2008 but didn’t have any strategy behind their current branding. As a result, they were losing customers through churn and having a hard time landing more sales in this highly competitive SaaS market.

I led our in-house creative team to elevate the existing brand while also developing a new creative identity, design and strategy direction behind the scenes, more on that later.

First things, first, we needed to get our non-tech-savvy sales team better tools, so I interviewed members of the sales and customer support teams to reveal pain points with their current presentation. This allowed us to streamline their demo experience with a new elevator pitch, presentation and easy-to-use in-product demo guidelines so customers could see how easy it is to use our platform. We revamped over 52 case studies for our top customer verticals so nonprofits could personally relate to the success other customers had with the software. And after talking more with our customer success team, we also updated the customer onboarding experience with a new strategy plan and worksheet.

Next, we revamped and created a new design system and copy tone using the existing brand for our website, blog, videos, infographics, ebooks and webinars. We created a new flow for the home, product and blog that considered top-line information that is important for the customer in their initial search, as well as incorporating a bot for our less tech-savvy customers.

Our overview and 4-minute demo videos where done on a shoestring budget to show our customers a preview of the product before even requesting a demo, something we heard a lot of prospective customers had been asking for. These videos paired with group demos helped to drive more interest in the product.

Nonprofits are usually very short staffed and looking for help in fundraising because it’s the least favorite part of their job. So, we made sure to make all of our resources were quality content and easily accessible on our website. We created a quarterly schedule and collaborated with our Digital Marketing Services team to make sure our content was topical and important to our customers. We created infographics with important stats that drove our customers to an informative webinar, highlighting a customer success story and other tips. Then, we would follow it up with a useful eBook or digital workbook that they could use with their colleagues. This content, combined with our blog, allowed us to position ourselves as a nonprofit thought leader.

All of our efforts resulted in driving over 3,500+ qualified sales leads per month by creating useful customer-centric content and promoting it via email and social strategies.

How

We had a small, but mighty, team and no process when I first started at MobileCause. I worked with our team to implement Trello and HubSpot workflows. We used Trello to visualize our content calendar and keep all of our deliverables in one place to easily hand off work to one another in the team. Our process also aligned with our HubSpot workflows to create a seamless content creation and promotion machine.

We also worked closely with the product team to ensure our user experience propelled us above the competition by creating an unmatched event experience with dynamic in-app thermometer designs and animations. Initially, we were tasked with just providing new and improved design options for the thermometer. But we did more user research and realized our customers were jumping from a PowerPoint presentation to our thermometer during their events and it was causing issues at live events. So, we updated our thermometer from a simple experience to incorporate welcome screens, donor thank you engagement and a closing celebration. We also offered a variety of thermometer styles and customizations so everything is easily branded for the customer’s event so that donors can have a more engaging event experience.

We also helped quality-control other app updates and advancements to make sure we had the user and business objectives in mind.

Thermometer Animation Concept Video

Why

While we were implementing new processes and revamping the current brand, we were also developing a new creative identity, design and strategy direction based on research we had conducted both internally and with customers.

Adoption rates of technology solutions geared towards fundraising and donor engagement among nonprofits are generally between 10% - 15%, with annual growth between 1% - 4%. Costly, analog fundraising efforts like direct mail still dominate nonprofits development strategies. Building upon the MobileCause portfolio of successes with thousands of organizations, we set our sights on solving one of the biggest challenges that plagues nonprofits – their lack of creating long-term engagement with their supporters and donors. Donor retention was at an all-time low and continues dropping every year.

Focusing on donor loyalty was a unique opportunity to differentiate and update the MobileCause brand. Enabling nonprofits to care more about their donors and for donors to have a greater understanding of their needs was a core theme of our new brand direction. The mission was to cultivate greater commitment between nonprofits and donors to achieve enduring social impact and to once and for all, end the cycle of donor churn through meaningful donor and user experiences, all starting with the MobileCause product and services. The goal was to not only revamp the brand, but to build a new design system for the website and product with new donor loyalty features.

The new brand direction is more human, focusing on real moments between donors and the organizations and people they seek to help. We explored many directions for new logos and taglines that really got to the core of what MobileCause platform is all about; helping nonprofits engage with their donors in more meaningful ways and letting the cause shine so we can all do more good.

Whew, that was a long one, if you made it through, thank you. It was really fun to look back on all we achieved as a small team over one year. We had a directional change at MobileCause before my relocation to Seattle at the beginning of 2019. They are currently focusing on the event portion of the platform only. But I am hopeful that the new branding will be revisited and maybe even more user research, because you can’t ever have enough of that, am I right?

Tools + Methods

Adobe Creative Suite
InVision
WordPress
Microsoft Office
Trello
HubSpot
Product Strategy
User-Centered Research
Data Analysis
Persona Development
Journey Mapping
Sketching
Wireframing
Visual Design
Rapid Prototyping
Design Systems
Development Methods
Identity Development
Copywriting
Graphic Design