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Meet Our Customer
The Future Business Leaders Association-Phi Beta Lambda, Inc. (FBLA-PBL) is the largest career student business organization in the world. Each year, FBLA-PBL helps over 230,000 members prepare for careers in business. They use Impexium as their member database.
We caught up with Alexander T. Graham, Executive President/CEO, and Gabrielle Gallagher, Director of Communications and Marketing at FBLA-PBL. They filled us in on their work to develop a better engagement strategy for the association.
Higher Logic Products & Services
Opportunity
Unengaging & Transactional Interactions
FBLA-PBL wanted to develop a better engagement strategy. Interactions with organizational leaders (including state advisers and local chapter advisers) tended to be transactional, because members had a hard time finding the association’s resources. They’d come to staff for help with finding content or had to search Google to find what they needed, which led to a poor user experience. And staff felt the strain too – they constantly had to respond to similar questions from advisers via email.
Strategy
Modernize Engagement Approach
To solve these challenges, FBLA-PBL worked with Higher Logic to launch an online community and a new communications strategy with automated email campaigns, just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and when their primary audience – educators – were displaced from in-school instruction. Where other associations might be reluctant to make changes and purchase new technologies during a turbulent year, FBLA-PBL’s decision to modernize their adviser engagement approach has proven successful.
Results
New Tech Enables More Effective Engagement
FBLA-PBL uses the Higher Logic Engagement Platform to engage advisers, answer advisers’ questions at scale, and connect them for problem-solving, with the help of Higher Logic’s Strategic Services. The association’s online community gives advisers an opportunity to co-create solutions, alleviating burden from FBLA-PBL’s staff and giving them time to focus on organizational objectives at the national level. Higher Logic’s Communications platform, which replaced MailChimp, gives the association useful data they can apply to their member communications strategy to get their audience more engaged.
- FBLA-PBL’s 9,000-member community helps educators adjust to massive changes during the pandemic
- 4,000+ discussion views and library downloads in the first quarter
- FBLA-PBL’s advanced member engagement technology differentiates them from competitors
“Pandemic or not, we were moving ahead with establishing a community platform. Our staff and volunteer leaders spent so much time responding to the same questions over email. Our communications were leaving people with more follow-up questions. We were only talking to, not engaging with our chapter leaders. We realized there had to be a better way. Our Higher Logic Leadership Community has truly made a tremendous difference. We are now delivering critical information and turnkey materials to business teachers 24/7 to better meet their needs.”
Alexander T. Graham Executive President/CEO, FBLA-PBL
