Case Study
M&GN adopts modern CRM solution to strengthen member relations
“Moving a society of this age to a new modern system is no small case from both the technical and business changes. GiveLife365 partnered with M&GN to complete a PoC to help with creating a business case to modernize M&GN’s membership system. The deployment of GiveLife365 was split into manageable delivery packages which helped with business change”
“M&GN see GiveLife365 as the backbone of our memberships. Before GiveLife365, new members would have to wait over a week for membership cards, now if they purchase online, they are emailed temporarily instantly, meaning they can get benefits from their membership straightway. We are looking to expand the use to other M&GN clubs, online portal to provide exclusive content to members.”
Adam Wood
IT office (M and GN)
Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway Society (M&GN) is the supporting charity of (and a dominant shareholder in) the North Norfolk Railway, which operates a 5¼ mile heritage railway from Sheringham to Holt. Founded in October 1959 after the extensive closure of the M&GN system, the Society works to preserve, display and operate a wide range of historical artifacts consisting of four steam locomotives and many unique carriages and wagons.
M&GN partnered with GiveLife365 to manage their membership database and align it with their various membership clubs and plans. This Non-Profit's constituent data and membership tier classification were stored in disparate systems with siloed information. M&GN wants to create data transparency within its organization to build and strengthen the relationship with its members, craft and implement an effective engagement strategy and expand its membership base.
Customer challenges
M&GN has a large pool of member databases. It saw an opportunity to move from its disconnected systems and procedures to streamline and optimize its donations, service, and relationships with members.
Some of the challenges they wanted to address through GiveLife365 were getting rid of labour-intensive membership processing and renewal processes, data inconsistencies resulting from manual entries, and lack of transparency across activities and data siloes. M&GN also identified its website as a channel to increase online conversion of members by transforming it to be more engaging and purposeful.
GiveLife365 solution
GiveLife365’s CRM solution enabled M&GN to unify data in a secure cloud platform that provides a single source of truth. GiveLife365 extended support by connecting processes to simplify and automate its membership registrations and renewal processes. With this implementation, M&GN could improve its operational efficiency.
M&GN received pre-built and automated artifacts such as membership cards, and welcome and renewal email alerts. With GiveLife365’s robust membership management system, M&GN gets a holistic view of all its subscribers across various plans, tracks and manages billing and online payments, etc all in one place.
GiveLife365 designed a user-friendly web portal for M&GN that clearly showcases the different membership plans, associated member benefits, and filters to segment plans based on requirements. Its members can now apply and renew their membership plans from the M&GN website.
Customer benefits
M&GN can now better manage its data, evaluate membership programs, member behavior, and preferences and develop personalized communication strategies with its members, all on one platform.
Adopting the GiveLife365 membership management system has enabled M&GN to effectively execute both front and back-end operations that were earlier manual and time-consuming.
Automating membership renewal and transaction process has freed up time to focus its efforts on building and strengthening relationships with its members and increasing its membership and donation churn. They achieved this by centralizing data across departments and crafting personalized communication based on data-driven insights.
The Microsoft-enabled secure and mobile-friendly new web portal organizes the membership tiers into a well-structured website. This makes it easy for website visitors to instantly gauge the member benefits and decide to join the club.
What’s more, integrations played an impactful role in streamlining workflows and increasing productivity in the day-to-day operations of M & GN.
- GiveLife365 implementation involved multiple integrations that brought about ease in operational tasks and significant time savings allowing M & GN more time to focus on valuable work.
I would add some more examples around integrations
- MailChimp is used to share information with M&GN members and manage promote M&GN. Before GiveLife365 M&GN must manually create records in MailChimp and update its legacy system. M&GN had to have MailChimp accounts for each club. Now M&GN has one MailChimp account that with a by-direction interface with GiveLife365.
- Web/Payment Integration – Before GiveLife365, members would pay be memberships via PayPal and M&GN would have to review PayPal and manually create memberships. As part of GiveLife365 M&GN moved to Stripe, this allows for payment integration, automated renewals, temporary cards automatically issued and no transcriptions.
- PowerBI – Before GiveLife365, M&GN have little to no reporting available out of the legacy system. GiveLife365 allows for PowerBI reporting out of the box. M&GN is now able to see data insights/trends as well automating report creation for month-end and HMRC submission.