Matrix Group International

Category: Blog Post

  • MatrixMaxx 24.1 Release is Full of Visualizations and Dashboard Enhancements

    MatrixMaxx 24.1 Release is Full of Visualizations and Dashboard Enhancements

    BIG changes are here with the release of version 24.1 of MatrixMaxx™, a leading Association Management System (AMS) that helps trade associations and professional societies manage their organizations better, have great member journeys, and be higher performing through data.

    The past several releases have focused primarily on under-the-hood optimizations and updates, but 24.1 brings a cornucopia of tantalizing visual and organizational improvements to the MatrixMaxx™ staff interface. Clients requested nearly every feature in this release, adding up to almost 80 enhancements to MatrixMaxx™. There are more changes than we can cover in one blog post, but we would love to highlight some of our favorites. From dashboard customizations and brand-new widgets to an overhaul of the graphing system, there is plenty to be excited about!

    Gone are the days of having to cram all of your desired widgets onto just the ‘MyMatrixMaxx’ home page. Clients are now able to customize every dashboard landing page, greatly improving the usefulness and utilization of each module’s dashboard area. Each dashboard can be tailored to help measure what is important to your association, and relevant to your memberships. In addition to the improvements to the main module-level dashboards, we have also revamped the look and feel of critical transactional dashboards to make them more user-friendly and visually appealing. Staff views of Meetings, Funds, Sponsorships, and Products have been transformed, bringing a sleek look with expanded functionality.

    In addition to better-looking dashboard elements, there is more to choose from, including three hot new widgets for Membership Churn, Tenure, and Budget. These highly visual dashboard elements will give staff a new perspective on membership data and trends. Membership Churn, in particular, charts members lost over a specific time period, providing a crucial metric alongside membership retention. Charting Churn to measure membership turnover offers a high-impact way to see how well your retention efforts are working.

    The visual upgrades continue in the Advocacy module, with a brand-new map of membership by congressional district. This new Advocacy dashboard offers an updated, virtual office spin on the ‘push pin map’ that used to hang on the walls of many GR offices. This new map is transformative for organizations that lobby and need to know their constituent footprint at a glance.

    The new and improved visualization features across MatrixMaxx™ are powered by an all-new, modern library. After significant research, we are pleased to have chosen and implemented HighCharts as our new visualization engine and chart generator, bringing major upgraded benefits to the interface. First and foremost, the new graphs and charts have a clean aesthetic and include modern features, such as datapoint-tooltips and hover-highlights. Second, through the pervasive hamburger menu, HighCharts graphs equip clients with a variety of fingertip options, including full-screen mode, print versions, and a variety of export formats.

    Not to be left behind, the CRM module has a brand-new feature as well. The “My Accounts” function allows members to be assigned to a staff account manager(s) and offers both a ‘My Account’ report as well as a “Search for Account Managers” that allows other staff to review accounts outside of their own list.

    MatrixMaxx 24.1 has so many more features! Please take a few moments to read the full patch notes in the newly redesigned Support Center and learn about all of them. (And if you are new to MatrixMaxx, be sure to check out the MatrixMaxx 101 recommended staff curriculum.)

    Remember…  we host a free, monthly Q&A session where our Client Success Manager will review recent upgrades AND answer questions about anything related to MatrixMaxx. Check out our upcoming Events calendar and register today! In June, not only are we hosting our standard Q&A, but also a special Introduction Training tailored specifically for new staff.

    And if YOU are a client of ours and have a suggestion for a new feature that you think should be in MatrixMaxx, log into the Matrix Group extranet and send us MatrixMaxx Enhancement request!

  • Celebrating 25 Years of Innovation and Impact: Reflecting on Our Journey

    Celebrating 25 Years of Innovation and Impact: Reflecting on Our Journey

    Matrix Group is officially 25 years old today. I say “officially” because May 1 is the date on our incorporation papers, but the real date is April 22, when I opened up shop in shared office space in Georgetown, Washington, DC. If you want to hear stories about when, why and how I started the company, listen to this week’s episode of Associations Thrive. For a change, Leah Monica, Director of Marketing at Matrix Group, interviewed me about my personal journey and the journey of Matrix Group.

    Although I love to take photos and videos, I’m not actually one to spend a lot of time looking back. If you want to read about the first 10 years at Matrix Group, here’s a blog post I wrote back in 2009! I’m not someone who looks to the far future, either. I’ve got my eyes on the next three years and boy do I expect a lot of change, challenges, and fun!

    Reinventing Matrix Group – Again

    I told my staff that we’re in a period of reinvention – again. Why? Because post-pandemic, I know that we can’t go back to offering our clients the same old services, in the same old way. Doing THAT would be the fastest way to planned obsolescence. So many of our clients are revisiting their strategic plans, most are upending their conferences, some are rethinking their member types, and so many are tweaking their governance. 

    So how do we stay relevant and continue to partner with our clients to create new services and amazing journeys for their members?

    The answer, of course, is that we need to reinvent Matrix Group – again. WHO we serve isn’t changing – we’re still committed and focused on the association and nonprofit community. HOW we do our work hasn’t changed either – we’re still committed to client education, we’re still fanatic about delighting our clients, we still like to go deep with our clients, and we work hard to keep the same team working with clients over time and across projects. 

    The WHAT of our work has changed, is changing, will always change. When NABTU (North America’s Building Trades Unions) came to use to help them better manage the process of contractors becoming signatory to their agreements and reporting work hours, we used a no-code/low code platform so that NABTU’s tech debt burden would be much lighter in the future and they would never be on an “old” version of their software. When SQFI (the Safe Quality Food Institute) came to us to redesign and help them do business better on a global scale, we integrated AWS Translate into their CMS so that the new website is available in 9 languages, visitors can search in 9 languages AND the site is indexed by Google in 9 languages.

    We are developing a lot of experience and fluency with AWS services, including their AI services, and their suite of cloud services. All of this new work is prompting new offerings by Matrix Group, necessitating new training for my staff, and creating a need for new skills sets and new positions at the company. I bet that by the end of 2026, I won’t recognize the company in terms of WHAT we offer our clients, even if the WHY, WHO and HOW remain the same.

    Work 4.0

    When I sent everyone home in March 2020, we already had a well-defined and well supported remote work policy. In fact, when we moved to our new office space in July 2019, Maki Kato, the Matrix Group CTO, declared that the new office would not have a server room and everything had to move to the cloud. So when the pandemic hit, we were well prepared technology-wise.

    But sending everyone home and holding regular Zoom meetings does not make a culture. For the past few years, we’ve had an ongoing conversation at Matrix Group about what Work 4.0 looks like. With our office space lease expiring in March of 2025, we continue to ask ourselves questions like, “How do we make sure Matrix Group values and culture stay consistent and strong? If we don’t have an office in Arlington, VA, where will we be based? When and how will we gather in person?”

    I’m proud of the active and intentional culture that we’ve created at Matrix Group. How have we done this?

    • Through the company’s fundamentals that serve as our guiding principles. Every meeting opens with a fundamental and we work to integrate this code of conduct into everything we do. My favorite fundamentals are:
      • Do or do not. There is no try.
      • If we don’t hear joy in a client’s voice, our job is not done.
      • Don’t let your boss make a mistake.
      • Don’t let your client make a mistake.
      • Be curious.
      • Be coachable.
      • Within Matrix Group, assume good intentions.
    • We encourage in person interactions, but they’re optional. I have not mandated a return to office because there just isn’t an appetite on the part of the staff to be back in the office, even part-time. So directors and managers actively reach out to staff via Slack and email, and we devote the start of every meeting to socializing and sharing.
    • We do a lot of co-working. One of my favorite things when we were all still mostly in the office was co-working. If the biz dev team was crashing on a proposal, or a services team was launching a new website, we would gather in a conference room or the War Room (the War Room was a large, open area that had couches, standing desks, a large screen and lots of power). Today, we co-work by meeting in a Google Meet to literally work side by side with another person, sometimes collaborating on the same document or slides, and sometimes just co-working to be together, but not necessarily working on the same project.
    • I provide my managers with communications skills training. Effective written and verbal communications are even more important when most of your interactions are done over Zoom. How do you remind someone gently that something is due? How do you have a fierce conversation with someone over Zoom? Just how often should you be checking in with your team?

    25-Year Celebrations

    The pandemic changed how and when we gather. In addition, not only did staff scatter to other parts of the country, we have hired from around the country. All of this means that a big, in person party would be really complicated. So how are we celebrating?

    • Once a month, I’ll be interviewing association CEOs on our Associations Thrive podcast about how their profession or industry is changing, and how their associations are adapting to these changes.
    • I’m hosting a couple of staff lunches at the office this month, complete with amazing Asian food. 
    • My leadership team has made a commitment to try and see everyone on the team this year!
    • Before our lease ends, we are going to do a huge, blowout party at the office!

    Full of Gratitude

    As I reflect on 25 years of being in business, I am filled with gratitude. Gratitude for:

    • My amazing staff, both present and past.
    • Our wonderful clients, for their confidence in us, and for giving us opportunities to do great work and help them achieve their missions and change the world.
    • My loving and supportive husband, sons, and other family members. I don’t think I could have done what I’ve done, and gone out into the world with my message and services, if I didn’t have their support back home.

    To help me reflect on everything I have in my life, and everything I am grateful for, my husband and I are reading The Gratitude Diaries. Howard Pearl, CEO of CARS, was on my podcast a couple of months ago. He shared with me that he makes every employee read this book. I took inspiration from his words and I’m so glad I did!

    Thanks to everyone who’s been part of my personal journey and the journey of Matrix Group! Be safe, be well.

  • How to Make Your AMS a Revenue Generator, not a Cost Center

    How to Make Your AMS a Revenue Generator, not a Cost Center

    I attend a lot of webinars and conferences about non-dues revenue, including Non Dues-A-Palooza. At all of these events, there are presentations and discussions about new products and new partnerships that associations can invest in and offer to their members.

    I realized recently that hardly anyone is talking about AMS (association management system) as a revenue generator; this makes no sense to me! Yes, nearly every association uses their AMS to manage and process dues payments. But associations also use their AMS to track event registrations, purchases, advertising, subscriptions, and sponsorships. So why isn’t your AMS part of YOUR association’s non-dues revenue strategy?

    Historically, associations view their AMS as merely a cost center: technology with a fancy price tag to track what the association and members are doing. This is a mistake. We assume that the market for a product or service is influenced by marketing alone, i.e., once a member or customer gets past the marketing email or landing page to convert, the software will take care of the rest and it’s marketing moving the needle. 

    In my experience, however, a great online store will increase sales and therefore revenue. A user-friendly event registration system will encourage more registrations. Why? Because while there are highly motivated customers who will manage to get past even the crappiest of online ordering systems, a lot of customers will abandon when they encounter friction (e.g., confusing directions, bad login page). Sure, they have every intention of coming back or calling the association, but a percentage abandons for good. Does this audience represent an additional 1%, 10% or 20% of what could be your total sales? Hard to know.

    If your association or nonprofit is looking to increase non-dues revenue, be sure to include someone from the AMS team and ask these questions:

    • Conduct a usability study. How easy or hard is it to actually complete a transaction? Where are the friction points?
    • Is your product or service optimized for search, meaning can I find your product through Google or your site search?
    • Does your AMS have an abandon report that tells you who started to convert but abandoned?
    • Are you tracking abandons in Google Analytics?
    • Is someone from the AMS team included in discussions about revenue generation at your organization?
    • Can you make e-commerce on your website more like Amazon with its recommendations and use of purchasing?
    • Can you look at previous purchasers, create demographic profiles and market to others like them?

    Once you have some answers, work with your team and/or digital partner to make your customer journeys better. Track progress, celebrate results. Keep tweaking. And keep including the AMS in all discussions about non-dues revenue! 


    Looking for an Association Management System packed with features to help you increase membership, increase revenue, and become more high-performing? We’d love to show you MatrixMaxx, Matrix Group’s AMS. Request a Demo today!

  • The End of Expertise and How Associations Must Adapt

    The End of Expertise and How Associations Must Adapt

    Summary: Trust in higher education, media, and other institutions is at historic lows, while confidence in peers and social media is rising. For associations, this means members are seeking support to protect their credibility and strengthen public trust. This post looks at the data behind declining trust, its impact on associations, and practical ways associations can help members stay relevant and respected.

    “Trust in companies from global companies is in decline, worry over societal threats and establishment leaders misleading us is growing, while peers are as trusted as scientists for information on new innovations.”  – 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer

    A couple of weeks ago, I facilitated a discussion through UST Education about trust and associations with Melanie Gottlieb, CEO of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) and Tara Puckey, Executive Director of the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA). Higher education and the media have been hard hit with trust issues. Americans today question the value of a college degree and mistrust the so-called “ivory tower” experts. They also distrust the media, calling bias and questioning facts. Here are a few statistics that we shared:

    • 27% of Americans say they have not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interest (Pew Research)
    • 39% of Americans, a record-high, say they don’t trust the media at all. (Gallup)
    • 50% of Americans under age 30 have some or a lot of trust in the information they get from social media, just under the 56% who say the same about news outlets. (Pew Research)

    Here are some of the discussion points from the webinar, which was really more of a discussion. These insights came from Melanie and Tara, along with the nearly 100 people who attended and lit up the chat:

    From Melanie: How declining trust is affecting higher education

    • 2023 Gallup data shows that public trust in higher education has dropped 20 points over the last 8 years to a historic low of only 36% having confidence in higher education. This translates into the negative national narrative that college isn’t worth it. At a time when higher education is facing public funding cuts, changing demographics and a challenging student debt environment, institutions are facing an uphill battle to sustain enrollments and stay relevant. 

    From Tara: How declining trust is affecting the media

    • Declining trust is something that isn’t new within the journalism landscape; we’ve been dealing with it for decades. Unfortunately, it continues to rise, spreading from national news down to the local level at an alarming rate. The addition of AI and other technologies to rapidly deploy misinformation and disinformation creates a new layer of complexity that newsrooms around the country are grappling with. The good news is that smart people are working to identify ways that newsrooms and individual journalists can stem the decline and build trust within their communities. 

    How is declining trust affecting your industry or profession?

    • Many attendees expressed surprise over the trust statistics that we shared.
    • Many association execs expressed the belief that declining trust is affecting their industry, including execs from higher education, medicine, public health, foreign affairs, media, real estate, government, technology, science, veterinary medicine, and libraries.
    • A few execs said their industries are not affected, including tourism and agriculture.
    • Members report having to work doubly and triply hard to shore up their credibility.

    How is declining trust affecting your association?

    • Declining trust is leading members to leave the profession.
    • Members are increasingly distrustful of government and jaded about advocacy, leading to less engagement in advocacy and government affairs.
    • Members are turning to their associations to help them shore up their credibility and address increasing public distrust of their industry or profession.
    • Members are asking for resources they can use to bring people together and enhance trust within their communities.
    • One association said their communications strategy has evolved to include: government relations, public relations, and consumer relations.
    • Meetings and events are becoming increasingly politicized, with arguments over location of conferences, and the politics of keynote speakers.
    • Declining trust and polarization is affecting national organizations’ ability to partner with their chapters.
    • When a keynote speaker at an event leans one way politically, associations are more mindful of having another speaker who leans in the other direction.
    • Social media and sound byte journalism is making it harder for associations to share balanced research, facts, and perspectives

    What are associations doing/should be doing to shore up trust in their industries?

    • Execs agreed on the importance of educating members about trust issues in their field.
    • Some associations are partnering with peer organizations to push out messages and expand their reach. 
    • Some execs recommended more explicit communications about their professional code of conduct guidelines or code of ethics to increase public trust of their members.
    • Organizations are having to remind members that discourse should always be civil and open-minded. 
    • Many execs say you always need to circle back to your mission.
    • The American College Health Association (ACHA) has developed a trust toolkit for its members.
    • The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) holds a three-day conference + ongoing training for members about advocacy and communicating the value of the profession, members and association to different audiences, called the STR Program.
    • Some medical associations are developing patient resources that have been double- and triple-vetted and that members can share with patients, building up the members’ credibility and authority.
    • Some associations are doing more public education and public outreach, eliminating the jargon and focusing on the WHY.
    • One exec expressed interest in resources to share with our members to teach them how to have conversations about controversial topics.
    • Many execs reinforced the idea that communications should be clear and transparent.
    • Some associations are providing more training for Board members and other leaders to be effective spokespersons for their industries.

    Are you having conversations within your association about declining trust, credibility and authority?

    • Most associations said not yet, but after the webinar, they are planning to start discussions with their Boards and staff.
    • One association conducts an annual brand tracker; trust in the association is one of the metrics.

    The key takeaways from this discussion are:

    1. Start conversations at the staff, leadership, and Board levels.
    2. Consider: can you/should you offer tools and resources to help your members address trust issues with their stakeholders?
    3. Educate your members to be discerning consumers of information: webinars, blog posts, podcasts.
    4. Track trends in your industry.
    5. Collaborate with other associations in your field.

    More Resources

    I had been thinking about trust and associations for some time now and I am so grateful to Melanie and Tara for jump-starting the conversation with me, and thrilled at the insightful comments from all of the attendees. Here are more resources as your organization embarks on your trust journey:

    This topic was so popular, that I hosted a second session on “The End of Expertise and How Associations Must Adapt” with UST Education in July 2024, and was joined by:

    • Lindsay Currie, Executive Officer, Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR)
    • Matthew Hughes, President & CEO, World Affairs Council of America
    • Tara Puckey, Executive Director, The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA)

    Watch the second session here!

  • Google and Yahoo’s 2024 Email Policy Updates: What You Need to Know

    Google and Yahoo’s 2024 Email Policy Updates: What You Need to Know

    2024 is shaping up to be THE year of safer email, starting with big email authentication policy updates from Google and Yahoo, which will take effect on February 1st, 2024. These policy changes will impact what email Google and Yahoo will accept and deliver to their users’ inboxes, in an effort to decrease spam and spoofing. 

    These changes primarily affect bulk email senders, which are defined as any email sender/domain that sends 5,000 or more messages to personal accounts within a 24-hour period. As of now (but this may change), Google is not counting emails sent to Google Workspace accounts in this number – just personal Gmail accounts. 

    It’s important to note that even if you don’t qualify as a bulk sender right now, this appears to be the way of the future for email. All of these updates are now considered email deliverability best practices and more email providers will likely roll out similar, or even more stringent,  requirements in due time. 

    Key Changes to Google and Yahoo’s Email Guidelines

    Google and Yahoo’s new policy updates center on three main elements: email authentication, easy unsubscribe, and spam complaints.

    Email Authentication

    The first policy update affects your domain architecture. You now must use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to authenticate your emails and prove they’re coming from a legitimate source. Alphabet soup, we know. Here’s a high level overview of what these records do:

    • DKIM & SPF records verify whether mail is legitimate. They prove that the domain in your “from” address is, in fact, yours, and that a sender (this could be your own mail server, a bulk email provider, CMS, AMS, LMS, Community platform, etc.) has permission to send on your behalf. 
    • DMARC suggests what to do with mail that isn’t legitimate. To pass DMARC, a message must pass SPF and/or DKIM authentication and alignment. DMARC tells the receiving mail server what to do if an email from your domain fails DKIM or SPF but appears to be from your domain – a sign that it may be spoofed. Check out this great resource from Sendgrid to learn more about DMARC.

    Google and Yahoo will now require that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC be in place for all bulk senders. If not, deliverability will be affected. 

    Easy Unsubscribes

    It now needs to be as easy as possible to unsubscribe from bulk emails, which Google defines as supporting one-click unsubscribes in email headers. No more burying unsubscribe links in tiny text in the footer! Also, all unsubscribes must be honored within two days. 

    The hope here is that by making it easy to unsubscribe, users will be less likely to hit the “spam” button, ensuring that legitimate email and senders are making it to inboxes. 

    Spam Complaints

    Both Google and Yahoo are cracking down on spam, with advanced algorithms to identify and block spam. Senders with spam complaints averaging 0.3% or higher will start experiencing issues with deliverability, but you should always aim to maintain spam levels at 0.1% or below to ensure your emails are landing in your members’ inboxes. 

    How do you reduce your spam complaints?

    • Make it easy to unsubscribe. The new one-click header policy should help with this.  
    • TELL your members to unsubscribe and NOT to mark emails as spam. Sometimes this is done innocently, but can have a big impact for your org. Let them know that!
    • Monitor your undeliverables and remove them from your list in a timely manner.
    • Respond promptly to members who request to be removed from lists.
    • Be thoughtful about what you are sending and how often you are sending. Don’t give your recipients a reason to feel you are ‘spamming’ them!

    Steps to Get Ready for Google & Yahoo’s Email Updates

    1. Determine IF and HOW these new requirements will apply to your organization, and make a plan for addressing them. 
    2. Make it EASY to unsubscribe from your lists. Most bulk email senders, such as MailChimp, HubSpot, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, etc., are already on top of this, rolling out new templates, requirements, and functionality for one-click unsubscribes in email headers.
    3. Talk to your IT Director or Managed Services Provider about DMARC, DKIM and SPF.
    4. Make sure you have DKIM and/or SPF records for all systems that send emails from your domain. 
    5. If you put in a DMARC policy, be sure to consider ALL of the systems that send out emails from your domain. Even a record of ‘none’ can affect deliverability. Here are examples of some systems that may send emails “from” your domain:
    • Your official email server
    • Your bulk email providers
    • Your website (e.g., emails from forms)
    • MatrixMaxx/any AMS
    • Community platforms
    • LMS
    • Custom applications

    What happens if I don’t comply?

    If these new requirements apply to your organization and you don’t comply, your bulk emails will be delayed, blocked, or directed to spam. 

    While these words and changes might feel big and menacing, remember that the email providers have put them in place to reduce spam AND make it harder to spoof your domain and fool email recipients. Now is the time to audit your systems, policies, and procedures to make sure that you are in compliance, no matter how well you followed the best practices in the past.

    Email authentication makes everyone less vulnerable to spoofing and spam attacks, easy unsubscribe helps to keep our spam rate low, and cracking down on spam helps us clear unwanted and potentially malicious emails. 

    As always, we are here for you if you have questions or need help navigation the brave, new world of DMARC!

  • New Year’s Resolutions For Your Website in 2024

    New Year’s Resolutions For Your Website in 2024

    It’s the New Year and all of us are bubbling over with resolutions. So many of us resolve to exercise more, be kinder, spend more time with family, and so on. What about our websites? Shouldn’t we have resolutions for making our websites, email, and social media accounts better?

    I am a big fan of Dan Pink, author of the best-selling books Drive, When, The Power of Regret, and so many others. He also has a video podcast that he calls the Pinkcast. Each podcast is only 2-3 minutes long and they’re full of amazing insights and advice. In this Pinkcast, he talks about how to make New Year’s resolutions like a pro. The process includes making a list of your regrets, picking the one thing that bugs you the most, and then focusing on just that in the new year.

    What Are Your Website Regrets?


    Getting back to your website, what are your regrets about your website from the last year? Here is what I hear from clients. They wish:

    • They blogged more often
    • They had better visuals on their website
    • They had cleaned up their website by deleting the old stuff and making sure what was left was current and fresh
    • Their website was better optimized for mobile
    • They had a better handle on their website analytics and what it means for their organization
    • Their content was better optimized for Google
    • Their site search was better
    • Their website did a better job of storytelling
    • Their join or registration process was easier
    • Their website templates were more flexible

    This is a pretty long list of regrets. Each of the items above is important and worth focusing on. BUT if you focus on all of them, it will be sometime before you see progress. AND not making any progress on your goals and resolutions early in the year could set you up for another year of regrets. So how and where do you start? 

    Pick 1 or 2 Regrets to Focus on in 2024


    Start by picking just one of your regrets, or maybe even 2, and turn them into goals. Which one is most important that if addressed, would yield the most benefit for your organization? 

    The key here is making specific enough goals that you end up with an action plan and a timeline. 

    For example, if one of your goals is to make your organization’s join process better, your action plan might have these steps:

    • Look at Google Analytics to see what kind of traffic the join page gets and where people abandon.
    • Meet with your membership database and marketing team to map the member join process and map the journey. Where are the friction points?
    • Ask your web team, AMS team or website vendor for suggestions for making the journey better.
    • Resolve to have something, anything done, by the first quarter of 2024.
    • Monitor the results weekly.
    • Repeat until the next set of improvements will bring in only marginal benefits.

    If your goal is to clean up the dead and outdated content on your website, your action plan might look like this:

    • Ask your web manager or web vendor to create an updated inventory of all of the content on your website.
    • Look at your Google Analytics to see where traffic is going and where it’s not going.
    • Do some searches on your site. Is old content dominating the results?
    • Resolve to make some decisions about 5 types of content, eg., news, blogs, annual meeting information, etc. A decision could be: Delete all but the last three years of news, or delete all but the last two years of annual meeting information (except session handouts, which will live in a separate database).
    • Set aside 1 hour per week to do this work. If you set aside too much, it will become onerous. If you allocate less time, you won’t make enough progress.
    • Distribute the work to a team of staff and monitor your work and results monthly, including whether and how traffic and site search are improving.

    Once you’ve got one one of your regrets tackled (at least for now), tackle the next one. And so and so forth. 

    Of course, your organization could opt for a total website redesign, which would presumably help you tackle a whole lot of regrets, challenges, and issues. Barring that, however, focusing on one thing at a time will give you the mental energy to actually make a difference on that item that’s been bugging you.

    What are your biggest website regrets from last year? What “regrets” are you planning on tackling first this year? Leave a comment and let us know!


    Need some help planning, strategizing, and/or getting the right technology in place to reach your goals and clear your year of regrets? That’s our expertise! We’d love to partner with you to help your organization thrive this year – in the digital space and beyond. Get in touch and we’ll schedule a time to tackle those “regrets” together!

  • When Do Your Customer Journeys Actually Begin?

    When Do Your Customer Journeys Actually Begin?

    I have two friends who have walked the Camino del Santiago. The friends are Peter Schwartz, who is my business coach, and Gordon Bernhardt, a member of my CEO peer group. Both of them did the French route, which takes you from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela. It’s a 500-mile journey that you do on foot over 30 to 35 days.

    My friend Gordon’s journey began when he walked out of his hotel room in France and started his Camino journey. He said something really interesting to me when I was talking to him about the Camino. He said, “Joanna, back in the day, if you were a pilgrim a couple of hundred years ago, your journey actually began when you walked out of your house in Germany or some other part of Europe, wherever you might have been.”

    Joanna Pineda and Gordon Bernhardt
    Joanna with Gordon and his book, Buen Camino

    This comment from Gordon got me thinking. I am in the business of helping associations and nonprofits create amazing member journeys. My company creates online shopping carts, online meeting registration forms, resource centers, etc. All of my clients are concerned with creating seamless and effective customer journeys so that their members and non-members find what they’re looking for, purchase the items they’re looking for from the store, or register to attend a conference or seminar.

    The question is: when do these customer journeys begin? Do they begin with the customer at the point of registering for a meeting or at the point of adding something to the shopping cart? Or do they begin when the customer starts with a Google search, clicks on a link in an email, or has a conversation with a friend about something that they might need?

    I believe that we all need to think of these customer journeys as starting much, much earlier. When a person ultimately registers for a conference, that attendee journey probably started days, weeks, or even months before the actual registration. It started when they had a conversation with their boss, did a Google search, or visited the website.

    When thinking about your customer journeys, ask yourself and your web team: 

    • How do people find whatever it is we’re trying to sell them or whatever it is we want them to use or do on our website? 
    • How findable is a specific product in our store on Google? 
    • How findable is a specific webinar from our site search, especially when a person doesn’t have the exact title? 
    • How findable is a specific resource on your website that perhaps was mentioned during a keynote presentation or a webinar?

    And even though you may not have complete control over the platforms they start their journey on – Google, email, social media, etc. – there are things you can do to make those touch points better. For example, to improve the journey from search to your store you can: 

    • Talk to your web team to make sure that every product in your store is actually indexable by Google. 
    • Make sure that each product has good navigation. 
    • Make sure that each product actually has a primary link URL, and each product page has a URL. 

    When we do these things, we make it easier for Google to find our products and also make it easier for the site search to find products.

    The next time you’re thinking about a product or service that your organization has to offer, think about the customer journey and when exactly those journeys begin. 

    Chances are you need to go much, much earlier in the process to make that journey better for your customers.

    Need help rethinking and retooling your member journeys? Let’s talk! We’d love to help.

  • Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts

    Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts

    Google for leadership lessons from the martial arts and you’ll get a jillion posts. Most of them focus on skills you’ll develop from practicing the martial arts. Skills like focus, discipline, respect, confidence, flexibility, etc.

    I recently did a webinar for UST Education on just this topic BUT my leadership lessons are ones I learned from my master, Master Seung Hum Yun at Be Ryong Martial Arts in Alexandria, VA. These leadership lessons are gleaned more from HOW Master Yun runs his studio, than from the practice of taekwondo and hapkido (both martials arts I practice). Here are highlights from my webinar.

    Sometimes, you need to trade your black belt for a white belt.

    A black belt is someone who has achieved a certain level of mastery of a specific subject, process or technology. We may have black belts in old technology that we no longer need or should upgrade. These black belts need to be coached to become white belts again.

    Learn how to take a punch.

    When you’re fighting, a punch could be seen as a failure because you didn’t get out of the way or you didn’t block the punch. But perhaps taking the punch means you learn something new or it positions you for the next move.

    Create a professional development ladder.

    Every martial arts studio has a prescribed journey of belts. Each belt is associated with specific forms, kicks and techniques. Without worrying about titles, how are you creating professional development ladders in your organization so that your staff have targets for the skills, experiences and relationships they will develop this quarter or this year.

    Sometimes, you just have to “do something.”

    When I’m sparring tired, it’s easy to just stand there or circle my opponent without really doing anything. That’s when my master will yell at me to “do something!” Do you have projects or initiatives that are stalled? What can you do to get them moving again?

    What happens in your organization is what you allow to happen.

    My master is very clear about the behavior that he expects from every student, no exceptions allowed. He expects all of us to be respectful and encouraging, especially when someone is trying to learn something new. He calls out bad behavior and does not tolerate it. What bad behaviors are YOU allowing in your organization?

    Black belts define their own journey.

    My master tells lower belts that he will define their journey, but once a student makes black belt (remember, there are 10 degrees in most martial arts!), he expects the black belts to define their own journeys. He expects us to advocate for more training, and decide the cadence of our journeys. Do we want to get that next black belt quickly, or perhaps go at a slower pace? We decide BUT he’s always there for guidance.

    I’ve been a student of taekwondo and hapkido for over 11 years. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my time at Be Ryong has been meaningful and fulfilling.

    How about you? What’s been your martial arts journey and how have you applied lessons learned to your personal and professional lives?

  • What is the Best Content Management System For an Association Website?

    What is the Best Content Management System For an Association Website?

    We get a lot of RFP (Requests for Proposals) for association and nonprofit website redesigns. Often, one focus of the RFP is the technology that will power the new website. These RFPs have giant lists of requirements related to how content will be authored, formatted and published. 

    We often get asked this question: 

    What is the best content management system (CMS) for association websites?

    The answer (you guessed it) is always gonna be, “it depends.” Depends on what?, you might ask. 

    The dirty little secret of website development today is that nearly all content management systems in the market will meet nearly all of any organization’s requirements. While this wasn’t the case 10 or 15 years ago, this class of software has matured a lot and nearly all will allow you to:

    • Add items to recurring collections of content
    • Author uniquely designed pages
    • Easily add formatting, images, and video to pages
    • Categorize content
    • Manage workflow
    • Schedule and embargo content
    • Create public and protected content
    • Consume content via APIs or imports
    • Optimized website content for Internet search engines

    So how does an association decide between content management systems? 

    Here are some ways that we’ve helped our clients choose a system that’s right for them.

    • Understand the development capabilities of your staff. Some CMS systems have friendlier drag and drop authoring systems, while others require a bit or a lot of knowledge of CSS (cascading style sheets).
    • Does your IT department require a specific tech stack? We’ve run into IT departments that prefer a Microsoft tech stack, while others prefer open source. Most of our clients don’t have a preference, but your organization may, so it’s best to check with those in the know.
    • Your staff may prefer certain features or interfaces. Just as people are drawn to specific models and makes of cars (and yet, they all take us where we need to go), some staff may be turned off by some systems that have a very tech user interface, while others will love it. I guess this is why some people prefer the Apple design style, while others like Google.
    • Budget is often a consideration. While we find that implementation costs are largely similar between systems (because the implementation work is quite similar between systems), licensing and hosting costs can vary widely between systems. Open source systems don’t have licensing fees, and hosting in a Linux environment is less expensive than hosting in a Microsoft environment.
    • Does your tech ecosystem require a specific tech stack? This doesn’t happen as often anymore, but sometimes, we run into projects where third party partners require a Microsoft tech stack. Examples are when a vendor requires SAML authentication, or SOAP for single sign on.

    As a company, we do website implementations in WordPress, which is an open source content management system, and Sitefinity, which is a Microsoft.NET based system. Matrix Group designers say that they design sites with no consideration for the CMS that will ultimately power their designs. Our front-end developers say there are, of course, differences between how you implement a site in WordPress or Sitefinity, BUT they can make both systems do exactly what they designers and information architects envisioned.

    And yes, we implement sites in other systems, and the art and science behind why a specific system is chosen will ultimately depend on functional requirements, design requirements, user interface preferences, and budget considerations. 

    Looking for a new system for your association or wondering what else is out there? Perhaps you’re wondering if your current system was implemented properly. We’d love to hear from you!

  • Does Your Organization Need a Podcast?

    Does Your Organization Need a Podcast?

    I love podcasts! I listen to at least one podcast every single day. And yes, I’m a podcaster. I have two podcasts: Associations Thrive is a podcast celebrating successful associations and their leaders and K Drama Chat is a podcast where my co-hosts and I take one Korean Drama (K Drama) each season and recap and analyze each episode.

    So, does YOUR organization need a podcast? 

    The answer is always gonna be “it depends.” But consider these statistics from Riverside.fm:

    • As of 2022, 62% of Americans will have listened to a podcast ever in their lives. This is an estimated 177 million Americans and an increase from 57%, the percentage of the same statistic, in 2021.  
    • From this figure, 38% of Americans listened to a podcast in the last month and 26% in the last week.
    • 50% of monthly U.S. podcast listeners are aged between 12-34, 43% between 35 and 54 years old, and 22% are aged over 55.
    • Dedicated podcast listeners prefer podcasts about history (37%), news (36%), true crime (36%) and science (34%).

    So why host a podcast for your association? I can think of many reasons:

    • Podcasts are a great way to educate members and keep them up to date about your profession or industry, through a channel that doesn’t require that they be sitting in front of their computers. Podcasts are great for when you’re in the car, cooking, even doing laundry!
    • Audio podcasts are more approachable in terms of cost and effort than video podcasts or video series.
    • Podcast listeners have a greater attention span. Listeners prefer podcasts that are under 30 minutes long, while TechSmith found that 50% of people prefer a video length between three and six minutes.

    If you’re looking for some terrific association podcasts, here a few that I recommend:

    While there are thousands of podcasts, there are probably few or no podcasts in your industry or profession. It’s a great time to create a podcast for your association. 

    Want to talk podcasting? Get in touch with me or find me on LinkedIn. Matrix Group doesn’t produce podcasts but we can help you develop your strategy and implementation plan. If you want execution help, I recommend my friends at Association Briefings.

    And if and when you launch a podcast, please let me know so I can listen and share!