Stefanie Mathew
Vice President of Corporate Partnerships
National Park Foundation
Outstanding Team Leader
Coming off the 2016 centennial celebration of the founding of the National Park Service, the National Park Foundation (NPF) was at the top of their game. Stefanie Mathew was leading a strong corporate engagement team that was seeing plenty of business interest in preserving national parks and programs and connecting people to them. NPF had dozens of corporate partners and felt lucky to call some of the biggest brands in the world, like American Express, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Coleman, Disney, Humana, REI, and Subaru, partners of their recent platform, the Find Your Park/Encuentra tu Parque movement.
However, Stefanie knew that NPF could soar even higher.
Challenge:
While Stefanie’s team had much success to be proud of, they often found themselves challenged to actively develop right-fit strategic partnerships, as they were focused on keeping up with the execution of existing partnerships. While they did not suffer from lack of corporate interest, she knew her team needed to find new ways to qualify incoming leads and re-prioritize to allow for proactive strategic thinking on the strongest, right-fit partners for NPF. Quality over quantity was the name of the game.
Solution:
Forming a relationship with Accelerist provided Stefanie turn-key solutions to many of the issues at hand through a few key tactics.
- Data-Driven Prospecting
Accelerist leveraged their robust data and matchmaking platform to identify quality leads. Acceerist’s service found the best companies for NPF, with a focus on open and relatively untouched categories. The guesswork was completely removed, and the data led the way.
- Qualified Leads
NPF leveraged Accelerist tools to research, screen and rate partnership potential for any business that contacted NPF, providing a seamless plan of attack for her team in qualifying new leads. Accelerist gave her team confidence that the companies they were targeting were the right companies and made it easier for the team to communicate to NPF’s senior leadership around strategy and successes.
- Uncovered Constituent Affinities to Drive Strategy
Stefanie was even able to leverage data provided by Accelerist to uncover new information she did not initially realize was needed. Accelerist analyzed NPF’s audience of over a million email supporters and provided valuable insights that directly supported the new business prospect strategy and ability to resonate with decision makers. The uncovered intelligence encouraged NPF to immediately expand its retail strategy.
With Accelerist as her partner fueling the data behind their partnership strategies, Stefanie’s team found its rhythm and is fully positioned to remain a leader in the industry with thriving partnerships for years to come.