Breaking News As Largest Membee User Group Convenes
June 2nd and 3rd were two jam-packed days as the largest and longest running Membee Users Group convened for their Spring Meeting in Burlington, ON. This group is self-organized and self-sustaining since 2001 and each year, they kindly extend an invitation for Membee staffers to participate. Before we get into some newsworthy details, if your …
June 2nd and 3rd were two jam-packed days as the largest and longest running Membee Users Group convened for their Spring Meeting in Burlington, ON. This group is self-organized and self-sustaining since 2001 and each year, they kindly extend an invitation for Membee staffers to participate.
Before we get into some newsworthy details, if your organization is always striving to implement best practices while taking advantage of Membee’s powerful feature set, you should join this group! While the group does some great work when they meet face-to-face, they advance their organizations and their use of Membee on a daily basis in an active Facebook group. They are a friendly lot and welcome all Membee users. You will find more details on the group and how to join in the “C’mon, Get Involved” section below.
Membee Users Share How the Put Membee’s Powerful “Promotions” Feature To Work
The note taking was going full blast as marketing innovators Nicole Gibson and Brenda Gregory from the Ajax-Pickering Board of Trade shared a detailed presentation on how they use the Promotions feature and promo codes to boost event attendance, revenues, and member engagement.
Quickly, Membee’s Promotions feature allows you to build discount codes that can be applied to membership, events, or both. You can even build “conditional” promotions where a purchaser buys a specific item and as a result, gets a promo code automatically for another item. For example, buy a membership and Membee will send you a 10% discount code on an upcoming event. Powerful stuff!
The great thing about the Promotions feature is you can start small, give it a try and before you know it, your organization will be tapping into new revenues. Have a quick snoop though these blog posts that outline just some of what’s possible with Promotions:
Use Membee’s Promotions Feature to Increase Revenues
Use a Promotion to Increase Membership Sales
Use the Sale of One Item to Boost the Sales of Others
A huge thanks to Brenda and Nicole for taking the time out of super busy schedules to share their expertise and innovative use of Membee!
Powerful New Membee Features Nearing Release
The wily veterans of this meeting will tell you that one of the biggest advantages in attending the meeting is the advance look at upcoming Membee upgrades. Taking this advance knowledge back to their organizations means they get a head start on putting these new features to work before they are even released. This year was no different as senior Membee staffers presented detailed demos of features that are just getting finishing touches and final testing.
Here are some highlights:
New Card Vault Feature Makes Member Checkout Convenient and Even Automates Membership Renewal
Taking advantage of the latest credit card security technologies, Membee’s new “Card Vault” feature will allow members to store and easily reuse their credit cards at checkout.
Pictured above is Membee’s Senior Implementation Specialist, Kathy Goodman walking everyone through Card Vault’s powerful features that include:
- Members can store their credit card when checking out so their card is conveniently available to them at future event and even membership renewal checkouts. Easier checkouts means more sales – it’s that simple.
- Membee users can use a member’s “card on file” to process payments and even refunds to the member’s credit card directly within Membee.
- With the member’s permission, Membee will automatically process membership renewal by debiting the member’s “card on file” on the renewal date – the best membership renewal scenario is one where the member doesn’t have to lift a finger!
- Members can manage their credit card information directly from their member profile.
- Fully automated reminders to members whose card is about to expire.
This feature is in final testing and documentation and dedicated posts here in the Latest Buzz will be published as we near Card Vault’s launch this summer.
Event Attendee Reports – Reinvented
The data doesn’t lie – event sales are becoming more and more important to Membee client organizations and to keep up with the growing informational needs of our Events users, Membee’s Event Attendee reports have been completely redesigned and expanded. The details include:
- Four new event attendee report “actions”
- Detailed – By Attendee – a completely redesigned event attendee report that is clean, easy to read and even highlights missing attendee information
- Detailed – By Purchaser – NEW - shows exactly “who” purchased and “what” they purchased in situations where knowing the purchaser is important
- Event Summary – NEW – pulls all your counts/totals for event item and event attendee custom fields so you know how many medium gold shirts to order or how many chicken lunches to confirm to the hotel
- Attendee Itinerary – NEW – a stylish layout will make your member feel special and welcome at your event as this report is intended for their use. The report shows everything they purchased or will be attending and a new Membee Automation will automatically deliver a PDF version of the report via email to the event attendee
This feature is in final testing and documentation. Dedicated posts here in the Latest Buzz will be published as we near the release of this feature later this summer.
Membee Goes Mobile!
If you are going to truly engage your membership, you need to meet them where they live – on their smart phone! As you see below, attendees got a hands on experience playing with the new responsive designs for Membee’s widgets.
Membee is committed to presenting a great member experience from their mobile devices and to deliver this, all of Membee’s major widgets either have or are about to have a fully responsive design. By responsive design, we mean that the widget will automatically adjust its layout based on the device being used by a visitor to your website. Attendees pulled out their smart phones and had a chance to play with:
- Member Directory – visitors to your website see a layout of your member directory that is optimized from mobile devices – check out this Latest Buzz post for the details
- New Member Signup – new responsive design makes joining even easier from a mobile device
- eBills – members can easily pay membership renewal and event invoices from their mobile device
- Events – event display and registration has been optimized to make it really easy to register from a mobile device
These responsive designs are in final testing and documentation. Announcements will be made here in the Latest Buzz as soon the mobile-friendly designs are released later this summer.
“Friends of the Hive” Program Creates an Opportunity to use Membee for FREE!
Membee’s largest source of new client organizations come in the form of referrals from users and organizations already using Membee. Membee staffers attending the meeting unveiled the “Friends of the Hive” program which will allow organizations to quickly refer another organization to Membee and when they signup, the referring organization receives a generous credit against their Membee subscription.
Refer just 4 organizations a year and there’s a good chance you’ll use Membee for free during that year!
As yet another perk for attending the meeting, attendees enjoy exclusive access to the Friends of Hive program until it is released to Membee’s entire user base in early July.
Stay tuned for more details!
Exciting New Features in Development
An integral part of the this meeting is the feedback Membee staffers gather and this is particularly valuable for features just entering our design and development process. The “What’s New At The Hive” session provided attendees with the opportunity to comment on some great new features that included:
- Membee’s new user-customizable dashboard that pulls key info to a new landing page in Membee
- The powerful Membee360 organizational performance analytics tool with the ability to share performance stats with external people (Board, committees, etc.)
- An Events upgrade focused on more complicated events and making registration even easier and faster for the purchaser
- A Profile upgrade designed to increase the utility of the Profile widget for the member to further increase the ability for the member to self-service in a fully responsive design
What Do You Guys Need?
Everyone was put to work in Friday’s facilitated focus group session where the Membee users split up into smaller groups to identify new features and capabilities that they would like to see in Membee. Each group presented their ideas for discussion with the entire group. After the ideas were explained, each user cast ballots on the ideas that would help them and their organization the most. As you can see below, there are a lot of great ideas and attendees cast their votes carefully!
By the way, too many Membee features to count that are put to work each day by Membee’s global user base had their beginnings in Membee user focus groups such as this one.
The top two ideas coming from this session are already in development!
C’mon, Get Involved!
A great meeting like this just doesn’t pull itself together. On behalf of all of the attendees and Membee staffers, a quick shout out to the Membee Users Group chairperson, Kathryn Newell. Membership Service Coordinator at the Burlington Chamber of Commerce by day, and meeting planner extraordinaire by night, her efforts to create a truly personalized experience for all the attendees is deeply appreciated by all. Thank you, Kathryn and to your organization and community for showing everyone from the “hive” so much love.
To make sure we do everything we can to support this great group, we’ve pulled together a short document in Help From the Hive that outlines the objectives of the group and how easy it is to join. Have your Membee username and password handy and click here to join the Membee Users Group today!