The iMIS Users Group Community Saves Members Hundreds to Thousands
Tags: Member Engagement, Users Group
Community is the iMIS Users Group’s Biggest Member Asset
As the largest independent, not-for-profit, user’s group for iMIS users, the iMIS Users Group sees their online community – powered by Higher Logic Thrive – as an essential tool for serving their members. The community brings together everyone from seasoned professionals – people who’ve been using iMIS since the beginning – to people just starting out to share knowledge and learn how to get the best out of their iMIS products.
Members can post their iMIS questions, brainstorm solutions, and get insights from vendors and iMIS solution providers. “The community also makes it really easy for our members to find personalized networking,” said Michele L. Morgan, the iMIS Users Group’s Executive Director. “They can find other similar organizations with similar needs who they can ask questions and learn from. And for people who aren’t traveling to events since the pandemic, or who don’t have the budget to travel to events, the community opens up that opportunity to connect.”
“Our community is our biggest asset because it helps our members save money – they could save hundreds to thousands of dollars a year. They can post questions to the community to get answers instead of having to go to their iMIS solution provider or consultant and pay upwards of $175 an hour for that answer. Our membership dues start at $100, so members can easily justify joining, because they can make that money back by getting 1 or 2 questions answered by posting to the community. And the iMIS solution providers are happy too because they want to spend their time helping you grow your organization – they don’t want to be bogged down by all the ‘nickel and dime’ questions. And we have vendors and solution providers who participate in our community because they want to help and be seen as a resource.”
Michele L. Morgan, DES, CMP
Executive Director, iMIS Users Group
Leveling Up Community and Marketing with Higher Logic Thrive Platform
Recently, the iMIS User’s Group upgraded from Higher Logic Community to Higher Logic Thrive Platform to take advantage of the modern, user-friendly community experience and leverage the power of community and marketing together.
“I love the new Higher Logic Thrive Platform because it puts a lot of information out in front of our members on the community homepage and in their profile. That makes it easy for us to drive awareness of upcoming events. Members being able to click on and sign up for events right from the community drives more engagement with our education. And the community feels very social-media like and user-friendly for our members,” said Michele.
Since upgrading to Higher Logic Thrive, the number of people using their community has increased, and they’ve been able to automate outreach to help drive community engagement: “We have a campaign set up that looks at who’s using the community and invites people to participate. And being able to automate that has definitely driven up our numbers in the community. I’m looking in the community and seeing names of new people I’ve not seen in the past. And that’s exciting for me as an Executive Director, to know the community is reaching new people and attracting them to our organization.”
The iMIS User’s Group is also exploring ways to use the marketing tools in Higher Logic Thrive Platform – which they’ve integrated with their AMS (iMIS, obviously!) – to automate member acquisition and lapsed member campaigns.
They’re able to look at specific fields in iMIS and personalize their membership marketing to nonmembers, letting them know about relevant dues pricing tiers and customizing their customer journey.
“Another thing I really like about Higher Logic Thrive is you can set up your IQAs (queries) from iMIS to be able to target specific groups. Prior to upgrading to Higher Logic Thrive, we never truly had an automated campaign to bring in new members. Now we can target nonmember companies and we can reach out to companies that didn’t pay their dues. Being able to automate that is huge for us – we only have two staff – so that really scales our ability to bring in new members and reengage lapsed members. And we’ve seen members come back through that lapsed campaign.”
Michele L. Morgan, DES, CMP
Executive Director, iMIS Users Group
All That and More – Plus New Initiatives to Come!
Not only does the iMIS Users Group use Higher Logic Thrive Platform for their community and marketing automation, they also run several programs through their community and are looking into incorporating additional efforts.
All their committees have a Higher Logic community, and they store related information and documents in the community libraries.
They’ve integrated their community with their Mosaic 365 mobile app, so community users can use the community through the app.
They’re creating a Young Professionals community to draw new people into the organization. “Many of our members who’ve been in the field for many years are going to be retiring, and if we’re not actively drawing new people into the community and the organization it’s going to become stagnant. So having a modern community platform to pull young professionals in is key to keep the organization thriving,” said Michele.
They’re exploring reviving event communities where attendees can discuss in-person events or continue connecting and learning after educational programs. They might implement takeaway assignments, training labs, or the ability to connect with instructors.
They’re planning to use Higher Logic’s Mentor Match tool to expand their mentoring program.
“One of our strategic goals is to use Higher Logic’s Mentor Match tool to expand our mentoring program. Right now we mainly match people up at our in-person events and we want to grow it to be larger in nature to encompass not just people who come to events but people who are new, for example, coming into the organization. Being able to match them up with a seasoned professional or someone from a similar organization. Having that is going to be key to growing the organization.”
Michele L. Morgan, DES, CMP
Executive Director, iMIS Users Group
About iMIS Users Group (iUG)
The iMIS Users Group is the largest independent, not-for-profit, iMIS users group. They create and maintain a platform where the iMIS community can: share information, easily connect with one another, and continuously gain knowledge through easily accessible educational tools and networking experiences. Their mission is to provide a forum to advocate for, educate, and connect users and vendors in the iMIS community. They started out with around 50-75 member companies in the United States and now have over 400 member companies internationally.
They now have approximately 1700 members using their online community and over 36,000 discussions in the community.
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