Team Red, White & Blue

Harnessing Data to Drive Veteran Engagement With Salesforce

About the Charity

Team Red, White & Blue (Team RWB) is a national nonprofit dedicated to enriching veterans’ lives by forging America’s leading health and wellness community for veterans. Founded in 2010, the organization provides in-person and virtual opportunities that help veterans build a healthy lifestyle.

Needing to scale impacts, collect data, without increasing headcount.

With over 250,000 members and supporters and nearly 200 local chapters, Team RWB empowers veterans to stay active, engaged, and supported in their post-service lives.

However, with 20,000+ events per year, data fragmentation posed a significant challenge. To maximize engagement and deliver data-driven experiences, Team RWB partnered with our team at Passion Fruit Partners to optimize their Salesforce ecosystem, including NPSP, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud, and Tableau, leveraging the technology to serve their community of veterans better.

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Pain Points

Data Across Multiple Systems:

The team wanted to consolidate all their data into a single, unified system.

Limited Insights into Veteran Interactions

Time-consuming processes, understanding how veterans engaged with their events and services.

Inability to Personalize Member Journeys:

Without a centralized system, targeted re-engagement strategies were difficult to implement.

"We needed to unify our data and automate engagement scoring. Without this, we couldn’t scale our impact or create truly personalized experiences."
– Dan Brostek
Senior Director of Technology, Team Red, White & Blue

The Challenges

The Challenges: Fragmented Data and Engagement Gaps

01

Data Across Multiple Systems:

Engagement and interaction data was siloed across different platforms, making it challenging to analyze participation trends.

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02

Insights into Veteran Interactions:

Understanding how veterans engaged with programs required manual data exports and time-intensive workarounds.

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03

Inability to Personalize Member Journeys:

Without a centralized system, targeted re-engagement strategies were difficult to implement.

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04

Resource Constraints:

With only a two-person tech team, scaling impact efficiently required leveraging technology, not increasing headcount.

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05

Automation across data points to give engagement scoring:

We needed to unify our data and automate engagement scoring. Without this, we couldn’t scale our impact or create truly personalized experiences." – Dan Brostek, Team RWB

The Solution

Passion Fruit Partners worked with Team RWB to get actionable data from their Salesforce database. Using Salesforce Data Cloud, PFP developed a data-driven approach to engagement and program measurement, enabling the nonprofit to unify data across multiple sources, create group and individual-level insights, and allow for the activation of personalized member experiences.

01

Data Unification and Centralized Analytics Would Allow:

  • Consolidated event, app, and participation data within Salesforce Data Cloud by optimizing the platform.
  • Unified datasets across platforms to eliminate siloed reporting.
  • A solution to regularly analyze and track program impact and engagement levels.
  • Created a single source of truth for all engagement data, improving decision-making and reporting accuracy.
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Additionally, Engagement Scoring and Personalization Would:

  • Develop a multi-variable scoring model to measure engagement levels over time.
  • Identify veterans at risk of disengaging and trigger automated re-engagement strategies.
  • Enable the ability to identify members with no or low engagement so the team can segment and activate re-engagement strategies tailored specifically to these veterans.

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02

Data to Empower Partnerships and Fundraising:

  • Leveraged Enriched Life Scale (ELS) surveys to assess the impact of participation and highlight areas where Team RWB partners can offer supplemental programs and resources, strengthening the overall support network for veterans.
  • Connected engagement data with enrichment metrics, proving program effectiveness that is vital for funders to see the impact. 
  • Multiple data points being discussed in the realm of understanding how wearable tech can power more of the mission of Team RWB and the work they do. 
  • Linked participation data with Enriched Life Scale (ELS) survey responses -  self-reported measures of veterans’ mental and physical health -  providing deeper insights into overall well-being. These insights not only strengthen Team RWB’s case for fundraising, but also help the organization identify where additional partner offerings can best supplement programs and drive greater impact across teams.

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03

Automated Member Journeys Designed To:

  • Build on the engagement scoring and personalization, the team is able to create lifecycle journeys through the automated member journeys the PFP team built.
  • Enable personalized recommendations for activities and events based on past engagement.
  • Integrated Marketing Cloud with Data Cloud to provide outreach.
  • Actively experimenting with building segmented audience groups to tailor messages based on engagement levels.
  • Automating in-app notifications and email campaigns to improve engagement.
  • Developed predictive analytics to anticipate member needs and deliver timely intervention

Impact

20K
Events per year - now seamlessly tracked
171K
Authenticated members - engagement data unified
50M
Data points processed - driving personalized insights and automation

The Red White and Blue Team have seen incredible impacts across their organization, which is enabling them to scale their mission.

01

Unified Data for Smarter Engagement

  • The team now uses Data Cloud to analyze consolidated event, app engagement, and participation data in a more targeted and meaningful way. 
  • The team now uses a sophisticated engagement scoring model, allowing personalized outreach based on user activity.
  • The team is now able to use data-driven marketing with segmentation strategies tailored to veteran needs.
  • The leadership team is now empowered with data-driven insights to measure and optimize program success.

"Before Data Cloud, our insights were fragmented. Now, we have a unified view of our members and can take meaningful action to better support their needs." – Dan Brostek, Team RWB

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02

Personalized Veteran Journeys

  • The team has now developed marketing journeys for onboarding, engagement, and reactivation.
  • Using the solution their team has created, they calculated insights to track behavior trends and re-engage inactive members.
  • In-App Communications: Dynamic segmentation for personalized notifications and email content.
  • Established a framework that will support personalized program recommendations based on participation history, which Team RWB is evolving over time.

"Now, when a veteran disengages, we have the opportunity to identify that disengagement and take timely action to re-engage them with relevant communications and opportunities to connect and participate." – Dan Brostek, Team RWB

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03

Scalable Automation and Efficiency

  • The solution has reduced manual data exports and analysis, saving significant staff time.
  • With an integrated Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud, the team can achieve more in less time through seamless outreach automation. 
  • Salesforce has enhanced analytics, enabling staff to make informed program decisions without increasing headcount.
  • Salesforce now allows self-service analytics, enabling different departments to generate reports on demand, empowering staff with intuitive analytics for fast, confident decision-making.

"By leveraging technology, we’re able to scale our impact and achieve more for veterans without significantly increasing headcount." – Dan Brostek, Team RWB

04

Measuring Long-Term Veteran Wellbeing

  • The team has Integrated Enriched Life Scale (ELS) surveys within the app to track veteran wellbeing at the touch of a button. 
  • Now, the team is able to use engagement and ELS data together to evaluate program success and inform future strategies.
  • Building on this, the team is planning wearable tech integrations to track physical activity and further enhance insights.
  • Team RWB is now using insights into how engagement correlates with improved mental and physical health outcomes to share their story and enhance the way they show their impact to funders. 

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05

New Team Tools Creating New Abilities

"Salesforce has given us the ability to scale, personalize, and measure our impact in ways we never could before. This is just the beginning -  our data-driven approach will continue to evolve, ensuring we support more veterans on their journey to health and wellness." – Dan Brostek, Team RWB

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"We now connect engagement data with veteran wellbeing metrics - proving that participation in Team RWB truly enriches lives."
– Dan Brostek
Senior Director of Technology, Team Red, White & Blue
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