Modernizing Marketing at a Leading Children’s Hospital with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

The Problem Statement

As a nonprofit children’s hospital, our client required a strong marketing program for both their Marketing and Philanthropy teams. Over the years, they had outgrown their legacy marketing platform, which did not provide many of the tools that modern marketing teams expect. In addition, they lacked an upstream Master Data Management process for their customers and constituents, which resulted in disjointed email communications, unreliable personalization, and an inability to attribute customer activities across several key systems. These key systems included, but were not limited to, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge (their Philanthropy CRM), Classy (their online fundraising platform), and Oracle Health (formerly known as Cerner, their healthcare IT software).

To address these challenges, the client had purchased Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Engage and Intelligence), but needed help getting started.

The Objective

Help our client operationalize Marketing Cloud with the following requirements:

• Integrate customer data from Raiser’s Edge, Classy, Cerner and more (manual lists, various data enrichment services).
• Coordinate and execute migration from their legacy email platform, including IP Warming, data migration and training.
• Design and build a data model that would reduce GTM timing and democratize their data for marketing and analytics use cases.
• Enhance overall marketing capabilities by building out automated customer Journeys, incorporating SMS marketing, and improving reporting.
• As with any healthcare client, we needed to honor HIPAA and other healthcare confidentiality regulations across the solution. This need is only magnified in Children’s healthcare: We needed to ensure our solution did not result in any marketing being sent to the patients themselves, but rather their adult caretakers and the hospital’s philanthropic constituents.

The Results

A Transformational Leap in Marketing & Engagement

Built a Unified Customer Data Hub

Solvenna helped architect a Customer Data Mastering process that unified critical data elements across Philanthropy, Marketing, and Patient Care systems. This breakthrough gave the hospital a true 360-degree view of their customers and patients, allowing them, for the first time, to accurately track and engage donors, caretakers, and supporters across every touchpoint. This single, trusted data source became the foundation of their new Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) instance, fueling smarter, more personalized marketing strategies.

Automating Multi-Channel Campaigns for Maximum Impact

With newly integrated data sources, Solvenna empowered the hospital’s marketing team with advanced segmentation, targeting, and personalization capabilities. By implementing a suite of Marketing Cloud Automations and Journeys, we eliminated manual processes freeing up valuable time and shifting focus to strategic, high-value initiatives. With advanced segmentation and automation, the hospital’s marketing team launched hyper-personalized donor campaigns, driving increased engagement and higher donation rates.

Innovating with a Custom Twilio SMS Integration

Out-of-the-box solutions weren’t enough for this hospital. Our clients will tell you that at Solvenna, we are not afraid to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty with custom solutions to fill the gaps when out-of-the-box solutions don’t meet business needs. Case in point: At this hospital, Twilio was already used for specific patient care messaging, but now their Marketing and Philanthropy teams needed an integrated SMS marketing approach. Solvenna stepped in and built a Custom SFMC Journey Builder Activity a drag-and-drop module inside Salesforce Marketing Cloud that seamlessly triggered Twilio SMS messages. The impact? One-click execution of combined email + SMS Journeys, revolutionizing their ability to engage donors and constituents through personalized, multi-channel outreach.

Flawless IP Warming & Elite Email Deliverability

Email deliverability can make or break a marketing program.  While not a very “sexy” aspect of the project, IP Warming is ultra important, tedious and can be complicated. One misstep in IP Warming could have led to emails being lost in spam filters, blocked altogether, or landing in the dreaded Promotions tab. Many organizations struggle with email deliverability, but Solvenna’s expertise ensured a seamless transition, protecting the hospital’s sender reputation and maximizing inbox placement. Our approach eliminates guesswork—ensuring our clients get results, not risks. The result? A 99.8%+ deliverability rate, with consistent Primary Inbox placement on Gmail, Yahoo, AT&T, and Hotmail—ensuring their messages reached supporters when it mattered most.

Is your organization struggling with outdated marketing technology? Are you having a hard time setting up an efficient unified customer master, marketing or analytics capability.  Let Solvenna help you modernize your stack, integrate your data, and drive real marketing impact.  Contact us today to start the conversation!