Today I’m thrilled to announce the release of Social Sync 2.0, which comes with several exciting improvements to the app.
This release is the result of months of development and I’m excited to introduce to you what our talented design and engineering teams have been working on.
In this blog post, I’ll explain some of the key features we’re launching with this new version, and highlight how they can benefit you.
I’ll also give a sneak peek into some of the enhancements to each of these features that we’ll be working on next.
Our aim is to iterate fast, and to accelerate our mission to help more nonprofits raise more money through exceptional supporter experiences.
Intros out of the way, let’s get on to the new stuff…
The Campaign Record Modal
The first update I’m excited to unveil is our Campaign Record Modal.
As a modal it’s always available right where you need it…
on the fundraisers table,
on the orders table,
in our new stewardship centre,
…a rich cornucopia of supporter level campaign data; always at your fingertips, and presented in a simple and intuitive UI.
The campaign record itself provides a lens into each individual supporter.
You’ll be able to see a breakdown of the money they’ve raised across all the platforms we support and track progress on the current and any previous fundraisers they’ve created.
You’ll also get direct links to visit their fundraisers; easy access to view any forms they’ve submitted during the campaign; the order status of their campaign incentive; any activity they’ve logged whilst participating in the campaign; and even granular detail on every single donation made via their fundraisers.
You’ll be able to easily answer questions like:
- Has this customer raised more on Facebook or Instagram?
- Is their average donation above or below the campaign average?
- Have they met the campaign target yet?
- Has their free t-shirt order been batched yet?
- Which marketing channels did they consent to when they registered?
The campaign record modal also includes details on the supporter themselves, including personal info, their motivation, lifetime value and marketing consent status by channel (email, SMS, WhatsApp, phone, post currently supported).
Finally, there’s also a flexible and powerful tagging system offering both built-in and user-generated custom tags. These can be added to any supporter or campaign record, either manually, or, as we’ll see below, via automated rules.The launch of our campaign record modal represents the first major step towards providing a complete view of every supporter.
Coming soon...
Various improvements to placeholder or hidden data
This is a beta launch. All the core data is in place and accurate, but we’ve also got some placeholders and other bits we didn’t manage to hook up to our database before the launch cut-off. This will be an ongoing process over the next few weeks.
Journey tab
You’ll also be able to see a full comms log of all campaign level communication with each supporter, both outgoing and incoming. Powerful stuff!
Improved data hub
Less glamorous than the first update, the data hub is nonetheless much improved over the previous version.
We now provide a complete log of all imported and exported data and have also made improvements to our file storage infrastructure to accommodate future scaling.
This provides complete transparency over all data both into, and out of the system.
The Facebook transaction importer has also been refined. It now comes with a calendar based UI which provides an at-a-glance overview of the status of transaction data in the system – whether its partial webhook-based data or full data from Facebook’s transaction reports.
Manual CSV upload is currently supported and daily automated uploads via Facebook’s API will be released in a future update.
Upon importing the data, the data will first be “processed”, then you’ll see a percentage based progress bar to keep you informed of how your import is doing.
Custom matching rules can also be applied to allocate imported transactions to existing campaigns based on keyword matching rules. Anything which doesn’t match a rule will be allocated to our organic campaign structure (outlined below) based on the fundraiser type column provided in Facebook’s transaction report file.
In addition to the import improvements, a wider range of global exports are also now available. Exports are no longer solely scoped by campaign either so data can be exported directly from the data hub for a specific date range and spanning multiple campaigns at once.
To coincide with this launch we have revised our export documentation and our export change log has been updated to help aid any adjustments that our users may need to perform to manipulate our data downstream.
The export specs are available here and will be formally adopted in the next week.
Coming soon...
Advanced filtering of exports
These didn’t make the cut for this release, but the addition of several export filters will follow along shortly based on user demand.
Performance upgrades
We have several plans in place to optimise and improve queue architecture and job times to reduce overall wait times considerably.
Automated data imports
Once enabled, Social Sync will automatically import Facebook transaction data every night. You’ll be able to manage this integration directly in the system and still upload transaction data or run automated single/multi day Facebook transaction imports through the data hub.
New-Look Campaign And Organic Fundraising Dashboards
We’ve given our dashboards a major facelift and reorganised how we handle organic fundraising (e.g. birthday fundraisers, or other non-campaign driven, donations).
We’ve update the core UI for improved accessibility and to maximise visual space for our data tables
Our campaign based dashboards remain largely the same as they were previously. We’ve improved some of the underlying data queries and made some other minor changes, but largely they’re untouched by this update. We hope that this will help somewhat to ease the transition between the old and the new.
They do need of a lick of paint however, to bring them inline with some of our new design conventions. And we’ll be adding some new charts and optimising the dashboard performance in the near future.
The big change in the dashboards is the reorganisation of what we’re calling “organic” fundraising.
As you’ll know, the current fundraising landscape is very fragmented with various large platforms like Facebook, Instagram, JustGiving and others offering ways for a supporter to raise money for a nonprofit. Whilst providing significant reach and trusted ways of engaging supporters, the data provided can also be very fragmentary and, until now, has been difficult to use at a tactical and behavioural level.
Social Sync’s new organic fundraising dashboards pull all this data into a single, centralised view, allowing our users to make sense of the data at both a high level and at a granular level.
All transactions imported can be allocated firstly via data matching rules set in the data hub, and then will be categorised and viewable through both the dashboards and also at an individual level via the new campaign record modals.
The end result is a powerful yet simplified overview for the nonprofit to evaluate their fundraising in a more comprehensive way
Our new organic campaign structure also opens the door to a future where preloaded touchpoint templates will empower any nonprofit to be able to deploy effective supporter journeys for each fundraiser type.
We’re not there quite yet with the current release, but you will be able to create custom data capture forms for any organic campaign type and deploy these via the final feature we’re releasing today. More on that in a moment…
Coming soon...
Visual and performance optimisations
Various visual and performance based optimisations will continue to be rolled out over the coming months. We want the dashboards to feel as quick and responsive as the new campaign record modals do.
JustGiving integration
We’ve updated our architecture for our JustGiving integration, which will be released soon. Additional integrations may follow based on customer demand.
Fundraiser Page Thanking And Rule Based Stewardship Automations
Last, but by no means least, this is easily one of our most requested features.
Fundraiser page thanking remains a cornerstone of the social fundraising landscape. And for good reason, as it allows a nonprofit to improve the supporter experience and enrich the quality of their data at the same time.
With our release today we are introducing beta versions of two of the key parts of our supporter journey builder:
- Our automated rule builder
- Our multichannel stewardship centre
Automated Rule Builder
The automated rule builder provides a framework for deploying personalised stewardship journeys at scale.
Our beta release works on a simple, when this event happens > schedule this action.
Fundraiser creation is the first event that we are supporting but other system events will follow soon.
Fundraising page posts are the only action supported currently, but we’ll also be adding additional communication channels (including email, SMS, WhatsApp and Messenger) throughout the rest of 2023 and 2024.
Creating your fundraiser page post template is as simple as writing a regular post itself. And you can drop in dynamic placeholders like the supporter’s first name or a personalised link to a data capture form to enrich their supporter data record.
Further (optional) settings also let you assign the task, set a deadline, apply tags and schedule the task for certain day of the week or a specific time of the day.
Stewardship Centre
The stewardship centre is where communication with supporters actually takes place.
The stewardship centre in its multi-channel glory. Only the fundraiser tab will currently be available
Our rule builder will let you set the events and conditions that must be matched to trigger a corresponding action.
For a Facebook fundraiser page post the corresponding action is to create a stewardship task.
Fundraiser page “thanking” cannot be fully automated to remain compliant with Facebook policies. The Facebook fundraising post will still need to be manually posted, however the rule builder takes most of the legwork out of it by serving it up as a task in the Stewardship centre.
From here it’s simply a couple of clicks to copy the message, paste it to the supporter’s Facebook fundraiser page, then mark the task as complete, which simultaneously updates the task status, applies the tags, adds the message to the supporter’s comms log and then loads the next task from the queue.
Automation at its finest! Whilst remaining fully compliant.
Oh, and one other thing, you can access the supporter’s campaign record modal directly from the stewardship centre at any time. Useful just in case you want to contextualise their message even more, for example if the data in the supporter panel indicates that they’re a high value supporter.
Coming soon...
More event triggers and custom conditions
Ever wanted to thank someone via email and WhatsApp as soon as they hit the campaign target? … with Social Sync it’ll be a doddle. Or how about reminding users who haven’t self donated to their fundraiser to do so a couple of days before the campaign ends? You bet!
More communication channels
Starting with email, with others to follow…
Templatised messages
We’ve been doing this for years, so we’ve got some awesome templates we use time and again. They’ll soon be dropped into the system for anyone to use 😎
Final Words
We hope you love these updates as much as we do!
Unlike some software companies, we use our product everyday through offering managed fundraising campaigns for some of the most well-known nonprofits in the UK.
So we understand the impact this update will have on our agency’s ability to continue innovating and delivering impactful fundraising campaigns. Our aim is to put that power in your hands.
What I’m really excited by is how everything works together to improve productivity whilst also enriching the supporter experience.
Imagine being able to import all your organic fundraising, view the data in the dashboards (or at an individual supporter level via the campaign record modals), and then set up a Facebook fundraiser page post automation to create thank you tasks for anyone who raised over £100.
…Or being able to automate sending a facebook fundraiser page message to motivate people who are yet to raise anything when your campaign hits its half way point. And then being able to quickly draw on a supporter’s unique motivation and campaign history from their campaign record modal to personalise your message before you send it in order to maximise efficacy.
Remember, this is just the beginning! We’re still very early in our journey to revolutionise the social fundraising landscape.
Our mantra is to move fast and this is very much a beta release of what are actually much bigger features, so a lot more exciting updates to come…
And, of course this is just the new stuff, don’t forget we already do all the following:
– 1-click Facebook fundraiser and order creation
– Real time transaction data feeds
– Branded fundraising pages and donation forms
We’re excited to work with our current and future customers and can’t wait to share our journey with you as we improve the platform going forward.
