Switching from Wild Apricot to Member365 Case Study
Membership Software That Makes Things Better & Easier
The Association for Fire Ecology (AFE) is a US-based non-profit organization with an international following, dedicated to improving the knowledge and use of fire in land management. They have a core membership of about 500–mostly scientists, educators, policymakers and others with a stake in fire ecology. But they also have an extended audience of over 10,000 contacts–all of whom require engagement, but in different ways and at different intervals.
That was the initial challenge AFE had to solve, says Annie Oxarart, the group’s Administrative Director. “We needed software that could organize all these contacts, segment them into various groups for emailing, track their activities and manage membership payments, as well as event registration for some.”
Ten years ago, they chose WildApricot as their software solution. “But as our organization grew, it just wasn’t working for us anymore,” Oxarart explains. “It became too expensive and was creating more work for us to manage our data–inefficiently at that–rather than it solving our underlying problem.”
65%
TARGETED EMAIL OPEN RATE
More tasks…and where’s the solution?
AFE is a small-sized non-profit: time and money are precious. They needed software that could simplify their workflow: not create more of it. Despite this, Oxarart describes the frustrating task burden they dealt with for years in managing their membership and contact lists via WildApricot. Download a spreadsheet. Then download all the contacts. Then delete some contacts from the solution provider’s database to keep costs down. Then store the segmented lists in other ways. And then rely on entirely separate software–Constant Contact–for that purpose.
“In the end, Constant Contact became our only source for contact management! When we needed a report, we couldn’t pull it from one place…instead, we had to chase after it from various sources. None of that was okay…or sustainable.”
Enter Member365: A Better Solution That’s Easier To Use
AFE switched to Member365 because it was a better solution at a reasonable cost with much more capable member pinpointing abilities and contact segmentation. Plus it has a powerful, easy-to-use payment gateway. An all-in-one solution that solves problems rather than creating new ones.
But switching anything in a business is risky, as Oxarart explains. “I was hesitant at first because we needed something better than what we had. It was a big deal for us. Once we made the decision and did the prep work, it went well and was really worthwhile.”
Their next challenge was to undo the consequences of all that legacy, inefficient workflow. “Because we had all that data spread all over the place, it took us a while to clean up everything to make it uniform so we could upload everything and finally have a membership and contact-management solution do what we needed it to do all along.”
Member365’s Onboarding Process To The Rescue!
Oxarart credits Member365’s onboarding coach–“a real person on the phone,” not an AI chatbot or a how-to manual–for making the onboarding process smooth and successful.
She explains that the live onboarding coach correctly understood the exact nature of the challenge at-hand and developed a simple-to-follow template so all the data could be made consistent for uploading…once and for all.
Measurable Results Matter
Next, AFE put Member365 to the test: segment the contacts, boost readership, manage membership renewals and dues…and keep costs down. Two years later: success on all counts. As Oxarart reports: “Our old email open rate was 35%. Now it’s 40%. The segmentation we struggled with before now performs for us and it generates an average 65% email open rate, because now all the messages are tailored, targeted and are done in a more efficient way while reaching specific lists.” On top of that, she credits Member365’s powerful tool for weeding out duplicate contacts to help keep costs down and ensure tidy list management.
A better workflow, fewer tasks, better engagement, efficient, easy segmentation, a powerful payment gateway, live coaching and support and better results.
That’s Member365’s promise…delivered every day to AFE.
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Find out today how Member365 can help your membership-based organization grow faster, connect better and serve more.
