Filene Research Institute works with its member credit unions on cutting-edge research, incubation programs to test and scale new solutions, advisory services, and host communities and events to help their own members improve and strengthen their financial well-being. Earthling Interactive built a custom authentication system that uses Salesforce and reporting with Pardot for Filene.
Salesforce as the source of membership truth
When a credit union becomes a Filene member, all of their employees have access to the library of incredible research and services that Filene has on their website. However, Filene doesn’t have a list of all the employees at each credit union, and if they did when an organization signed up, that list would be out of date quickly.
Starting a new user on their journey with Pardot marketing automation
The first step to getting a member access to the research is to have them sign up with an email address. Using the domain name in the email address a few things happen depending if they are an active member or not:
- If the domain in the email address matches the domain of an active member credit union in Salesforce, the user is sent an email to activate their account and once they do that, they have access to the Filene library.
- If the domain name in the email address matches that of a formerly active member credit union, a message is displayed that their membership is no longer active, and to contact the Filene Membership team.
- If the email address doesn’t match any domain in Salesforce, like a personal gmail account, the new user is put into a group and vetted by the Membership team before they are given access to Filene’s research.
When a new user has passed the membership verification process and activated their account, an API request is sent to Filene’s Pardot instance to create a new Prospect, and add them to a list for new users where marketing automation takes over and sends them a welcome email as the first touch point to orient them, and guide them through all the of the membership benefits.
Content insights from member behavior using Pardot
Google Analytics reporting is the de facto way to measure user behavior and traffic. However, user data is anonymous in Google Analytics. You can see in general which content is important, but it is impossible to tell which organizations are using the site the most heavily and how widespread that usage is. By applying Pardot’s event tracking code to buttons, Filene is able to directly associate behavior like downloading reports with an actual person.
Unfortunately, Pardot doesn’t have a good way to group users for event reporting by organization or report. But, that limitation can be overcome with the Pardot API in our quiver to crunch data and provide meaningful reports. Using the API, Earthling Interactive pulls the data from Pardot once a day, or on demand if Filene wants to get the latest data in their CMS. The report dashboard shows report downloads by organization as well as a breakdown of user downloads in the organization.
At a glance a Content Management System user can review which reports and topics a credit union is most interested in quickly. The dashboard has the capability to download an Excel spreadsheet with more prospect fields and download history. Additional reports can be created using the Excel file to create charts to create additional reports and track historical data like downloads over time.
The Value of Custom Integration with Salesforce and Pardot
- Filene is able to maintain the value of their research by making sure only members are able to access it on the Filene website by checking a user’s membership status in Salesforce where the Membership Team maintains a credit union’s account status.
- Filene is able to lead a new user through all benefits, not of just the research reports on the website, but the whole suite of Filene membership benefits like events, webinars, and member programs using Pardot’s marketing automation tools.
- Using the custom integration coded by Earthling Interactive, the Marketing and Communications Team can determine which topics are most useful to Filene’s members in ways that Pardot by itself is not able to provide to them. The team can then explore and create content that is most relevant, while the Membership Team can demonstrate how valuable belonging to Filene is to a member credit union leadership.
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