Tag: marketing

Blog

Are These Mistakes Costing Your Association Memberships, Renewals, and Event Registrations?

Posted on by KCampbell
Are These Mistakes Costing Your Association Memberships, Renewals, and Event Registrations?

Today’s Thursday. The day John picks up his kids from school. He pulls into the parking lot and realizes he’s early — a whole 5 minutes early. He thinks back through his day.

“Oh yeah, I need to sign up for the holiday party the chamber of commerce is throwing.”

John takes out his phone, gets to the local chamber of commerce’s events page, but the page is only set up for desktop.

After scrolling and scrolling, 5 minutes passes in a flash. John’s kids, Aaron and Jacob, are now in the backseat exchanging jokes they heard during lunch period. “Signing up for the holiday party is going to have to wait”. John groans. Maybe later tonight he’ll register. Maybe Monday. Maybe …

Your members — like all of society — like John — are constantly seeking information from their smartphones. And they’re quick to click away from your site if it isn’t easy to navigate and doesn’t load within seconds.

The Greater the User Experience, the Greater the Results

A poor online user experience equates to poor results, while a seamless, intuitive user experience leads to greater results.

When members or prospective members come to your site, they do so to get information. They may also visit your site to become a member, renew their membership, or sign up for an event. You want them to be able to take action quickly and easily. The last thing you want is for them to scroll endlessly through pages, get frustrated, and abandon their transaction — like John.

Get on the Brand-wagon

Branding on your web pages is equally important as is ease of navigation and a mobile-friendly design. Your members already recognize and trust your brand, believe in your association, and stand behind its mission.

That means it’s critical to include your branding through and through on your website where members are taking actions like signing up for a new membership, paying their annual dues, or signing up for that holiday party.

Optimizing the Experience for 123Signup End Users

To improve the user experience, 123Signup’s enrollment, renewal, and registration application pages went through extensive user testing. Then based on data and feedback, the pages were redesigned to optimize navigation and make transactions, like renewing a membership, intuitive and simple. The result is a better user experience which translates into more memberships, renewals, and event signups for our clients.

And because branding is so important, we’ve expanded our page customization options. The application pages can be tailored to reflect the software users’ brands so that their end users — their members and prospective members — get a seamless online experience no matter what action they’re taking on your website.

Speaking of Brand …

You may have noticed that we refreshed our own brand. We’ve always been committed to delivering the most feature-rich and flexible AMS software on the market. We needed a logo — and fresh, clean, modern site — to reflect our evolution over time. Be sure to check out our site and let us know what you think by sending an email to [email protected].

123 … Takeaway!

1. Have a friend or family member — someone far removed from your organization — review your website. Is it easy for them to find where to go to renew? Can they find where your events are? Take their feedback into consideration to improve the user experience and improve your results.

2. Review your application pages. Do they adequately reflect your brand? This simple exercise could make all the difference from someone enrolling in your association or stopping dead in their tracks because the page doesn’t look like it’s part of your association or that it’s trustworthy.

Time to Take Another Look

Over the past several months, we’ve been hard at work redesigning our Enrollment, Renewal, Registration and Edit Profile application pages — with expanded options to reflect your brand. See how we can improve your members’ user experience — and improve your association’s results. Signup for a free personalized tour today!

Blog

Serve Your Event Survey in Bite-Sized Pieces

Posted on by KCampbell
Serve Your Event Survey in Bite-Sized Pieces
Post-event surveys are a must if you want to continue to grow attendance in future events. They can be simple and once you have a general template, you can adapt and reuse them to save time. Plus, if you’re using a good online event registration software, you probably have a built-in event survey feature that will enable you to quickly create and distribute it to participants.

The trick to getting good response rates is to keep your event survey short and accessible – and to make it obvious up front that participating will only take a few minutes.

If you want to collect more information than you can get from 10 questions or so, think about gathering feedback from attendees in chunks throughout the event, rather than through one long survey at the end. There are some natural times during your event when it makes sense to ask your participants what they think …

At the Time of Registration

Get some quick feedback at the time of registration just by adding a couple of questions at the end of your form, or including a link to a short survey in the registration confirmation that your participants receive. Include questions like:

  • Where did you hear about this event?
  • How have you found the online registration process?
  • Why are you attending the event? (Networking, learning, etc)

While Your Event Is Happening

Take advantage of technology, and use a real-time mobile polling app like Zwoor or QuickTap to collect feedback from your attendees throughout your event. Not only will it give you a true picture of what they’re thinking right then and there, but it will also keep them engaged and remind them that you value their opinion. Here are a few ideas of what to ask while your event is actually taking place…

After Each Workshop, Session, or Activity (for Conferences and Conventions)

  • How informative/valuable did you find the session overall?
  • How would you rate the presenter?
  • How would you rate the content?
  • Would you recommend the session to a friend or colleague?

On the Last Day of the Event

  • Was the duration of the event just right, too long, or too short?
  • Was the price of the event just right, expensive, or inexpensive?
  • How would you rate your overall experience?
  • What were your key takeaways from the event?
  • What suggestions do you have for improving future events?

If You Don’t Use Mobile Polling at Your Event

Be sure to put an event survey out as soon as you can after your event. By incorporating mini-surveys while the event is fresh in the minds of your participants, you’ll increase your response rate and get a more accurate picture of their opinions.

Blog

11 Ideas for Partnering with Local Venues

Posted on by KCampbell
11 Ideas for Partnering with Local Venues

This week’s blog is re-posted with permission from Aaron D. Wolowiec, MSA, CAE, CMP, CTA. Aaron is the founder and president of Event Garde, a professional development consulting firm based in Grand Rapids, Mich. Website: www.eventgarde.com.

When’s the last time this happened to you? There’s a highly recommended, world-class speaker you’d like to feature at an upcoming program.

She’s perfect for your event in every way, except for the associated price tag. After much negotiation, you’re able to secure the “friends and family” discount; however, it’s still more than you’ve budgeted.

If your meeting comprises a qualified audience of planners or other decision-makers, you might consider an in-kind sponsorship with a local hotel or conference center. Following are 11 ideas for partnering with local venues:

  1. Select three venues that might like to showcase their property and reach out to them directly with the understanding that this partnership will be secured on a first-come, first-served basis
  2. Allow venue to give tours/sales kits following the program
  3. Encourage two to three venue staff to participate in the program and to be available during registration, breaks and meal functions to engage with attendees
  4. Recognize venue as the title sponsor in promotional materials (e.g., print, website, social media, magazine, email)
  5. Give venue a couple of complimentary registrations to parcel out to potential clients; venue could make these VIP experiences with a complimentary overnight and breakfast before/after the program
  6. Give venue the complete participant list before/after the program
  7. Allow participants to register at a discounted rate if they complete a brief meetings portfolio survey that is then shared with the venue
  8. Allow venue to set up a booth near registration
  9. Allow venue a three-minute introduction, video or slideshow to kick-off the program
  10. Encourage venue to host breakfast/lunch; during this time, a venue representative should be assigned to each round to meet and engage with participants
  11. Ask venue what other deliverables they would like to receive [perhaps association-related products and services] and do your best to share whatever you can

What other ideas do you have for successful partnerships between venues and associations?

Blog

How Will the New Overtime Rules Affect Your Association?

Posted on by Miranda Pruitt
How Will the New Overtime Rules Affect Your Association
In May, the United States Department of Labor released new overtime rules that will take effect on Dec. 1.

Since December will be here before we know it, nonprofits are already making adjustments, as the new rules will have significant implications for the nonprofit sector.

According to the National Council of Nonprofits, it all comes down to salary requirements.

With limited resources, many nonprofits can’t afford to pay their staff big bucks. Under the new regulations, most employees earning less than $47,500 will be entitled to overtime compensation. So think about your events and meetings. What will that mean?

If you’ve got limited staff resources, 123Signup can help you do more with less. 

That said, it’s a complex formula for understanding compliance, but the U.S. Department of Labor has published resources.

According to DOL, employers have a few options:

  • Pay time-and-a-half for overtime work.
  • Raise workers’ salaries above the new threshold.
  • Limit workers’ hours to 40 hours per week.
  • Combine options above.

The council offers some tips, as well.

“Employers have various options to comply with these change in overtime rules, ranging from increasing exempt employees’ salaries to the new level, converting them to hourly employees and paying overtime or making other changes to benefits or operations,” the National Council of Nonprofits said. “Nonprofits with budget years ending on June 30 will need to develop new budgets for the fiscal year beginning in six weeks that take these new changes into account. Nonprofits with budget years ending on Dec. 31 have more time to adjust and plan for 2017.”

In addition, the rules allow for the use of volunteers under certain circumstances, but DOL warns nonprofits shouldn’t use volunteers to skirt the regulations.

The department contends its new regulations will ensure companies – including nonprofits – adhere to the Fair Labor and Standards Act. It also says the new regulations will lead to a better work-life balance while increasing productivity and reducing turnover.

“Job titles never determine exempt status under the FLSA,” DOL said. “Additionally, receiving a particular salary, alone, does not indicate that an employee is exempt from overtime and minimum wage protections.”

Regardless of the exemptions the new rule provide, associations are concerned about the ramifications. According to ASAE, more than 250,000 associations submitted comments on the proposed rule to the department last year.

“Because the rule would dramatically expand the number of employees now eligible for overtime pay, associations and other employers could be forced to lay off staff or limit employees’ work outside of core business hours, stinting employees’ career growth and harming productivity,” wrote Chris Vest on June 1 in “Associations Now.”

Additionally, Alex Beall wrote about the new regulations, offering advice from Julia Judish, special counsel with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.

“Once the employer has identified which of its currently exempt employees would convert to nonexempt, the employer should start now requiring those employees to do the equivalent of clocking in and clocking out and track their average hours,” Judish said.

As December approaches, we’ll track the new DOL overtime rules and report changes and their implications for nonprofits.

This week’s blog post on online community management is re-posted with permission from Aaron D. Wolowiec,  founder and president of Event Garde, a professional development consulting firm based in Grand Rapids, Mich. Website: www.eventgarde.com.