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Meet Our Customer
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.
We spoke with Krystele Chavez, Digital Communications Specialist at BCNPHA, to learn about how they used a marketing automation campaign to increase virtual event attendance by nearly 50%.
Higher Logic Products & Services
Opportunity
Increase Attendance for Second Virtual Event
In 2020, BCNPHA hosted RENT virtually for the first time. It was free to members and they had about 400 registrants. The team had expected more registrations, but they found that professional development was on the backburner for members because of the pandemic.
As Krystele and the team began to think about their 2021 event, they wanted to communicate more effectively with members about the event, especially because members were so overwhelmed in their day-to-day operations due to the pandemic. Their current process of putting together the promotion emails manually was also very time intensive.
Strategy
Adopt a New Email Promotion Strategy
The team knew they needed a new approach to convince their members to invest in a day’s worth of professional development, particularly when the event had been free the year before, and now there would be a fee for attending. They needed a new approach that clearly demonstrated the value of the event. A marketing automation campaign was the perfect fit, enabling them to reach people at the right time with the right message.
To set up their new marketing automation campaign, the team looked into the Advanced Starter Kits in Higher Logic’s Communications software. Just 19 days after seeing the campaign tools for the first time, they launched a seven-email, month-long campaign that took members from the registration launch all the way through the “last chance” email.
Results
Nearly 50% Improvement 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 there being a charge this year for registration. And with marketing automation, Krystele was able to leverage the Higher Logic-iMIS integration to add the data and run the campaign.
Once the campaign was established, the team also had time to add new sponsors and develop a new track, all because they weren’t spending the time manually managing registration promotion. The team was so happy with the results that they’re currently working on campaigns to promote services and membership.
Krystele Chavez Digital Communications Specialist, BCNPHA
“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
