Launching SMS for Stockholms Stadsmission in under three weeks
Client
Stockholms Stadsmission
Year
2024
Industry
Non-profit
Services
CRM
Automation
Growth
Tech Stack
Stockholms Stadsmission hadn’t used SMS in years, even though it’s one of the most effective channels a non-profit has for timely, urgent asks. Souk set up SMS through LINK Mobility inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and launched a Christmas fundraising campaign in under three weeks. The campaign went to a test segment of just under 4,000 engaged Swish donors. More than one in five donated, together giving over 150,000 kr in December, and every krona spent on sending brought back around 14 kr. We also built an automated thank-you journey and trained the in-house team, who now run SMS on their own.
Challenges
SMS is one of the most valuable channels a non-profit can have. It’s immediate and personal, and it reaches people when needs are urgent. Stadsmissionen hadn’t used it for years, which left a gap in their donor communication.
Christmas, the most important fundraising period of the year, was weeks away. SMS had to be set up, connected to their customer engagement platform and live with a first campaign in December, in less than three weeks.
Solutions
Implementation
We added SMS as a native channel in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights through LINK Mobility, so it sits in the same platform Stadsmissionen already uses for email. SMS can now be segmented, triggered and measured alongside every other donor touchpoint, with no separate tool or manual exports.
Campaign design
With a new channel, we treated the first campaign as a controlled launch. We targeted Swish donors from the last 12 months, filtered further for engagement, so the first sends reached the people most likely to respond. Before launch, we set clear targets for delivery, conversion and opt-outs. The campaign followed three moments when people are already thinking about others: the first Sunday of Advent, Lucia and the day before Christmas Eve. Each send was A/B tested with two message versions, and every message linked straight to Swish so giving took seconds. Anyone who donated was taken out of the remaining sends.
Automation and handover
We added a trigger-based journey that sends a thank-you SMS after each Swish gift, starting the relationship from the first donation. Once the campaign was live, we trained Stadsmissionen’s marketing team to build and launch SMS campaigns themselves. They now run the channel independently.
Result
SMS went from unused to a revenue-generating channel in under three weeks. Each send converted 4–8% of recipients within four days, well above typical nonprofit SMS benchmarks. From a segment of just under 4,000 recipients, more than one in five donated, together giving over 150,000 kr in December. Over 60% of that came within four days of a send, and every krona spent on sending brought back around 14 kr in that window. Around one in seven donors came back and gave again. Stadsmissionen’s marketing team is now trained in SMS and runs all its SMS campaigns in-house, with the thank-you journey running automatically in the background.
3 weeks
From zero to first SMS campaign
22%
of campaign recipients donated
150,000+ SEK
Donated by campaign recipients
