Tuesday, November 6
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM — Registration Open
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM — Product Advisory Council (PAC) Meeting - Invite Only
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM — Exhibitor Setup
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM — Higher Logic Academy Pre-Conference Session (Part 2)
Online Communities | Basic
Online Communities – Basic Training is designed for project teams and individuals who are new to the Online Communities platform that wish to launch or re-launch their community. Our training includes hands-on technical exercises and interactive strategy sessions.
Session Topics Include:
- Product Overview
- Launch; Re-Launch Strategy
- Configuring your Site for Success
- Gamification: Ribbons, Badges, and Beyond
- Data, Metrics, and Reporting
Speaker: Lila Elliott, Higher Logic
Location: Eastern Shores 2
Informz Marketing Automation | Basic
Informz – Basic Training is designed for project teams and individuals who are new to the Marketing Automation Professional (powered by Informz) platform. Our training includes hands-on technical exercises and interactive strategy sessions.
Session Topics Include:
- Getting Started: Product Overview
- Managing Subscribers
- Opt-Out/Unsubscribe Forms
- Designing Templates
- Sending Mailings
- Basic Data, Metrics, and Reporting
Speakers: Lyssa Jackson, Higher Logic
Location: Eastern Shores 1
Real Magnet Marketing Automation | Basic
Real Magnet – Basic Training is designed for project teams and individuals who are new to the Marketing Automation Enterprise (powered by Real Magnet) platform. Our training includes hands-on technical exercises and interactive strategy sessions.
Session Topics Include:
- Product Overview, Designing Messages
- Creating Templates
- Design Inspiration: Models and Samples
- Data and Integration
- Sending a Formal Message
- Using your Analytics
- Best Practices for your Account
Speakers: Ted Whalen, Catherine Curtin, Jacqueline Abunassar, and Dan de Moraes, Higher Logic
Location: Eastern Shores 3
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Opening & CEO Address
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM - Keynote
Jackie Huba | Customer Loyalty Expert | Bestselling Author
Location: Potomac A
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM — Afternoon Break
3:30 - 4:30 PM — Breakout Session 1
Integrated Campaigns: Connecting Marketing Automation and Community
Track: Online Communities: Marketing/Membership/Program Support
This session will be an overview of the type of integrated campaigns you can perform with the connection of marketing automation and online community. We will cover the basics of how it works, and go over a number of potential campaigns you'd want to run and where the data is coming from for these.
Speakers: Greg Pollack and Mitch Eisen, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake C
A Deep Dive into Multi-Channel Marketing Content
Track: Marketing Automation: Content & Design
Join this session for a discussion on how to incorporate engaging and differentiated email content (video, infographics, digital flipbooks, and more) to break through inbox clutter. You'll learn how to invest in your insights, create customer-centric content, and use data to make smarter decisions with a small team.
Speaker: Tara Pawlak, YourMembership
Location: Chesapeake B
Email Design Inspiration and Best Practices
Track: Marketing Automation: Content & Design
Feeling "blah," overwhelmed, or uninspired when you design your messages? Do you want to use those "best in class" designs that companies like Apple, Lyft and Under Armour use in your messages, but you're not sure where or how to start? Then this session is for you! Join us for an example-rich design inspiration session that will take your creativity to the next level. We'll teach you how to deploy the latest email designs to make your messages and campaigns visually appealing, inspired, and most importantly, effective for reaching your intended audience.
Speaker: Jacqueline Abunassar, Higher Logic
Location: Eastern Shores 1
New Admin Experience: Marketing Automation Professional Version (Informz)
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Informz
This session will provide a deep dive tour of the new administrative experience using Marketing Automation Professional, powered by Informz. Peter Nelson will familiarize attendees with the new location of certain elements and provide example workflows for common use cases, all in an effort to improve your adaptability to this exciting update.
Speaker: Higher Logic Product Team
Location: Eastern Shores 2
Moderating Communities…Don't Panic!
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
This session will cover tactics and strategies for handling your day-to-day community moderation, including:
- Full-moderation (when to use it and when to skip it)
- Self-moderation (enabling members/users to flag posts)
- Moderating individuals (three strikes rule), housekeeping (ideas for solutions to common violations, announcements thread, dedicated home for job postings)
- Administrative tools: what community admins can access
- Paper trail (record of moderation log and rejected posts in CCAdmin)
- Trolls in the community
- What happens when your community is on fire? (tactics for course correcting on the fly)
Speakers: Elizabeth Urban and Jenny Taylor, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake G
Drive Decisions Through Data
Track: Doing More with Your Data
Learn strategies to craft measurable goals, identify pertinent data, and leverage analytics tools to meaningfully measure success, increase conversions, and improve your users' experiences. We will explore using free tools (like Tag Assistant, Tag Manager, and Optimize) to further enhance analytics by tracking the customer journey across devices, through email campaigns, online communities, and websites.
Speaker: Dan Scheeler, Results Direct
Location: Chesapeake A
The Review Economy: How Online Recommendations Impact Your Association and its Members
Track: Online Communities: Marketing/Membership/Program Support
Your members won't spend $25 at a new restaurant, buy a $250 product online, or book a $2,500 vacation without reading reviews first. But where do your members go to get reviews when they're making $25,000 purchasing decisions at work? Believe it or not, they look to their associations! While prevalent in the consumer market, The Review Economy is just beginning to invade the B2B market. Associations are ideally positioned to deliver all-new, unexpected value to members and gain a new revenue stream by offering niche B2B customer review sites for the industries and professions they serve. Empower your members to make more informed buying decisions at work by creating a resource that pairs customer reviews with the authoritative, unbiased essence of your organization. Disrupt your market before someone else does.
Speakers: Teri Carden, 100Reviews and Ben Martin, CAE, The Review Society
Location: Chesapeake H
Driving Customer Success with Online Communities
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
Community’s concept is basic: people come together to chat, learn and use a product. It’s a solid base line and an advantage for the organization — customer engagement will turn into feedback, brand advocacy, and retention. A customer’s entire journey, from beginning (researching and deciding which product to buy) to end (working with you on problems and becoming a brand advocate) can be enhanced by community. Today’s preferred customer experience combines support, community, and outreach into one unified platform. Join Higher Logic and Zenoss for an interactive presentation on taking a community approach to streamlining the customer experience, detailing how Zenoss launched TechZen, its online user community, leading to a 140% increase in membership and engagement, with over 3,000 active members worldwide and growing. A user-focused, community approach has helped Zenoss gain greater insight into the needs of their customers.
Speakers: John Boyle, Zenoss, and Mark Ace, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake I
Put Your Best Foot Forward: Community Implementation and Beyond
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
Come join three community managers, detailing three stages in their community lifecycle, for some real talk about implementing your online community. Gain an overview of understanding where best practices meet reality.
Speakers: Matt Cipriani, American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, Ariel Brandt Lautman, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and Anne-Margaret Olsson, Society for Human Resource Management
Location: Chesapeake J
Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Better Community Experience with Customer Journey Mapping
Track: Online Communities: Executive Level/Strategic
Customer journey mapping is all the rage these days, but it can seem overwhelming if it's new to you or to your organization. Where do you start? What do you look for? Who needs to be involved? How can customer journey mapping help make your community better? When are you done? Join Renee Schaefer from Code42 as we cover these questions and more.
Speaker: Renee Schaefer, Code42
Location: Chesapeake K
Ask the Experts: Success in Hosting Live Community Events
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
After hosting 'Ask the Experts' events for a year, CFP Board shares success stories, lessons learned, and best practices for hosting live events on the community to deepen engagement. After our first event, we ended with over 100 new individuals agreeing to our Terms and Conditions, nearly 400 logins in one day (we generally averaged 100), and over 80 posts on the event thread alone. In this session, we'll review what we developed along the way, such as frequency, timeline for planning, gathering seed questions in advance, creating a topics and experts calendar, and metrics to measure the success of your event.
Speaker: Amanda Zapata, CFP Board
Location: Chesapeake L
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM — Welcome Reception
Wednesday, November 7
7:00 - 8:00 AM - Exhibitor Setup
8:00 - 9:00 AM - Breakfast
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM — Registration Open
9:00 - 9:15 AM - Welcome Address
9:15 - 10:15 AM - Keynote
Kim Lear | Workplace Trends Expert | Marketplace Researcher
Location: Potomac A
10:15 - 10:30 AM — Transition Break
10:30 - 11:30 AM — Breakout Session 2
10 Effective Ways to Increase Revenue with Website Personalization
Track: Doing More with Your Data
You leverage marketing automation techniques with your email, but how about your website? Maximize the value of your investments and increase revenue - personalize your website based on user data you already have in your CMS and Higher Logic's Online Communities. Learn how to identify actionable data, tailor your content accordingly, and make an impact on your conversion rates.
Speaker: Alexandra Mouw, Results Direct
Location: Chesapeake G
New Admin Experience: Marketing Automation Enterprise Version (Real Magnet)
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Real Magnet
This session will provide a deep dive tour of the new administrative experience using Marketing Automation Enterprise, powered by Real Magnet. The Higher Logic Product Team will familiarize attendees with the new location of certain elements and provide example workflows for common use cases, all in an effort to improve your adaptability to this exciting update.
Speaker: Chris Scavo and Mitch Eisen, Higher Logic
Location: Eastern Shores 2
How to Personalize Your Association or Non-Profit Communications to Increase Conference Attendance
Track: Marketing Automation: Success Stories
Many associations face a similar challenge: recruiting their members to attend conferences and continuing to grow their membership base. Christopher Antonopoulos from Measured Result Marketing will explore how to personalize communications beyond associations and highlight best in class approaches. Further, we'll showcase how automated marketing campaigns can help keep members engaged throughout an entire year to ensure their renewal.
Speakers: Christopher Antonopoulos, Measured Results Marketing
Location: Chesapeake I
Your Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Compelling Gamification Program
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
Looking to bring some fun and friendly competition to your community? Heard about “gamification” but not sure what it really means? Do you have an existing gamification program that could stand to level-up? Join two extremely chaotic (read: good looking) professionals for an in-depth, step-by-step overview of the who, what, why, and how of building a successful and impactful gamification program, from concept to implementation. Learn more about what we mean when we use the term “gamification” and how to think like a designer as you build compelling badging programs and rewarding ribbons.
Speakers: Rebecca Hoffman and Will Machin, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake J
Build an Indispensable Community: How to Escape the Engagement Trap with a Community Your Company Finds Irreplaceable
Track: Online Communities: Executive Level/Strategic
The most successful brand communities aren’t the ones with the most engagement. They are the communities designed to capture the full value their members already create, from most active to lurkers. Leaders of indispensable communities don’t endlessly chase engagement. Instead, they get members to make their best possible contribution to the community with the time, knowledge, and motivation they already have. But this only happens when the community offers value members can’t get anywhere else. In this session, FeverBee’s Richard Millington will use case studies from over a dozen organizations, big and small, to show how to design a community to be indispensable.
Speaker: Richard Millington, FeverBee
Location: Chesapeake L
Back to Strategy Basics for a Better Member Experience (AKA, It's Never Too Late to Learn From Your Mistakes!)
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
In 2015, the Association for Information and Image Management International (AIIM) launched its online community with all the bells and whistles we could offer our members. What we lacked was strategy, and it showed. For the next two and half years, discussions were scarce, community sites sat abandoned, and the community began to look more like a desert than an oasis. However, after attending a HL Academy Training and the 2017 SuperForum, AIIM was able to make a 180-degree turn in terms of community engagement. By stripping down to the basics and focusing on the member experience, we saw great success in just a few short months.
Speaker: Jessica Lombardo, AIIM
Location: Chesapeake C
Successful Upgrades for Higher Logic Workspace
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Workspace
This session is designed to help Workspace clients prepare for and be confident about upgrading to Higher Logic Workspace. We will cover:
- Describe the upgrade process for legacy Workspace sites
- Show before and after versions of the same site
- Demonstrate a successful data migration
- Discuss how Community Roles and the new Contact Manager works
- Review integration options
- Present new community engagement tools like Automation Rules.
Speakers: Mark Ace, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake B
Embrace Failure: How We Learned from Our Community Mistakes, and You Can, Too
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
When the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) initially launched the community, we did a number of things wrong and continued to run into roadblocks as we were learning. We launched communities no one wanted, avoided seed questions like the plague, and made major technical snafus. But as Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Four years later, our community is thriving and is our primary member benefit. We have had major successes with volunteer management and member engagement. Learn about the mistakes we made, how we fixed them, and how you can avoid the same pitfalls to skip right to success.
Speakers: Simon Helton and Heidi Ellis, International Society for Technology in Education
Location: Chesapeake A
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM - Lunch
12:30 - 1:30 PM — Breakout Session 3
Real-Time Trending Topics to Drive Strategy, Content, and More Effective Marketing Campaigns
Track: Doing More with Your Data
In this high-energy session, we will uncover how to pull together and use current data and trends to drive strategy and content for your association. What are your members talking about? What do they care about? What is that next best topic, and for which parts of your audience? We are always striving to develop meaningful content and educate our audiences on the most relevant topics. So stop guessing, or spending hours pulling together reports! Also, ever think you're sending too many emails? Use data to quickly segment, target, and track effectiveness of campaigns in real time. Come learn how to use visualizations to access real-time trends on key topics in your community and email marketing data. ASAE will walk through a case study on how they were able to do just this and more!
Speakers: Christin Berry, ASAE, and Julie Sciullo, Association Analytics
Location: Chesapeake A
New Admin Experience: Online Communities
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Take a tour with us! Together we'll explore the newly designed Online Communities Admin experience. This session will also provide a technical tour of the new visual page designer that is part of the Online Communities content management system (CMS). We will explore how to create pages and valuable content using the new functionality.
Speaker: Higher Logic Product Team
Location: Eastern Shores 2
Website Tracking and Remarketing: Drive Conversions with Relevant Content
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Don’t miss out on the abundant opportunity to better serve audiences by delivering purposeful communications based on observed interests and behaviors. Your website is a virtual storefront buzzing with activity. What actions would prompt you to engage with a prospect or member? When would a product recommendation, promotional offer, or personal outreach be appropriate? Delivering relevant and timely communications is the key to driving engagement and conversions.
Speaker: Vivian Swertinski, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake B
How Better Listening with Community Changed How Our Association Supports Membership
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
As association professionals, we're often used to hearing feedback from only a small portion of our membership base. For Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), introducing an online community changed that. Through engaging with members that they weren’t otherwise reaching and offering something new that was of real value to everyone, their community changed not only how PPAI interacted with their members, but also how they interpreted their needs as an organization. All it took was listening (to more than just the loudest voices).
Speaker: Melissa Weber, PPAI, and Will Machin, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake C
Start Understanding Your Data to Bolster Membership
Track: Marketing Automation: Success Stories
Struggling to overcome low member retention rates? The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) was, too. But after deep dives into our AMS and marketing automation data, we uncovered insights that transformed membership retention efforts and enabled a more data-driven company culture. In this session, hear how AMIA segmented and reengaged members through targeted outreach.
Speakers: Rebecca Duff, PMP, Gravitate Solutions, and Karen Greenwood, AMIA (the American Medical Informatics Association)
Location: Chesapeake G
How Content Calendars Will Help You Build Engagement and a Sense of Community
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
In its simplest form, an online community is a place for people with a common purpose, job, or interest to gather and discuss topics of importance to them. But that doesn't mean they can't use some guidance and ideas of what to talk about! Whether your online community is struggling for engagement or already bursting at the seams with chatter, a content calendar and strategic engagement initiatives can truly take you to the next level. Learn how a well-planned and constantly evolving content calendar became the backbone of some of the most valued interactions of the Discovery Educator Network. You'll also hear from the Higher Logic community management team on how you can apply these great ideas to YOUR community.
Speakers: David Tchozewski, Discovery Education and Jenny Taylor, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake H
Online Events Drive Community Engagement
Track: Online Communities: Executive Level/Strategic
Over the past few years, there has been increased recognition in the value of prioritizing social learning as a core component of an organization’s engagement strategy. This manifests online by creating a unified presentation of a Learning Management System (LMS) and a community, where expert content is amplified through peer exchanges. But where do webinars, livestream events, and virtual conferences fit into this unified approach? In this session, we will share opportunities and benefits of integrating live online events with an organization’s online community.
Speakers: Richard Finstein, CommPartners, and Josh Yavelberg, National Recreation and Park Association
Location: Chesapeake J
How to Gain Unwavering Executive Support and Secure Resources
Track: Online Communities: Marketing/Membership/Program Support
Many executives are supportive of their organizations’ online communities, yet only a few community teams use this support to secure resources. It’s time to shift from a “We’re hanging on for dear life” mindset. In this session, you will learn how to translate the awesome power of your community into something executives will truly value and appreciate as an integral part of your organization’s success.
Speaker: Courtney Howell, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
Location: Chesapeake K
Microsite Toolkit: A Resource for Training and Supporting Chapter Site Admins
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Discover our new Microsite Toolkit with turn-key resources for your Microsite Admins. From tech-savvy staff to your new chapter or section leaders and volunteers, this new resource will help you train, enable, and support your Microsite Admins so they can update, manage, and maintain their sites with confidence and ease. We'll also discuss some common challenges with supporting Microsite Admins and proven solutions that work.
Speaker: Lila Elliott, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake L
1:30 - 1:45 PM — Transition Break
1:45 - 2:45 PM — Breakout Session 4
Stronger Together: What your Career Center Should be Delivering for your Community
Track: Doing More with Your Data
Sponsored Demo
Join us for an informative demo of Madgex. You'll discover how our market-leading career technology will boost engagement, provide deeper insight and drive more revenue to your organization.
Speakers: Sergio Garcia, Madgex
Location: Chesapeake J
The Reporting Rabbit Hole: Getting Past Numbers to Find Insight
Track: Doing More with Your Data
How do you use reporting to tell a compelling story about your community? Everyone wants to see the data, but the real power comes in sharing the insights: what that data means about the health of your community and your members’ engagement. We’ll talk about our favorite reports, how we share them with our stakeholders, and any successes and challenges we’ve encountered along the way. This is a participatory roundtable, so come prepared to share your current favorite reports and how you put them to work for your community.
Speakers: Ariel Brandt Lautman, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, Maral Balayan, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and Jess Diehl, American Gastroenterological Association
Location: Chesapeake A
Mentor Match – One Association’s Best Practices
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories Mentor Match
Forging valuable relationships between mentors and mentees is a rewarding way for you to accelerate growth in your community. The Mentor Match tool provides functionality to help you start a mentoring program, and while the tool itself can seem complicated, you’ll enhance your community by including it as a benefit for members. Join this session, led by Molly Perrin with the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), to learn how one association uses the Mentor Match tool to increase member engagement. You’ll walk away with tips and tricks you can implement today to make the Mentor Match tool, and a mentoring program, work for you.
Speaker: Molly Perrin, Customer Experience Professionals Association
Location: Chesapeake I
Integrated Campaigns in Your Event Community
Track: Marketing Automation: Strategic Objectives
In this session, you'll learn how to use an integrated marketing campaign in an event community to increase engagement and awareness.
Speakers: Stephanie Cinque, Veronique Nguyen and Josh Slyman, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake B
Unboxing the Informz Mailing and Template Designers
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Informz
Join us and unbox the Informz Mailing and Template Designer experiences. This session will showcase key features to help you optimize mailing design and streamline mailing creation. Learn how to work more efficiently and take away tips and tricks to make you and your team more successful. Highlights include: Creating controls for consistent branding, design aesthetics and how you achieve them, mobile friendly features, custom layouts, and quick links and icon sets.
Speakers: Jillian Casler, Higher Logic
Location: Eastern Shores 2
Just Checking In: Drive Engagement Through Automation Rules
Tracks: Online Communities: Success Stories Marketing Automation: Success Stories
In order to gauge member satisfaction and provide individualized experiences, our nursing membership organization implemented a series of automation rules designed to check in with our members throughout their first year of membership. These emails directed members to watch new member welcome videos, engage with their community, and provide feedback on their membership via a short survey. Since implementing these check-ins, our membership retention rate is 88.1%, which is a 15.1% increase over the average. In this session, we'll take you through our journey of improving "checking in" with members.
Speakers: Meaghan Trimyer, American Psychiatric Nurses Association, and Courtney Hyde, American Psychiatric Nurses Association
Location: Chesapeake C
Design and Run an Engagement-Focused Ambassador Program
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
What is state-of-the-art for ambassador programs? What are the basic elements and tactics that work, how much time do you need to design them, and how inclusive should they be? The American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) has run an ambassador program for four years, starting with six members and reaching a total of +50 ambassadors in 2018. In this session, we will show what AACC has done to nurture and grow its army of community champions.
Speaker: Simona Ciampi, American Association for Clinical Chemistry
Location: Chesapeake G
Make Online Community Participation a Best Practice
Track: Online Communities: Marketing/Membership/Program Support
Creating a 'sticky' community starts with administrators and marketing. Utilizing your community to market its efficacy, functionalities, and importance are fundamental to adoption. Hear from PBS on how we launched, continue to market, and holistically manage the community, OurNeighborhood.
Speaker: Toanya Kesse and Mikail Faalasli, PBS
Location: Chesapeake H
Things You Don't Know that You Don't Know
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Join HUG MVPs Justin Prevatte and Brett Wangman as they lead you through a wide range of helpful tips, creative workarounds, proven hacks, hidden features, and valuable add-ons that will help you squeeze every ounce of value out of your Higher Logic community platform. With dozens of Higher Logic implementations to their credit, Justin and Brett want to show you how to fine-tune your platform with impactful CSS updates, common widget configurations, helpful JavaScript additions, and other best practices. This session will help newcomers understand some basic updates that should be added to every new site and will inform seasoned veterans of creative solutions to ongoing challenges.
Speakers: Brett Wangman, The Center for Association Growth, and Justin Prevatte, Theme Logic
Location: Chesapeake K
Qubole's Higher Logic Journey: From Forum Challenge to Community Success
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
Qubole started with a less-than-functioning website that was called a "knowledge base," where users had the capability to comment on posts. In January 2018, we purchased Higher Logic to serve as Qubole's user community platform. Our purchase consisted of Online Communities, Customer Advocacy Management and Activity Sync, and this is our success story.
Speaker: Terry Martin, Qubole
Location: Eastern Shores 1
Build a Stronger Community with Inspired Educators
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
The Discovery Educator Network (DEN) connects educators to their most valuable resource: each other. Now in our second year, the DEN Online Community is the hub that allows our community members to share best practices through online discussions, access built-in interactive courses, and engage with other educators. Join us as we shine the light on our unique opt-in community and share how we blend face-to-face meet ups and virtual experiences to grow and foster community.
Speaker: Jannita Demian and David Tchozewski, Discovery Education
Location: Chesapeake L
2:45 - 3:15 PM — Afternoon Break
3:15 - 4:15 PM — Breakout Session 5
Altai - Increasing your Community ROI using the Microsoft 365 Platform
Track: Doing More with Your Data
Online Communities Sponsored Demo
Join us for an interactive and informative demo of Altai Systems. You'll discover how you can increase the ROI in your community, using the Microsoft 365 Platform.
Speakers: Mike Frye, Gary Francart, and David Quackenbush, Altai Systems
Location: Chesapeake J
What AI Can Do for Your Engagement
Track: Doing More with Your Data
This session will focus on how modern AI technologies will change how you drive engagement in your communities. It will cover content personalization and recommendation models, as well as content analysis and categorization.
Speaker: Mikhail Opletayev, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake A
Transitioning to the New Informz Mailing and Template Designers
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Informz
You’ve heard about the latest Informz Mailing and Template Designers, but you may not have made the switch yet. This session is designed to help you move forward with success. This session will cover: Understanding the “no HTML” mindset and how it helps team efficiency, re-envisioning template design without HTML coding, creating “locked-down” styling themes in a template for design protection, leveraging pre-headers to boost opens, and moving from story layouts to new layouts for faster mailing creation. At the end of this session you will be equipped to take advantage of all of the great features in the newest designers.
Speaker: Peter Nelson, Higher Logic
Location: Eastern Shores 1
Tackle the Omni-Channel Marketing Funnel
Track: Marketing Automation: Strategic Objectives
In today's marketing environment, we can't afford to isolate our outreach channels. A customer's journey does not occur solely within email, social, search engine marketing, or any individual channel. Their journeys need to be tracked and reacted to within each step of the marketing funnel. This presentation will use a real-life case study to discuss methods for aligning your pay-per-click, social, and email teams to work cooperatively towards defined goals within your marketing funnel.
Speaker: Ian Phillips, American Society of Safety Engineers
Location: Chesapeake B
Next-Level Automation Rules
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
So, you know how to enable the automation rules that Higher Logic automatically deploys to your site. Maybe you've even built a few custom ribbons or security groups. Are you ready to take your automation rules game to the next level? In this session, we'll discuss advanced uses for automation rules, such as creating custom webpage content and messaging depending on a user's demographics or activity level on the site, and A/B testing messaging to create more effective email automation rules. Also, we'll gather questions on HUG in advance and live from the audience to work through automation rule creation in real time, equipping users with the understanding to do this themselves in the future.
Speakers: Lindsay Starke and Jenny Taylor, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake G
The Comprehensive Guide to Getting Help and Finding Answers
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Whether you’re new to the Higher Logic family or you’re a seasoned vet, there will inevitably come a time when you need to find an answer or want to request help. This session will cover all the various avenues for getting help and the resources available for finding answers for both marketing automation and online community users.
Speakers: Mark Gatcha & Calista Rollogas, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake C
The Role of Community in a Turn-Around Environment
Track: Online Communities: Executive Level/Strategic
Three years ago the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) was an organization in crisis. New leadership, new governance structure, new strategic direction, and the implementation of member communities have now positioned CSI to assume its role as a leading resource in the construction industry. This session is for anyone looking to understand how communities (and other products in the Higher Logic platform) can support and inform your strategic ends, build trust, and prompt new levels of member engagement.
Speakers: Cathy Stegmaier, Catherine Fry and Rick Bawcum, Construction Specifications Institute (CSI)
Location: Chesapeake H
Easy Content Wins for Organizations of Any Size and Budget
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
Content is king, there's no doubt about it. But creating new content with limited staff and budget resources can be tricky. This session will share our “content recycling” strategy that allows a small staff with no full-time community manager or team to continually bring “new” resources to our members. This session will provide specific examples, how we build content, and the metrics associated.
Speakers: Aubrey Wanner, National Society for Histotechnology, and Connie Wildeman, National Society for Histotechnology
Location: Chesapeake K
Launching Your Volunteer Platform: Get Internal Buy-In and Build a Volunteer Pool
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
This session will review strategies that the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS) used to get colleagues on board with using the volunteer platform. We'll help you gain a better understanding of the approach that led to our success. With staff support, we were able to dramatically increase our volunteer pool, achieving 285% growth in approximately 18 months.
Speakers: Wesley Carr, Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society, and Heather Arkwright, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake L
4:30 - 4:45 PM - Higher Logic Super Forum Awards Ceremony
"Celebrate your colleagues and discover their innovative work during the 2018 Higher Logic Super Forum Award ceremony. Award categories are:
- Most Successful Online Community (Online Communities)
- Most Successful Community Launch (Online Communities)
- Marketing Automation Masters (Marketing Automation)
- Best Community Manager (Online Communities)
- Best Community Site Design (Online Communities)
- Best Email Campaign Design (Marketing Automation)
- Most Creative Way of Using the Higher Logic Platform (Online Communities)
- Most Innovative Way of Using the Higher Logic Marketing Automation (Informz/Real Magnet) Platform (Marketing Automation)
Location: Potomac A
4:45 - 5:30 PM - Product Roadmap
Ed English, Chief Product Officer, Higher Logic
2018 has been a big year for Higher Logic and we’re thrilled to finally show you what we’ve been working on behind the scenes – the first steps towards unifying the Online Community and Marketing Automation platforms to deliver a full lifecycle engagement solution. This session will review what we’ve done so far and what we’re planning to do in 2019 and beyond. We’ll also touch on new features like Ideation, Polls, and a new visual designer, enhancements to Workspace and Marketing Automation that have already been released, and preview what’s on the docket moving forward.
Location: Potomac A
6:00 - 9:00 PM - Customer Appreciation Party
Thursday, November 8
8:00 - 9:00 AM - Breakfast
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM — Registration Open
9:00 - 10:00 AM — Breakout Session 6
What Are They Thinking?! Gain Better Insights Through Community Data
Track: Doing More with Your Data
Metrics abound for things like downloads, users, activity, page views, and the like, but how can you get a better understanding of what your members truly think about their areas of interest? In this session, learn how analyzing unstructured text from Higher Logic community engagement data helped one organization refine their target messaging, drive better content decisions, improve segmentation efforts, and more.
Speakers: Rob Miller, 340B Health, and Lindsay Swanson and Rebecca Duff, PMP, Gravitate Solutions
Location: Chesapeake A
Demystifying Email Deliverability
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Most marketers have experience growing a list, creating great content, and managing campaigns - but what happens when your campaign emails don't make it to the recipient's inbox? Our Deliverability team will show you ways to assess your deliverability health and provide solutions to some common problems you may experience.
Speaker: Brad Gurley and Greg Robinson, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake I
Understaffed? Maximize Member Engagement Through Volunteer Community Champions
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
Community champion programs are a well-known best practice for online communities, but not all champion programs are created equal. In this session, we'll discuss how to build a community champion program from the ground up that will help jumpstart your community, all with minimal staff time invested. Topics will include program structure, champion recruitment, retention, and recognition, as well as the top ten critical tasks for champions.
Speakers: Heidi Ellis and Simon Helton, International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
Location: Chesapeake B
See You Online: Increase Member Value by Using Higher Logic to Revitalize Existing Interest Groups
Track: Online Communities: Marketing/Membership/Program Support
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has had an existing interest forum (special interest group) program for decades. Traditionally, our interest forums have gathered for face-to-face meetings at various national meetings of the association to discuss, network, advocate, and share resources on the topics they are most passionate about in the field. Through the use of Higher Logic's online communities (ours is called “Hello”), we have brought new energy and engaged significantly more members in meaningful ways through this program. We'll review three specific tactics that illustrate ways to reach new audiences, expand access to networking, and foster a sense of community. Each strategy has resulted in new members joining the forums, new members joining NAEYC, and old members reengaging. Hello’s platform allows us to take existing groups of members and maximize their impact, resulting in increased member value for everyone.
Speakers: Michael Coventry, NAEYC
Location: Chesapeake C
All About Testing: Drive Revenue Using Testing Best Practices
Track: Marketing Automation: Strategic Objectives
Testing is a part of every marketer's agenda, but often isn't executed to help the team prove real results. In this session, Amy Bybee of DigitalLENS will show some best practices and case studies with real results, all around testing that will generate more effective emails and automation programs.
Speaker: Amy Bybee Mangueira, DigitalLENS Lead Generation
Location: Chesapeake G
Getting Started with Real Magnet Marketing Automation and Best Practices
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Real Magnet
This session will present the foundational information you need to leverage marketing automation for more strategic messaging and communications. During this session, we will provide an overview of marketing automation key terms and features and how you can use these features meaningfully to meet your marketing goals. Additionally, we will also discuss some of the best practices for you to think about as you transition to the marketing automation module.
Speaker: Ted Whalen, Higher Logic
Location: Potomac 3
Online Communities Website Design Series: Session 1 [Basic CSS] of 2
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Delivered over the course of two sessions, the Online Communities Website Design Series is a set of sessions on theme design and getting the job done.
This session, Session 1 of 2 -- Basic CSS, is designed for novice Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) practitioners. This session will cover what CSS is, how it works, where to use it. We'll also explore resources to get you started along with some live examples and basic How-to's. We'll also give you plenty of resources to get you started.
Speaker: Justin Prevatte, Theme Logic
Location: Potomac 1
Extending Higher Logic: Key Integrations with Real Business Impacts
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Today's organizations are transforming in the digital era and leveraging many key solutions, including online community platforms. Extending key solutions by seamlessly integrating them together is critical to break down silos of information, engagement, and communication. This session will review examples of Higher Logic's open APIs and extensibility using sample integrations into SalesForce, ZenDesk, and Gainsight as examples.
Speaker: John Boyle, Zenoss
Location: Chesapeake H
10:00 - 10:15 AM — Transition Break
10:15 - 11:15 AM — Breakout Session 7
Our Favorite Things: Platform Tips and Tricks to Personalize Higher Logic Websites
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
In 2017, we were presented with a challenge: Two separate community sites wanted to combine into one massive community, while making it easy for those two audiences to still retain their identity and find their respective connections, discussions, and content. In April 2018, we launched our new combined experience (www.d365ug.com), and we'd love to tell you all about the awesome tips, tricks, and hacks we learned during the re-design process to personalize a user's experience. In this session, we'll walk you through how we added tabs to Higher Logic widgets so users could filter through the latest discussions by community, using HLCommon widgets to show upcoming meetings and your event registrations, personalizing the search bar to say 'Hello' to you, topic-based pages that float up tagged content, and more! Come join us to talk about our favorite things in the Higher Logic platform! ...and YOU get an idea... and YOU get an idea...
Speakers: Katie Froeber, Marghet Hager, and Michelle Lowry, Dynamic Communities
Location: Chesapeake B
Tips and Tricks for Using Workspace
Track: Workspace Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
You’ve learned how to set up Workspace - now what? This presentation will take you through some of the essential functions and features of the Higher Logic Workspace integration. Session Topics Include: Managing Comments in Workspace, Managing Community Member Access, and Managing Voting Rights in Workspace.
Speakers: Debbie Mason, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake G
Topic Community Jam Session: Making Higher Logic Personalization Work For You
Track: Online Communities: Community Management
By Popular Request! Higher Logic released Personalization earlier in 2018, but these topic-based communities can seem scary to implement for the first time. Fear not—the Higher Logic community management team has been working hard to establish guidelines on how to make Personalization work for you. In this highly reciprocal presentation, we’ll share what we’ve learned in terms of strategy, tactics to encourage adoption, and—more than anything else—field questions from the audience about topic communities/personalization.
Speaker: Lindsay Starke and Michael Shim, Higher Logic
Location: Chesapeake A
Stop Communicating and Start Conversing
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Informz
Automated campaigns are not simply another way for you to talk TO your audience; they are an opportunity to converse WITH your audience. Be it internal barriers, lack of time, or not knowing where to begin, many of us have yet to utilize automated campaigns. The good news? Adopting automation is easier than you think! In this session we will dispel the myths of automation, show how automation can help enhance communication efforts, and help you identify opportunities for automation. At the end of this session, you will walk away with the tools you need to adopt campaign automation and have more conversations with your audience.
Speaker: Christopher Scavo, Higher Logic
Location: Potomac 4
Online Communities Website Design Series: Session 2 [Advanced CSS] of 2
Track: Online Communities: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance
Delivered over the course of two sessions, the Higher Logic Website Design Series is a set of sessions on theme design and getting the job done.
This session, Session 2 of 2 -- Advanced CSS, is designed for those that are comfortable with CSS and how it works. We will teach you how to successfully apply your CSS skills within the Higher Logic design framework. We'll explore Modern CSS tools to quickly and easily improve your Higher Logic website's design. This interactive session will include plenty of how-to's, live examples. Time permitting, we will explore using jQuery to tweak content, widgets, and site structure and creating custom page layouts.
Speaker: Justin Prevatte, Theme Logic
Location: Potomac 1
Real Magnet Expert-Level Product Capabilities
Track: Marketing Automation: Product Capabilities & Technical Guidance Real Magnet
Unlock expert-level product functionality in the Marketing Automation Enterprise, powered by the Real Magnet platform. Did you know that Real Magnet allows you to create actionable segmentation and lead scoring campaigns, build full-cycle lead nurturing and call-to-action campaigns, make your data actionable via database integration, leverage website tracking into workflows, and use campaigns to more effectively deliver hyper-personalized messaging? Join Mitchell Eisen, Vice President of Product Management, for an informative, interactive session that will give you new ideas you can easily implement at your organization to maximize your investment in the Real Magnet platform.
Speakers: Mitch Eisen, Higher Logic
Location: Potomac 2
Don’t Set It and Forget It! Leverage Automation Beyond Your Renewal Series
Track: Marketing Automation: Strategic Objectives
You created an amazing automated renewal series - now what? We'll share tips and tricks on how to leverage your automation platform to increase membership. With an organizational strategic goal of stabilizing membership renewals, we looked at how we could save time and fully utilize our Higher Logic tools, including:
- Adjusting renewal series to maximize results
- Dynamic renewal footers on all emails powered by automated groups
- Targeted social media renewal ads based on custom audiences from automated groups
- Automated “abandon cart” membership emails
- Digital welcome campaign tied to a print campaign
Speaker: Rupert Schutz, ASHRAE
Location: Chesapeake C
Automation Rules for the Win!
Track: Online Communities: Success Stories
Data aside, CREW Network's CREWbiz community platform meaningfully connected members in countless ways. We solved problems. Members found new jobs, made referrals and shared resources. We convened Meet-ups. And when our members moved to new markets, they had an instant network. CREWbiz made the difference. On Dec. 12, our first ever membership renewal automation email was sent from CREWbiz, simply saying: “It's been an active year on CREWbiz, and we have members like you and all of your contributions to thank for it. Don't forget to renew your membership for the coming year to ensure you retain access to everything the community has to offer, from discussions and playbooks to the member directory and speaker directory. Renew Now.” In this session, you will discover how that single email and use of Automation Rules resulted in the highest number of dues paid online (more than 700 logins) in a single day in the history of CREW Network.
Speaker: Megan Cottrell, CREW Network
Location: Chesapeake I
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM - 45 Ideas in 45 Minutes
Higher Logic’s classic 45 Ideas in 45 Minutes is back. This fast-paced session designed to showcase the best of our community and marketing automation platforms gets better every year. The Client Success Team will highlight the best ideas for top-notch communities and marketing automation. Join the session that’s all about offering a variety of resources, tips, and creativity for any organization.
Location: Potomac A
12:00 PM - Conference Close
12:00 - 3:00 PM - Exhibitor Tear Down