Marketing for a Cause

The Client

Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) has been committed to transforming the lives of people living with muscular dystrophy, ALS, and related neuromuscular diseases for 70 years. MDA does this through innovations in science and innovations in care. As the largest source of funding for neuromuscular disease research outside of the federal government, MDA has committed more than $1 billion since its inception to accelerate the discovery of therapies and cures.

The Challenge

MDA decided to replace legacy systems with a local Salesforce NPSP instance and Marketing Cloud. They wanted to transition email campaigns from Luminate to Marketing Cloud, requiring an extensive IP warming initiative due to domain change.

The Solution

Beyond the Horizon provided initial Marketing Cloud configuration including user account setup, feature enablement, layouts, data mapping, contact schema, and FTP setup. Data preparation included quality assessment, duplicate merging, migration, and validation.

The IP warming strategy included phased email sending focusing on high-engagement segments, prioritizing the Family segment (highest engagement, lowest complaints/unsubscribes), gradually increasing volume before adding additional segments. Luminate lists were evaluated for engaged constituents and opt-in permissions. High-quality emails were migrated to Marketing Cloud while low-quality contacts were excluded.

Personalization was used in all emails, explicit opt-in was added to all forms, and consistent sender identity per audience was maintained for brand recognition.

The Result

MDA was successful in migrating away from their legacy systems and starting their journey in the Salesforce ecosystem. Running campaigns through Marketing Cloud gave them greater visibility on success, improved delivery rates, and improved visibility on metrics of the campaigns.