Revive Our Hearts and Journity: Personalization Leads to Success

Every visitor to your website is different. One might be there for the first time. Another is a regular. One wants to read your blog. Another wants to shop your online store. One is in Dallas. Another is in Detroit. How can you connect with each visitor effectively?

That’s just what Bryan VanHaitsma, digital media director at Revive Our Hearts, had been wondering.

At a glance

• Organization: Revive Our Hearts, Niles, Michigan
• Situation: Revive Our Hearts didn’t have the capability to create targeted messages for the various audiences visiting its website every day.
• Solution: Use Journity to plan and create personalized messages to encourage different website visitors to take specific actions.
• Results: Targeted communications for website visitors, a 48% increase in the monthly partner sign-up rate, and $45,000+ raised during a one-month fundraising campaign.

The inside scoop

VanHaitsma manages digital ministry for Revive Our Hearts, a Niles, Michigan-based nonprofit women’s ministry focused on biblical teaching and heart revival. The organization produces online content, books, conferences, and two daily nationally syndicated radio programs. VanHaitsma oversees the website, emails, and social media, spreading the ministry’s message to women around the U.S. and to an expanding Spanish-speaking audience worldwide.

He was using traditional methods to reach his digital audience. “We used a ‘broadcast’ approach because we weren’t able to segment particular demographics,” he says. That meant the same message for all visitors, no ability to test, no segmentation, and a lot of guesswork. That changed when Revive Our Hearts signed on with Journity.

He likens Journity to a “tour guide” for website visitors. “Different audiences have different needs. Journity captures audiences from particular sources or content areas and directs them properly,” he explains. Using Journity, VanHaitsma has created more than 65 campaigns: carefully timed, personalized messages delivered in real time, from fundraising appeals to local event promotions.

Journity consolidates the tools digital marketers need in one dashboard: individual profile data on site visitors, audience segmentation, design tools for branded messages, and A/B testing. Creating a customized campaign takes just 20 minutes.

Reaching the year-end goal

During one campaign, the ministry used Journity to reach its annual contribution goal. VanHaitsma started with softer “asks” for support and moved to specific requests as the month-end deadline neared. Journity gave him the power to:

• segment audiences by level of engagement
• create appropriate messages for each segment
• run A/B tests to develop the most effective calls to action
• vary the frequency of when visitors would see messages

By month-end, Revive Our Hearts had raised more than $45,000 and captured 263 donations using Journity.

VanHaitsma has also used Journity to invite highly engaged visitors to become ministry partners, geotarget visitors to announce events in their area, direct visitors to a sale in the online store, and promote a 30-day challenge to deepen engagement.

Every step of the way, the Journity team has worked closely with him to provide training, answer questions, and brainstorm campaign ideas. “It’s very collaborative. When I work with Journity, it doesn’t feel like another team. It feels like all one team, my team.”