Centrepoint and Wood for Trees
Revolutionising donor engagement and automating supporter journeys for greater impact and efficiency
Background
Centrepoint is the UK's leading youth homelessness charity. Alongside their partners, they support over 16,000 young people every year and are campaigning to end youth homelessness by 2037. They run over 60 accommodation services and work in 15 boroughs in London, Sunderland, Manchester, Bradford and Barnsley.
The challenge
Centrepoint’s individual giving income and number of actively engaged donors has been growing steadily over the past ten years. At the same time, the programme had got more complex, with increasing sources of new donor and audience engagement. It became clear their current approach to creating supporter journeys was not suitable for the scope of the programme.
Previously, the only (semi-)automated journeys were built in a bulk email platform. This allowed the creation of journeys with multiple messages and decision points, but building telephone or mailing elements into the journey was challenging. The data needed to be manually extracted from the database to feed in new supporters and update the data fields for supporters already in journeys.
This process was time-consuming, required two members of staff to action and often fell down if the people responsible were out of the office or too busy. These issues meant that although Centrepoint had two useful regular giving supporter journeys running, including for valuable ‘Sponsor A Room’ (SAR) and ‘Standard Regular Giving’ (SRG) supporters, the journeys were difficult to develop and optimise, and there was a barrier to creating any further journeys.
Watch the full customer story
Watch our video which covers the full impact of Apteco software on Centrepoint, presented by Nick Cook, Jack Scott and Markus Tralla.
The Apteco Solution
With support from Wood for Trees, Centrepoint implemented Apteco FastStats and PeopleStage to automate and personalise key supporter journeys. They successfully migrated complex journeys, such as ‘Sponsor a Room’ (SAR) and ‘Standard Regular Giving’ (SRG), incorporating personalised messages, sophisticated audience segmentation and multi-channel touchpoints.
The automated journeys led to some positive improvements in engagement.
In particular, the SRG journey saw an increase in open rates compared to what was achieved using the previous system, and the marketing team has gained new insights that were previously impossible to achieve.
Centrepoint also utilised PeopleStage’s testing capabilities to help refine content and optimise future engagement, all while eliminating the need for more manual processes.
Expanding on their success, Centrepoint launched additional automated journeys for new donors, lapsed supporters and retention efforts. These journeys, which included targeted reactivation and churn prevention campaigns, have contributed to substantial revenue increases, including a potential £33,813 in additional annual income from reactivated donors. In total, more than 150,000 emails were sent to over 40,000 supporters, doubling Centrepoint’s outreach compared to the prior year.
The adoption of Apteco software has also saved approximately 13 hours of staff time each month, allowing for greater productivity and more streamlined processes.
Using FastStats and PeopleStage has professionalised our selection processes, making them more organised, transparent and flexible, while keeping the level of complexity we need. It has also enabled a quick expansion of our supporter journeys. This has allowed our fundraising teams to make their activities more sophisticated and more tailored to our supporters’ needs.
Jack Scott, Analysis & Insight Manager, Centrepoint
Jack Scott, Analysis & Insight Manager, Centrepoint
The impact on the business
Centrepoint’s innovative use of Apteco software, supported by Wood for Trees, has revolutionised their supporter email journey management and earned significant improvements in donor engagement.
Centrepoint doubled its outreach efforts, sending over 150,000 emails to more than 40,000 supporters compared to the prior year. Enhanced personalisation through segmentation and dynamic content increased open rates and deepened supporter relationships.
Optimised journeys and targeted campaigns generated significant financial benefits, including an additional estimated £33,813 annually from reactivated donors. These efforts supported Centrepoint’s long-term financial stability and mission to end youth homelessness.
Automation of previously manual processes saved approximately 13 staff hours per month. This efficiency gain allowed the team to allocate more time to strategic initiatives, improving productivity across the organisation.
Centrepoint successfully launched new supporter journeys tailored to specific needs, such as retention, reactivation, and event engagement. These campaigns broadened the charity’s ability to connect with supporters, enhancing its overall impact.
The powerful features of the Apteco software gives our clients a wide breath of functionality to use, the ease of use of the system allows us to implement and train our clients at speed, which allows them to then quickly embed the software in their organisation and get the true power of turning insight into action, which is definitely the case for Centrepoint.
Nick Cook, Solutions Architect, Wood for Trees, part of the Salocin Group
Nick Cook, Solutions Architect, Wood for Trees, part of the Salocin Group