BCNPHA Increased Virtual Event Attendance By Nearly 50%
The Challenge
BCNPHA wanted to communicate more effectively with members about their annual event and make event promotion less time intensive for staff.
The Results
They leveraged their Higher Logic marketing automation tools to automate their event marketing campaign and increase event attendance by nearly 50%.
Getting the Word Out
In 2020, BCNPHA hosted RENT virtually for the first time. Despite being free to members, they received less registrations than they were expecting – about 400 registrants. As they approached their 2021 event, they wanted to communicate more effectively with members – who they knew were overwhelmed in their day-to-day operations due to the pandemic. They also aimed to improve their process for creating promotion emails, which was very manual and time intensive.
“Before we used marketing automation, I was worried we were inundating members with email communications and the important ones were passing them by. Now, we can send the right message to the right person at the right time."
Krystele Chavez
Digital Communications Specialist, BCNPHA
A Head Start on a New Email Strategy
BCNPHA got a head start on their new event promotion campaign using Higher Logic’s Advanced Starter Kits – customizable automated campaigns that come pre-built based on Higher Logic’s almost 20 years’ of experience with associations. Just 19 days after seeing the campaign tools for the first time BCNPHA launched a seven-email, month-long campaign that took members from the registration launch all the way through the “last chance” email.
The Higher Logic integration with their AMS, iMIS, made it easy for them to pull member data into the campaign, and the automation tools made it possible for them to reach people at the right time with the right message.
“Email marketing can be very manual. When promoting an event, we normally send out 5-7 emails. Each email would need to be approved by my director and then I would send it based on a schedule I created in Excel. Now, with marketing automation, I can leverage our integration, build the campaign, and get it approved once. Now, I don’t need to worry or be involved in every single step, and I can let the system do its job.”
Krystele Chavez
Digital Communications Specialist, BCNPHA
Nearly 50% Increase in Virtual Event Attendance
While the initial marketing automation campaign took a little time to set up, it paid off in a big way. BCNPHA increased conference attendance from 400 to nearly 600 (an almost 50% increase) – despite implementing a fee for the event (which had previously been free).
With campaign was established and running on its own, the team’s time was freed up to add new sponsors and develop a new track because they weren’t spending time manually managing registration promotion.
About British Columbia Non-Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA)
The British Columbia Non-Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA) is an umbrella organization that provides leadership and support to housing providers and other stakeholders in British Columbia. They use iMIS-ASI as their member database. One of their biggest educational opportunities is the RENT, BC’s premier one-day event dedicated to tackling the affordable housing crisis.
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