As a community-driven nonprofit, the YMCA of Alexandria, Minnesota, serves a broad demographic in four central Minnesota locations. From youth sports and fitness programs to senior wellness and family-oriented activities, the YMCA aims to engage its community with programs that improve mind, body, and spirit. But in an increasingly digital world, connecting with the right members at the right time was proving to be a challenge.
To streamline its operations and improve member engagement, the YMCA of Alexandria adopted ActiveCampaign’s marketing and sales automation platform. The result? A dramatic improvement in operational efficiency, personalized member communication, and overall program engagement. Take a look at the specific ways ActiveCampaign helped the YMCA overcome their challenges and how they leveraged automation and AI to improve operational efficiency and grow their business.
The YMCA’s Business and Unique Challenges
The YMCA of Alexandria is part of an association that operates four locations across central Minnesota. While serving smaller communities, their mission is ambitious: to create a hub for the entire community, catering to people from all walks of life. However, this broad mission brought with it unique marketing challenges. Their audience ranged from seniors interested in fitness programs to families signing their children up for youth sports, making targeted, relevant communication a challenge.
“We’re in smaller communities, so we’re really trying to bring the whole community together,” said Adam Sakry, Digital Marketing Specialist for the YMCA of Alexandria. “Anyone that wants to either socialize, start their fitness journey, or get involved in youth sports—we’re just trying to be that community hub.”
Adam was also stretched thin by the scope of his responsibilities, which included email marketing, SEO, website management, social media, and even photography and video production. With so many different hats to wear, efficiency was paramount.
Before implementing ActiveCampaign, the YMCA’s marketing processes were disjointed and manual, making it difficult to scale and personalize member outreach. The YMCA struggled with sending the right message to the right member at the right time, often resulting in generic communications that failed to resonate.
The Problems with Previous Solutions
The YMCA’s previous marketing efforts lacked automation and segmentation, two critical features that could have helped manage their vast range of programs. Without the ability to track user behavior or segment audiences based on interests, Adam and his team were sending broad emails to their entire membership list. This approach didn’t allow for personalized messaging, and engagement suffered.
“We’d send out a list of all the programs we had going on, but it wasn’t targeted enough,” said Adam. “We were missing opportunities to engage members on a more personal level.”
Manually creating email campaigns also created a bottleneck. Adam spent too much time building out emails from scratch, which reduced his capacity to focus on higher-value activities. Additionally, the YMCA had strict brand guidelines, and ensuring consistency across campaigns was labor-intensive.
How ActiveCampaign Helped Solve Their Problems
ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation and AI tools gave the YMCA a scalable solution to streamline communication and improve member engagement. Here’s how they used the platform to solve their challenges:
1. Automation to Save Time and Improve Efficiency
With ActiveCampaign, the YMCA was able to automate routine processes like onboarding new members and nurturing members via regular program updates. This automation not only saved Adam valuable time but also ensured that new members received timely, personalized information without manual intervention.
“We’re able to contact our customers quicker, especially by email,” Adam said. “Automating the onboarding process has been huge for us.” By setting up an automation that triggered a welcome email immediately after a new member signed up, Adam ensured that members received a warm introduction to the YMCA’s services, along with tailored suggestions for programs based on their interests.
Specific Use Case:
- Onboarding Workflow: The YMCA’s automated workflow for new members included an introductory email that provided an overview of services and invited the recipient to choose programs that interested them. Using ActiveCampaign’s conditional logic, Adam set up triggers that sent timely follow-up emails based on the programs each new member clicked on.
2. Personalized Follow-Up Based on Member Interests
One of the biggest improvements ActiveCampaign brought to the YMCA’s marketing strategy was the ability to personalize communication based on member behavior. With behavioral tracking, the YMCA could now send targeted follow-up emails to members who engaged with specific program links in their monthly newsletters.
“We have a lot of different programs for different target audiences—seniors, youth sports, fitness enthusiasts,” Adam explained. “With ActiveCampaign, when someone clicks on a specific program link, we can follow up with an email tailored to that interest.”
For example, when a member clicked on a youth sports link, ActiveCampaign automatically tagged that member as being interested in youth programs. This tag triggered a follow-up email focused solely on youth sports, allowing the YMCA to automatically provide relevant information while avoiding cluttering the member’s inbox with irrelevant content.
Specific Use Case:
- Behavioral Trigger Emails: After a member clicks on a program link (e.g., youth sports), a tag is added to their profile, automatically moving them into a new email nurture sequence focused on that interest. This workflow led to an impressive 12.8% click-through rate on a recent fitness program campaign, far surpassing the industry average of 2%.
3. AI Tools for Brand Consistency and Efficiency
One of the most exciting features the YMCA adopted was ActiveCampaign’s AI-powered Brand Kit. With the YMCA’s complex brand standards (including multiple logos, color palettes, font, and social links), maintaining brand consistency across all communications was a major pain point before ActiveCampaign. The Brand Kit allowed Adam to quickly import the YMCA’s brand assets and apply them to automated templates, ensuring every email met the organization’s standards.
“Our brand standards are pretty complex, with around 12 different colors in our palette,” Adam said. “ActiveCampaign’s Brand Kit made it super easy to pull in our logos and mission statement, and I no longer have to worry about adjusting fonts and colors every time I create an email.”
This feature was particularly helpful for less-experienced team members who needed to send emails but weren’t well-versed in email design. The AI templates ensured that even non-marketing staff could send out on-brand emails without needing Adam to personally design every message.
Specific Use Case:
- AI Brand Kit: The YMCA used the AI Brand Kit to automate the design process for different types of emails—whether it was a new program announcement or a community event invite. By preloading their logo, fonts, and color schemes, team members could easily select a template and create a professional email in minutes.
4. Improved Email Design Accessibility
Before ActiveCampaign, Adam was solely responsible for designing all the YMCA’s emails, a time-consuming process that often created bottlenecks. With ActiveCampaign’s AI-generated email templates, that changed. Now, anyone on the team could create visually appealing, branded emails, even without extensive design experience.
“Before we had these brand templates, I had to build every email myself. Now, anyone on our team can create an email that meets our brand standards,” Adam said.
This shift not only saved Adam time but also empowered other team members to contribute to the YMCA’s marketing efforts, allowing for more frequent and timely communication with members.
Specific Use Case:
- AI Email Templates: Team members across different departments now use pre-built templates to quickly send out announcements, newsletters, or reminders. For example, the YMCA’s community outreach coordinator used these templates to promote an upcoming family event without needing assistance from the marketing team.
Business Impact and Measurable Results
The implementation of ActiveCampaign has had a significant impact on the YMCA of Alexandria’s business operations and member engagement. By automating processes and personalizing communication, they’ve been able to engage members more effectively while also improving internal efficiency.
Key results include:
- A 12.8% click-through rate for a targeted fitness program campaign, compared to the industry average of 2%.
- 27% average contact growth year over year across all branches.
- Significant time savings for the marketing team, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives rather than manual processes.
“We haven’t been ending up in people’s junk mail, which is always huge,” Adam noted. “And our click-through rates have been through the roof.”
Conclusion
For organizations like the YMCA of Alexandria, which serve diverse communities with wide-ranging interests, personalized communication and operational efficiency are critical. ActiveCampaign’s robust suite of automation, segmentation, and AI tools allowed the YMCA to transform its member engagement strategy, streamline its internal processes, and ultimately grow its community.
As Adam puts it: “Email is the best way to communicate with people who actually want to communicate with you. ActiveCampaign makes that communication simple, effective, and personalized.”
Through its intelligent automation and AI-powered features, ActiveCampaign is not only helping the YMCA thrive but also providing a roadmap for other organizations to follow in building stronger, more meaningful connections with their customers. If you’d like to see how ActiveCampaign can help you grow your business through powerful automation, start a 14-day free trial today!
