Association Marketing Springboard

I've been emailing with Shana Rieger, the social media program manager at InfoComm International. Her story particularly interested me, considering my fascination with self-forming groups. She gave me permission to share this with you.

"We launched our site, InfoComm Community, in June 2008 at our tradeshow. We initially had three eGroups set-up for Special Interest Groups (SIGs), which were new for us. The new online forum helped us to introduce Special Interest Groups. At the end of the summer we had over 300 subscriptions to these eGroups. We now have 10 SIG eGroups with over 500 subscriptions.

Our SIG eGroups are open to both members and non-members, so we could have open conversations and include individuals that may not (yet) be part of our membership. Through word-of-mouth a few individuals have “spoken up” in our eGroups and we learned of new thought leaders in the industry. A couple of individuals have joined our association and they are now very active in important industry initiatives. The Community helped make that introduction/connection for us.

Our councils and committees formerly used listservs to communicate and collaborate, but they are now using the eGroups and Resource Library features. They have easily adapted to using the new tools and we have received a lot of positive feedback about the ease of use and also the additional functionality they now have available. Councils can now find attachments in one central location instead of going through their email looking for past listserv messages.

Next week we will be starting a postcard campaign to promote the Community, since we have relied on word-of-mouth and a few “spotlight” features in our e-newsletter to promote the Community. It will be our first “big” promotion since having a presence in our booth at the tradeshow."

I followed up with Shana to ask her how the SIGs were formed. She said that both members and non-members can request a new SIG--all they need to do is provide the name, purpose and a moderator who will post regularly. Imagine the insight that comes with hosting these groups in the InfoComm sandbox. And the marketing potential...whoa. So cool.

Thank you, Shana!