From one-to-one emails to region-wide campaigns: How FFSC scaled stakeholder outreach with Zoho Campaigns

The Company

The Furniture & Fittings Skill Council (FFSC) is an awarding body recognised by the National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET) that works to strengthen the skills ecosystem for India's furniture and interiors sector. Led by its CEO and Secretary Rahul Mehta, FFSC builds industry-aligned skilling to boost workforce capability, productivity, employability, and career progression.

FFSC's work spans occupational standards, training, assessment and certification, industry partnerships, Centres of Excellence, apprenticeships, and skill competitions. Its key programs include training, certification, enrollment, partnerships, academies, apprenticeships, events, and skills activities.

A multidisciplinary team of about 45 professionals runs these programs across standards, assessments, academies, industry partnerships, projects, governance, communications, and operations. FFSC is headquartered in Gurugram (NCR), with team members based across the country, including in Mumbai, Chennai, and Udaipur. The council is connected with more than 1,800 industries across India, of which over 330 are members who receive additional, premium-tier benefits.

FFSC's diverse audience, including learners, professionals, and partners, requires distinct outreach.

The challenge

FFSC's team previously relied on individual emails, spreadsheets, and manual lists for outreach, alongside an in-house PHP dashboard with region logins that captured stakeholder study and enrollment data. As the council expanded its regional presence and the frequency of program announcements, event invitations, and partner communication grew, several challenges emerged:

• One-to-one communication only: Outreach happened almost entirely through individual emails, and campaigns were rarely run. Reaching the council's full network meant hours of repetitive, manual effort.
• Multiple stakeholder groups, no easy segmentation: Industry partners, training partners, institutions, learners, and professionals each needed distinct messaging. Segmenting audiences and personalising messages through spreadsheets and one-off emails was time-consuming.
• Hard-to-maintain contact data: Keeping contact lists updated, tracking engagement and opt-outs, and consolidating campaign reports across regions was a constant challenge for a database built up over many years.
• Limits of a homegrown tool: The in-house dashboard, built from scratch, was prone to bugs. Neither the partnerships team nor the developer supporting it could dedicate enough time to maintain it as FFSC continued to scale.
• No measurable outreach platform: Without a dedicated system, there was no reliable way to see who was engaging, who needed follow-up, or how communication was performing.

Planning a regional event campaign with Zoho Campaigns

Using FFSC's Industry Transformation Conclave in Mumbai as an example, here's how the team now plans and runs a typical regional event campaign.

1. Define the catchment region: For a Mumbai event, invitations can reach stakeholders in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, and, to an extent, Rajasthan.
2. Segment leads and accounts by region: The team filters the Lead module in Zoho CRM to create a region-specific audience, and does the same for accounts.
3. Build the campaign plan: Dates, speakers, and theme-specific communication are mapped out, along with follow-up calls and registration confirmations.
4. Run countdown messaging: Closer to the event, scheduled reminders go out at fifteen, ten, and five days to go, keeping the event top of mind for registered and prospective attendees.
5. Keep key relationships personal: Mass communication goes out through Zoho Campaigns, while FFSC's regional teams continue to email key accounts directly, preserving the personal touch of those relationships.

The solution

FFSC evaluated email platforms on ease of use, segmentation, personalisation, templates, automation, analytics, deliverability, compliance, scalability, and CRM integration. Zoho stood out for its integration with Zoho CRM, customisable workflows, reporting capabilities, and overall fit with FFSC's technology ecosystem.

The decision was sealed by a recommendation from Satyan Thukral, Founder and CEO of Caple Industrial Solutions and a Zoho power user, who sits on FFSC's board as an industry partner. His firsthand experience with the platform gave the team the confidence to commit. The council was already using Zoho CRM and Gallabox for WhatsApp messaging, and initially adopted Zoho Campaigns on its own for email before later bringing it into the fold as part of Zoho One.

Onboarding was completed in phases. Existing contact lists were consolidated, cleaned, and imported in stages—a process the team found manageable, though standardising data and removing duplicate or outdated contacts required internal effort. FFSC began with contact-list management, audience segmentation, reusable email templates, scheduled campaigns, and campaign analytics, and continues to progressively expand into automation.

Zoho Campaigns: Key features in use

• Audience segmentation: Contacts are segmented by type, category, interest, geography, and context, with tailored subject lines, content, and calls to action for each group.
• Reusable HTML templates and newsletters: FFSC sends a monthly newsletter featuring Skills Insight, built in HTML and delivered to its entire database, alongside program and enrollment announcements, certification-related communication, and awareness campaigns.
• Event and webinar campaigns: Region-specific invitations, registration confirmations, and scheduled countdown reminders support FFSC's conclaves, webinars, and events.
• Industry and partner outreach: Partner updates and industry communication reach FFSC's network of more than 1,800 industries, including its 330+ premium members.
• Campaign analytics and list hygiene: Built-in duplicate checks, engagement data, and bounce reports keep FFSC's multi-year stakeholder database current and validated.
• Native Zoho CRM integration: Engagement history is tracked against each stakeholder record, so the team can see the last communication with any lead or account.

Benefits and ROI

The most visible impact has been on preparation time. What once took each regional team hours of manual effort now takes minutes, and FFSC's campaigns currently see an average open and click-through rate of around 20 percent—a figure the team is working to improve by applying campaign best practices to how emails are drafted.

• Preparation time cut from hours to minutes: Regional email sends that took two to three hours a day manually can now be completed in ten to fifteen minutes to the entire database.
• One platform for all outreach: Contact lists, templates, scheduling, and reporting live in a single place, improving coordination between FFSC's program and communication teams.
• A live, validated database: Built-in duplicate checks and engagement data show which contacts are still active, who has changed organisations, and whose email addresses are no longer valid.
• Prioritised follow-ups: Segmented, real-time-tracked distribution for event invitations, webinar outreach, and program announcements lets the team focus follow-ups on interested stakeholders.
• Continuity in client servicing: CRM integration provides visibility into the last communication with any lead or account, so commitments are never lost between team members.
• Board-ready reporting: Dashboards built on Zoho CRM data—including leads and accounts segmented by geography and company scale—now feed directly into FFSC's monthly and quarterly board reviews, replacing spreadsheets with a graphical view of engagement.

FFSC has not attributed increases in enrollment or event participation to email campaigns alone, since outreach draws on several channels, but the council views Zoho Campaigns as a meaningful and growing part of that mix.

Looking forward​

FFSC's Industry Partnerships and Growth team was the first at the council to adopt Zoho, testing it as a proof of concept before any wider rollout—a pattern FFSC intends to repeat as it expands regionally.

"These campaigns really help us see which people are still in touch, who may have changed organizations, or whose emails are no longer valid. We get a live picture of our actual connections instead of just going by numbers." — Shrikanth Sasi, Head of Industry Partnerships and Growth, FFSC

The teams at FFSC have their sights set on the following next steps:

Regional expansion

• Extending the West region model nationwide: Having piloted its campaign approach in the West region, FFSC plans to extend the same model to the East, South, and North through the year.
• Wider adoption across teams: Fuller integration of Zoho products across other FFSC teams is planned from next year onward.

Automation and AI

• Automated communication journeys: FFSC has experimented with a small number of workflows at an individual level and now plans to roll out automated journeys across the team.
• Deeper CRM integration: Using engagement data to refine content, timing, and follow-up for each stakeholder segment.
• Exploring Zia and AI agents: Once automation is in place, FFSC plans to explore Zoho's AI capabilities, including Zia.

FFSC would recommend Zoho Campaigns to other organisations in the skill development and vocational training space that manage diverse stakeholder groups and frequent outreach, particularly when the platform is integrated with a CRM for segmentation, continuity, and reporting.

To learn more about the Furniture & Fittings Skill Council, visit their website.