Call: Digital marketing platform services for UNHCR Private Sector Partnerships in the Europe region
Buyer: UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency)
Closing date & time: 25 October 2024 – 23:59 hrs CET
Objectives and Purpose of assignment
The Digital Strategy of Private Sector Partnership (PSP) aims to achieve three key objectives.
1. First, it seeks to enhance the income generated from digital channels, leveraging innovative online fundraising techniques and platforms.
2. Second, it focuses on developing comprehensive retention strategies for donors, both online and offline, through effective digital communications.
3. Third, it endeavors to expand the community of supporters, increasing their engagement levels and guiding them progressively towards making donations. These objectives are designed to digital marketing platform services ensure a sustainable and growing digital presence that supports the overarching mission of UNHCR.
To contribute to reaching the above-mentioned goals, PSP Europe is now looking for a high-quality digital marketing platform provider. The Frame Agreement will be signed with the successful bidder for an initial period of thirty-six (36) months, with a possibility to extend the contract period to twenty-four (24) months upon satisfactory performance:
•Phase 1: 01 January 2025 to 31 December 2027 (36 months)
•Phase 2: 1 January 2028 to 31 December 2029 (24 months)
The bidder company should demonstrate solid experience in the performance of similar services, proving that the bidder company already has:
• A reputable firm with at least 5 years of prior experience.
• A broad knowledge and experience in implementing and managing Automated Marketing Systems
• Good understanding and compliance with European and industry standards for security and data protection laws.
• Excellent knowledge of recent technology.
• The ability to provide solution designs and support on top of the latest technologies.
REQUIREMENTS
The appointed supplier will be asked to provide PSP Europe with a Digital Marketing Platform (DMP) with all the features/functionalities described below. The platform’s user interface (UI) must be fully functional and available in English by default. Any additional language for the UI will be considered an asset.
CONTACTS MANAGEMENT
Effective contact management has become essential for successful fundraising. For PSP Europe, contact management entails the following capabilities:
1. Providing different business accounts, workspaces, databases, users, and privileges for each UNHCR PSP country and team.
2. Managing different databases per country.
3. Manage different primary keys for each database (e.g., user id, which can be donor id in Mentor or contact id in the case of Salesforce, or e-mail address or cell phone number).
4. Managing at least 2mln contacts per country.
5. Managing minimum 200 fields per contact to keep track of preferences, segmentations, donors’ behaviors dedicated privacy by communication channel and personalization of contents.
6. Scheduling and automatically import/update of contacts from external databases/CRM through file exchange or APIs calls. Integration of the DMP with two current CRMs used by PSP markets (Mentor by Direct Channel, and Salesforce) is mandatory.
7. Manage, through marketing automation nodes and actions on forms, the possibility of communicating real time, directly via webservice, with the CRM systems in use by PSP (Mentor by Direct Channel, and Salesforce) both to transmit new contacts, and to update or enrich their data, as well as to write useful actions for external contact management (telemarketing or mailings). Importing/updating contacts by manually uploading files in the DMP, or automatically reading files from an external FTP server
8. Customizing rules to manage privacy consents, mailing lists, greylists and blacklists.
9. Creating Facebook Custom Audiences with daily automatic sync from the DMP is mandatory.
SEGMENTATION
To enable the segmentation of the supporter base into groups of individuals with similar relevant variables, such as age, gender, interests, donation type and value, etc., the Digital Marketing Platform should ensure:
1. Static Groups: a collection of contacts that are manually selected or automatically pushed from the CRM and remain fixed, regardless of any changes in their attributes.
2. Dynamic Groups: automatically updated based on predefined criteria and hierarchic queries ensuring the group composition changes in real-time as contacts’ attributes evolve.
3. Ability to leverage AI capabilities for defining dynamic groups with rules created through interpretation of typed text for segment construction.
4. Segmentation should also consider and allow for the exclusion of, for example, contacts who are completing or have completed specific marketing automation flows.
DELIVERY
1. Ability to delivery large volume of emails in very short time.
2. Ability to distribute communications & messages across various channels beyond emails (SMS and Instant Messaging – WhatsApp, Viber).
3. A/B tests to optimize communications based on different key parameters (e.g., subject line, sender, content). A range of variables, such as open rate, click rate, and conversion rate, should be available for A/B testing goals.
4. Option to schedule deliveries based on customer behavior to optimize the rates.
5. The option to schedule deliveries at a specific date time.
6. Availability of an integrated SMTP service for sending ‘transactional’ emails from external systems (e.g., websites and UNHCR telemarketing call centers).
7. Availability of webservice API libraries that enable the sending of “transactional” message templates, e-mail, and SMS, from external systems (e.g., the CRM or websites or UNHCR’s telemarketing call center) to recognized contacts by exploiting dynamically enhanced placeholders during sending.
8. Ability to store and export i.e. PDF form of messages sent to contacts to respond to any checks required by banks or other financial institutions.
CONTENT CREATION
The Digital Marketing Platform should ensure:
1. Drafting content (e-mails, SMS, Instant Messaging – WhatsApp, Viber, …) with an advanced WYSIWYG editor and templates (tailored on UNHCR contents or pre-made templates). All the templates must be mobile-responsive and in line with email marketing standards.
2. Creating dynamic and user-based or behavior-based customized content.
3. Designing & building landing pages, web forms to collect supporters’ data, popups, light boxes and surveys.
4. Creating Data enrichment forms to catch personal data from donors and automatically update UNHCR’s CRM through webservice call.
5. Creating lead generation forms to catch new contacts and automatically write them inside UNHCR’s CRM through webservice call.
6. Preferably providing AI (Artificial Intelligence) services to improve messages & content build
7. Ability to personalize messages, especially emails, with personal information from the supporter database.
8. Ability to attach documents to send emails.
9. Ability to store files i.e. PDFs in each donor profile with a dedicated link ie for Tax Mailing Purposes.
2.5 MARKETING AUTOMATION
The Marketing Automation tool should meet the following requirements:
1. Ability to design communication journeys using a visual editor (workflows).
2. Capability to incorporate email, SMS and instant messaging communications.
3. Capability to query/write data from/to UNHCR CRM in real-time inside the workflow and taking decisions consequentially.
4. Provide AI (Artificial Intelligence) nodes to improve advanced scenario goal based.
Given the ongoing need for timely, personalized, and data-driven communications, a Marketing Automation tool integrated into the DMP is essential for UNHCR’s outreach efforts.
The Marketing Automation tool should enable UNHCR to personalize contents (email, SMS, Instant Messaging) and communication journeys, ensuring that messages resonate with donors and supporters on an individual level, thereby fostering stronger relationships and increasing engagement.
SMS INBOUND SERVICE
The service should also enable us to manage large SMS campaigns targeted at supporters. Donors should be able to respond to these SMS messages by directly replying with a text, which the DMP needs to be capable of receiving and handling.
The DMP should enable country offices to have:
1. A dedicated phone number per market for SMS outbound/inbound campaigns.
2. The DMP must be capable of handling a large volume of SMS responses, mapping them to their respective donors, and automatically sending a reply SMS based on the text received from the donor.
3. The DMP must be capable of allowing both manual and automatic export of all received messages.
4. Enable SMS recipients to opt out from SMS communication and manage supporter consent
REPORTING
The platform should ensure at least:
1. Automatic export of delivered communications and users’ activities (sent, opens, clicks, un-subscriptions, bounce, complaints, conversions) to be imported into the UNHCR CRM for each contact and delivered communication, through any channel.
2. A tracking code (pixel managed by the DMP) to monitor online conversions /donations on UNHCR’s websites.
3. Online and downloadable reports of selected communications.
4. Deliverability reports
INTEGRATIONS WITH THIRD-PARTY PLATFORMS
The DMP must have available API calls. The API should enable seamless integration with UNHCR existing systems and provide flexibility for custom development.
Key functionalities should include the ability to manage subscriber lists, send and schedule campaigns, access detailed analytics and reporting, and perform automated workflows.
The platform’s API must be well-documented, secure, and support both REST and SOAP protocols to ensure compatibility with a wide range of applications. This will facilitate efficient data exchange and enhance the overall marketing automation strategy.
Other native integrations with external services and other digital platforms will be considered an asset (for example, landing page builder, CRM, Facebook ads / leads, analytics tools, third-party app integrations, Zapier).
HELPDESK
The DMP must provide a responsive and efficient helpdesk service available across multiple channels, including telephone and email. This support should be available to assist users with any technical issues, account management inquiries, and feature usage questions. The helpdesk team must be capable of addressing and resolving issues promptly to ensure minimal disruption to marketing activities. Additionally, a comprehensive knowledge base or FAQ section should be available for self-service support, enabling users to find solutions to common problems independently.
DEDICATED SUPPORT TEAM AND FUNDRAISING CONSULTANCY
A dedicated support team capable of providing comprehensive assistance to UNHCR across various technical and fundraising aspects will be considered mandatory.
This support team is expected to offer expertise in fundraising consultancy, technical developments, marketing automation, reporting, template development, and any potential customization of the DMP.
The supplier is expected to provide backup support for strategic and technical areas for the existing digital marketing platform whenever requested by the countries marketing teams.
Example of requests, and not limited to:
• Setup/update data model.
• Setup/update outbound communication journeys.
• Setup/update subscription forms.
• Review, adapt and adjust technical documentation.
• Build web pages using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Write and design new email templates.
• Build and create SQL queries.
• Use REST API/SOAP API to integrate multiple systems.
• Project/program management services.
• Provide support in the conception, strategic and design, of marketing automation flows, integrated with UNHCR systems, aimed at achieving shared goals.
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