The Goal
Building strong donor relationships in healthcare fundraising means creating experiences that honor the deeply personal and individual relationships supporters have with the cause. Mass General Brigham wanted to improve their online revenue while respecting those donor relationships by creating meaningful, interactive donor journeys that engaged supporters and grew digital revenue.
As the health system expanded, the challenge evolved: how to build bespoke, custom-tailored tentpole campaigns from scratch for distinct hospital entities – each with its own speciality and audience – and then thoughtfully synthesize those learnings to build a unified, best-in-class digital strategy.
THE STRATEGY
We focused on powerful storytelling and unique campaigns that invited the audience into the mission – while also testing and optimizing for direct response best practices and leveraging those insights to power YoY growth. In partnership with Mass General Brigham, we tested new ideas, elevated care team appreciation, and turned routine emails into powerful digital experiences.
Growing Email Revenue Through Tentpole Campaigns
Cutting through the digital noise and finding ways for supporters to connect to your mission can be challenging. That’s why we worked with our partners at Brigham and Women’s and Mass General to create unique brand-focused campaigns outside of highly crowded periods like Giving Tuesday or Year-End.
Through optimizing campaigns like Brigham and Women’s Giving Day, Mass General’s Fiscal Year-End and increasing cadence around Doctors’ Day, we added 15% more digital revenue for those tentpole campaigns in 2025 alone.
Deepening Audience Engagement With Cultivation
Powering Actions With User Journeys
To deepen audience connection, we introduced interactive storytelling and cultivation messages that deepened supporter engagement while powering additional revenue. From responsive health quizzes to interactive timelines and sign-the-cards, these experiences – built with our proprietary tool, Sign For Good – transformed how supporters learned about the mission.
These Sign For Good messages powered record-breaking results:
- 32% increase in average revenue per email
- 7% higher open rate
- 107% higher click-to-open rate
Centering Gratitude
We found that an important element of healthcare fundraising at Mass General Brigham is gratitude: both for providers and for the audience. By building campaigns around key healthcare moments, including Doctors’ Day, Nurses’ Week, Patient Appreciation Month, and Staff Appreciation, supporters were able to write heartfelt notes to their doctors and nurses. They also became a powerful revenue driver, with 43% of campaign revenue generated from these cards.
Thanking and engaging supporters after key campaigns also helped extend the fundraising moment and cultivate supporters. For one campaign, the thank-you message drove 17% of the overall fundraising revenue.
System-Wide Integration & Specialty Hospital Scaling
As Mass General and Brigham and Women’s brought its academic medical centers together under a unified vision, we’ve had the opportunity to support the merging of their two email programs.
After developing strong partnerships and programs across both hospitals, we were able to integrate shared insights, ensuring that each program was learning from the other and merging best practices. We also supported the strategic transition to unified digital branding, carefully warming recipient lists to protect email deliverability and maintain donor relationships.
Since this first integration, our partnership has continued to expand, now working to support Mass General Brigham’s four affiliate specialty hospitals – Spaulding Rehabilitation, McLean Hospital, and Mass Eye and Ear – as well. For each of these hospitals, we’re bringing best practices from Mass General Brigham while crafting distinct, individual creative strategies that reflect their own unique programs and offerings.
MissionWired has been a key partner in scaling our email program over the last few years. They’ve introduced exciting creative concepts, implemented best-in-class strategies, and found new opportunities to connect with supporters and deepen their relationship to our mission. We’ve been grateful for their guidance integrating across the Mass General Brigham system to combine our digital programs.
