About NESS

The New England Science & Sailing Foundation (NESS) provides K-12 students with a STEM-based ocean-focused curriculum through hands-on marine science and sailing programs. Serving over 10,000 students, NESS connects students to their communities and the environment, providing an impactful and holistic approach to education both on and off the water.

Before the Migration

Over the last 20+ years, NESS has grown in size and program offerings. With that growth came new platforms and tools and challenges to manage their data. Platforms came and went and over time, data became siloed, stagnant and oftentimes inaccessible. 

Tool Stack

• Active
• Donor Perfect
• DocuSign
• SmartWaiver
• Constant Contact
• Survey Monkey
• Square
• QuickBooks (desktop)
• Social Media

With data in so many different places it was hard to see the full profile of any given contact. The tools did not speak to each other and kept each piece of data siloed and often inaccessible.  

The additional challenge in centralizing this data is that there are multiple types of contacts and these contacts need to be differentiated in the system. If the contact is a parent, we need to know which children are being registered and their relevant registration details (age, grade, program). If the contact is a teacher or school program director, we need to associate them with the right school, know what grades they’re working with, and anticipate their recurring program needs. If a contact is a donor, we want to know their donation frequency, but we don’t need to send them program information for upcoming registrations unless they have children who would be a good fit. 

In addition to handling multiple contact types with varying profile requirements, we have to consider the different associations of these contacts with the company and deal records. Any one contact can also be associated with several contacts, companies, and deals, all with different association labels and requirements.

The Big Lift: Data Standardization & Import

The data exported out of the other systems wasn’t clean and standardizing it was a challenge. It was a mix of info for the contacts, companies, deals, and most often there were no unique identifiers. The risk of creating duplicated, outdated records and creating a mess that would require hours of manual data cleanup was very high. 

In addition, each department was used to different views and different ways to manage their data. Change management needed to be a top consideration to ensure buy-in across the organization.

Making it Work: Configuring & Integrating HubSpot

NESS had several business functions that we moved over into HubSpot.

Taking Donations

Building the forms and payment links to facilitate donations via the website and tracked in HubSpot. We want to be able to track donation frequency, recency, and lifetime totals. 

Program Registrations by Parents

Building the forms, payment links and deal pipelines to allow parents to register their children for programs during open enrollment. These forms are connected to the parent/guardian contact record and have to also collect information for the associated participant record. Completed transactions need to generate deals to track revenue on the associated sales pipeline and tie back to the completed purchases of that parent/guarding. 

Tracking School Registrations

Building the forms and deal pipeline to track school program registrations. Collecting information for the class, the organizers, and tracking recurring revenue for that school over time. As multiple contacts may be associated with this registration (program organizer, administrator, teachers and supervisors) they need to have the appropriate association labels. 

Customizing Contact, Company & Deal Records to Collect the Right Information

Some data points may need to reside on multiple records. For example:

• Grade Level - is important to track for Schools (Company Records), Program Registrations (Deal Records), Students (Contact Records), Parents of Participants (Contact Records) and Teachers/Administrators (Contact Records).
• School - could be an association with a contact (if they work there), a text property on a contact record (if they or their child attends that school) or added to the deal record as an association or text property. It also needs to be in form submissions for program inquiries and needs to be updated in the correct place with that submission. 

There were numerous situations like this where we had to assess and build rules for which record hosted which data point and adjust our forms and workflows accordingly. 

Consolidated Brand Management & Tracked User Behavior

By bringing social media, ads, email marketing and more under one platform, we’re able to segment our audience more effectively and engage with them in the ways they like best. We’re also able to make sure that program announcements and updates are being seen across all channels. Best of all, we can tie those engagements back to the contact and measure actual business impact of our brand interactions.

Email Marketing

All email marketing and program emails are now being conducted through HubSpot and we’ve successfully sunset Constant Contact. With the consolidated data we’ve been able to automate program emails and ensure they’re hitting the right people at the right time.

Sales ♥️ Marketing ♥️ Client Experience
With the consolidated CRM, it’s incredibly easy for the handover from marketing to sales to customer service. Contacts can be managed in one place with the full suite of tools available which reduces the risks of delays and data compromising when ownership of contact is moved between departments. 

Forecasting Deal Revenue

With the rollout of our pipelines, we’re better able to see the revenue generated per contact and company, and to forecast/predict future revenue.

Testimonial

NESS testimonial about the impact this has made on the business. Something that ties into actual ROI to show the business impact would be ideal.

Moving Forward

With HubSpot now serving as the centralized source of truth for organizational data, NESS can easily and quickly gather and act on key business intelligence. All stakeholders will be able to keep a pulse of registrations and revenue, see what marketing activities are working, and feel confident that they’re all working off the best data. With confidence in their data set, future tech stack additions will be evaluated on how well they integrate with HubSpot to maintain this integrated data set.