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Case Study 02

Media Cause

Media Cause is a digital agency that partners with mission-driven organizations to build marketing infrastructure, run campaigns, and solve technical problems nonprofits don't have the staff to tackle internally.

My Role Senior MarTech Strategist
The Problem

Nine platforms, no central system, and every enrollment was a manual process.

The Solution

One connected system through HubSpot with the full member lifecycle automated.

Skills Demonstrated
Marketing Automation Cross-Platform Integration CRM Implementation Workflow Automation Email Lifecycle Management eCommerce Migration Training & Enablement
9
Platforms Integrated
1
Unified CRM
40%+
Open Rate
3
Core Workflows

Millennium Forum supported educators through well-being and professional development services. Membership data lived across disconnected tools with no central database. Every new enrollment meant manual tracking, manual group assignment, manual onboarding, and too much bouncing between spreadsheets and platforms.

Nothing was connected. Signup, scheduling, payments, and communication all required handoffs and workarounds. The team wanted to grow, but the system underneath them could not support it.

Before anything got connected, I needed to understand what was actually broken. Staff interviews, workflow mapping, and a review of every platform in use painted the picture: nine tools doing overlapping jobs with no shared data layer.

HubSpot became the center. Squarespace, Hivebrite, Circles, Zoom, Google Sheets, Gmail, Shopify, ReCharge, and SurveyMonkey all connected through native integrations and Zapier. Member data migrated out of legacy systems into a contact structure with custom properties that matched how Millennium Forum actually worked.

Subscription billing moved to Shopify + ReCharge, syncing back into HubSpot so membership status and communication lived in one place. Three core workflows handled the lifecycle end to end: registration and welcome series, automated meeting reminders with personalized details, and ongoing member communication.

The team needed to run this without outside help. Documentation, training, and a custom reporting model for engagement, bounces, and list performance gave them the tools to do that.

New members flowed from signup through onboarding without anyone touching a spreadsheet
Nine platforms that used to operate independently now fed into one system
The team stopped rebuilding lists and manually assigning groups — workflows handled it
Subscription billing ran through Shopify and synced back to HubSpot automatically
Email engagement landed above industry averages across member communications
The team could run the system on their own — no dependency on outside help
Reporting surfaced patterns the CRM's built-in tools couldn't show
"His responsiveness to our needs has been outstanding, guiding us in selecting the most suitable solutions and providing ongoing support as we manage things independently. As a result of his efforts, our entire enterprise has significantly improved its efficiency and accuracy."
Margaret Golden
Margaret Golden Director, Forum Program — Millennium Forum
Tools Used