A Splash + Salesforce Solution Helped VFA More Efficiently Manage, Track and Convert Leads

The Situation

Help us scale our events program across the country.

Since 2011, the not-for-profit organization Venture for America (VFA) has worked tirelessly to spread its mission: To help enterprising college grads launch their careers as entrepreneurs, and in turn, help revitalize American cities.

Not surprisingly, events have proven to be one of VFA’s most successful marketing strategies to accomplish its goals:

Attract
Qualified Fellows

VFA hosts over 400 events each year at colleges and universities, including on-campus "Career Fairs" and "Info Sessions," which help to expose the best and brightest college juniors and seniors to the benefits of the VFA Fellowship Program.

Educate
Hiring Partners

VFA matches Fellows with startups in 15 cities across the country. Its "Kickoff" events bring together leaders in each community along with newly transplanted VFA Fellows to mix and mingle and work together on ways to add value to the city.

Fundraise

As a non-profit, VFA relies on the support of the community to help keep the VFA mission alive. Fundraising events allow the organization to have valuable one-on-one time with potential donors.

“VFA used to task an ‘army of interns’ to input attendee data into Salesforce after every event. Not only has the Splash + Salesforce integration made us 100x more efficient, we now have a clearer picture of how successful our events really are.”

Joe Guy | Community Partnerships Manager, VFA Midwest

The Challenge

There had to be a better way.

After nearly four years of juggling endless Google Docs and Excel spreadsheets of event attendees and RSVPs, VFA knew there had to be a better way.

Worst of all, VFA had a feeling that their events were successful, but had no way to know for sure.

The Solution - Part 01

Beautifully-designed email invites & event pages.

Splash helped VFA transform its static email invites and event pages into enticing marketing tools to help attract more and better recruits, hiring partners and donors. As an Enterprise Customer, VFA collaborated with Splash on a variety of custom templates that made it easy for any team member to create a beautifully-branded event page and email invitation in minutes.

The Solution - Part 02

An integration with Salesforce.

VFA has long used Salesforce to track new leads and maintain contact with their growing alumni and donor list.

The problem? After every single event, they had to spend hours inputting valuable data into Salesforce. As the organization grew, the process became a logistical nightmare.

In July 2015, Splash integrated Salesforce into its platform, which changed the game for VFA.

Now, when guests attend or RSVP to a VFA event, Splash automatically takes one of two actions within Salesforce: (1) Updates the individual’s existing record and associate him or her with that particular event; or (2) creates an entirely new Lead or Contact.

The complete automation allows VFA to focus on what really matters: Building and maintaining relationships with donors, recruits and hiring partners.

The Results

Today, VFA is able to directly attribute every recruit, hiring partner, and donation to the exact event from which they originated.

After switching to the Splash platform, VFA was not only able to increase organizational efficiencies and build a more beautiful event page & invites – they were able to quantify the return-on-investment (ROI) from every event.

Armed with this new information, VFA has begun to course-correct for the events that produce less-than-stellar results, and scale the ones that prove to be smashing successes.

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