Solidarités International doubles its open rates with Brevo and digitalizes its fundraising

Industry: non-profit organization

2,350 employees

Location: Clichy-la-Garenne, Île-de-France, France

www.solidarites.org

About Solidarités International

Committed to providing access to clean water and sanitation for all, the non-governmental organization Solidarités International has been helping populations affected by conflicts, epidemics, and natural disasters since 1980.

Headquartered near Paris and active in 17 countries, its 53,000 active donors have enabled it to assist 4.6 million people by meeting their vital needs: food, water, and shelter. Individual fundraising is instrumental to the organization's survival, and it began digitalizing its fundraising process several years ago across its various collection channels.

Results achieved with Brevo

+53,000
Active donors
2x increase
In open rate
+5
New automated workflows

For Solidarités International, a French non-profit operating worldwide with a focus on humanitarian actions for access to clean water, fundraising is an ongoing challenge to secure the revenue vital to their work.

Beyond recurring donations, Solidarités International sometimes needs to launch emergency fundraising campaigns. This was notably the case in 2020, both during the health crisis and following the disaster in Lebanon, which required an exceptional level of responsiveness.

Matilde Touzalin, Head of Fundraising, explains how Brevo helps her tackle these challenges on a daily basis by supporting the digitalization of the fundraising process while maintaining donor loyalty.
When Matilde Touzalin joined Solidarités International, donations were collected through numerous channels such as telemarketing and street fundraising. She quickly realized she needed to adapt her fundraising methods to meet donor expectations — an increasing number of whom preferred an end-to-end digital process. She began looking for guidance on digital marketing. "Our team had fairly limited digital expertise — for example, I had never set up a digital strategy before," says Matilde Touzalin.

Disappointed by the limited support, high cost, and steep learning curve of her existing email marketing tool, she started looking for an alternative. A partner NGO recommended Brevo, particularly for its database management capabilities. The attractive pricing and dedicated support included in Brevo's Enterprise plan ultimately won over Matilde Touzalin. "We were reassured by their industry knowledge right from the evaluation stage. Brevo consistently came up in my searches and came across as very professional in everything I found, which gave me the confidence to trust them," she says.

The fundraising team manages both one-off donations such as emergency campaigns and automatic direct debits, sending personalized messages in each case. Regular newsletters are also sent to donors to keep them informed about the humanitarian work made possible by their contributions.
From the very start of the deployment of Brevo's email marketing and automation solution in June 2020, a dedicated Customer Success Manager was assigned to support Solidarités International. The onboarding began with a detailed walkthrough of the platform and its many capabilities, followed by regular phone check-ins to deepen the team's mastery and address any questions from Matilde Touzalin's team. "Every time we had a question, he was available within the week — even for quick clarifications on small things," she says.

Contact migration, performance tracking, IP warm-up, and building marketing automation workflows were all part of the training phase provided by Brevo. "The level of support is incomparable to what we had before. Some things aren't intuitive for a team that isn't digitally native — having someone so available and patient makes all the difference," adds Matilde Touzalin.

For her and her team, Brevo's ease of use also made a huge difference in just a few months. She particularly values the drag-and-drop email editor and campaign performance reports, which she finds well suited to her needs. "They're clear, the data is easy to read," she says.

The fundraising team has already set up five marketing automation journeys linked to petition management and new donor onboarding. "Setting up the cycles and dynamic lists is straightforward. If someone hasn't opened any emails within the timeframe we define, they're automatically moved to the inactive list — no manual intervention needed," explains Matilde Touzalin.

She is now working on building a loyalty program in collaboration with the outsourced contact center, planning to develop a statistical model by acquisition channel to prevent churn.
After just two months of use, Matilde Touzalin had already seen a significant difference in her campaign performance. "Our open rates doubled — partly because with Brevo, you can see which domains you're blacklisted on, something we had no visibility into with our previous platform," she explains.

Her team is now exploring the possibility of connecting Brevo to their database and their online donation page, which would allow them to use the platform for transactional emails too, streamlining their processes even further. To ensure continued success, she knows that "our CSM is always there, and his presence makes all the difference. The support covers both technical and strategic aspects. Everything is set up to make it easy to become self-sufficient."

Between the platform's ease of use, the additional features included in their plan, and the personalized support, Matilde Touzalin is convinced she made the right choice with Brevo. "The value for money is excellent. We rely on donations, so we have a duty to use them as effectively as possible. Our contact center has also discovered Brevo and loves using it!"

Looking to build on the new donor segment uncovered during the health crisis, Solidarités International is now ready to accelerate the digitalization of its fundraising efforts — reaching out to a younger audience for long-term support and increasing the share of individual donations across their total resources. They can count on Brevo's support — proud to stand by the organization in its humanitarian mission!