Matrix Group International

Tag: Strategy

  • How to Make Your Conference Speakers Feel Special

    How to Make Your Conference Speakers Feel Special

    MicrophoneI get asked to speak at industry and professional conferences throughout the year. While I appreciate the opportunity provided by every organization, I want to give a shout out to the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans (they call themselves the International Foundation, let’s call them the Foundation in this blog post).

    I don’t get paid a big speaking fee by the Foundation, but I always enjoy speaking at their conferences for one simple reason: I feel special, extra special, in fact. Here are some of the things the Foundation does really, really well for their speakers:

    • While I handle my own travel, they handle registration and hotel reservations, which reduces some of the friction associated with being a speaker.
    • I’m always assigned a designated moderator and that person always reaches out to me ahead of time to get to know me, brief me on the conference, answer my questions, and ask how I’d like to be introduced. I always, always ask for a brief introduction because long, boring introduction take the energy out of a room.
    • I get demographic information about the attendees, and the results of any industry surveys recently done. For example, I’m speaking at the Foundation’s Institute for Apprenticeship, Training and Education Programs this week, and a week ahead of time I received a copy of their most recent survey: Top Trends in Jointly Managed Apprenticeship Programs from 2018. This survey is gold; I will be able to better tailor my remarks to my audience!
    • When I check in, I’m warmly welcomed. I get a special thank you from the Director, who makes a point of telling me that his attendees attend his conferences because of speakers like me. There’s a speaker ready room, and there’s a speaker thank you reception the first night of the conference.

    I bet it doesn’t cost the Foundation very much to do these extra things for their speakers, but they go a long way toward making me feel welcomed and valued.

    So shout out to Tom DeRoche, Director of Educational Programs, and his team at the Foundation!

    Since so many of you say that it’s the educational content that draws people to your conferences, what are YOU doing to make your speakers feel special?

  • Make These Your 2019 Resolutions for your Website and Web Marketing

    Make These Your 2019 Resolutions for your Website and Web Marketing

    strategy planning in notebookIt’s the start of a new year. Did you accomplish all of your digital goals from 2018? Did you complete every project? If you like Matrix Group, or most of my clients, you didn’t meet all of your goals, but you gave it a good try. As you ponder the new year, I hope you’ll think about adding these resolutions to your digital to do list for 2019.

    Evolve Your Website.

    If the idea of a full website redesign scares you, why not consider evolving your website instead? Here at Matrix Group, we tackle a section or feature of our website every quarter. We might redesign just one page, redo a form, or update the language on a bunch of pages. Last year, we:

    • Updated my blog home page
    • Updated our Contact Us form
    • Redesigned our Recent Projects page
    • Updated our presentation template
    • Refreshed our About Matrix Group blurb, and
    • Changed our webinars to have co-presenters from outside the company.

    Because we tackled these initiatives in pieces, it didn’t kill us and we got a lot done.

    Tidy Your Website Content.

    If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you know that two years ago, my husband and I read “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. If you haven’t read the book, watch the show on Netflix. And this year, resolve to declutter your website so that only the content that will spark joy in your members and customers will be on your site AND your search will work better.

    Look at Your Analytics!

    I know, seems obvious, but many organizations don’t look at their analytics regularly. If you don’t, how do you know what content is connecting with your audiences? To get started, just do these three things:

    • Look at your analytics once a week
    • Never, ever send out a link without Google UTM codes so that traffic on your site can be attributed to your campaigns
    • Put in annotations and note when you send out mass emails, mailed out your magazine, or ran an AdWords campaign.

    Get Started with Marketing Automation.

    Marketing automation refers to software and technologies that automate the often repetitive tasks involved in cultivating prospective and current customers and members, and do it in a way that allows for personalization based on time, an individual’s demographics, and/or an individual’s actions. Marketing automation can be used to create personalized members journeys via email and on the web for new members, new primary contacts, prospective members, etc. If you’re not already using marketing automation in your organization, make this the year you explore how it can benefit you.

    Revamp Your Content.

    If your content strategy hasn’t changed in the last decade or even half decade, it’s time for an overhaul. Your customers are mobile, they are time constrained, they are busy, they are distracted, and what you’re offering is probably available for free somewhere on the web. Take one thing and redo it. Change the format of your webinars, rethink your e-newsletter strategy, convert text to video, consider a nano learning format, get rid of your paper directory.

    2019 is the year to test new ideas, be bold, and learn. What are YOU going to do differently in 2019?

  • How Do You Compete with Free?

    How Do You Compete with Free?

    I love Audible, the audiobook app owned by Amazon. I have a monthly subscription because listening to audiobooks with my sons has transformed car rides, plane rides and folding laundry.

    I usually have extra credits available because it takes us forever to listen to an 8-hour book in 15-minute chunks. But this summer’s trips have made me burn through my credits as we listened to the entire Percy Jackson series.

    Tonight, as I faced a mountain of laundry and with no Audible credits available until later this week, I had a conundrum:

    Listen to something again, buy more credits, or borrow an audiobook from the library?

    I decided free was the best solution for tonight. I love the Overdrive app that lets me borrow ebooks from my local Alexandria library. But I had never borrowed an audiobook. How hard could it be? Turns out, very.

    I did a search and found a bunch of great audiobooks available to borrow, even though Crazy Rich Asians has a waiting list a mile long. I downloaded The Wishing Spell with no issues. Trouble was, I could not figure out HOW to listen to it via the Overdrive app. There’s not an easy and obvious play button. I turned to Google. I was directed to try Overdrive Listen, which I couldn’t find in the app or the app store. I tried the website, I verified my account on my computer and iPad. Still no luck. I kept trying.

    After about 20 minutes, I gave up. I bought something on Audible and I will likely stick with Audible in the future. Because even though my local library has audiobooks, Audible makes it sooooo easy and such a wonderful experience to listen to audiobooks.

    In his book, The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly says most content these days is free, if you are willing to spend the time looking for it.

    If content is free, where’s the value?

    In the case of Audible, the value lies in the user experience. It’s so easy to log in to Amazon, find an audiobook and pay for it. Within a second, the book is on my phone and iPad. Within a minute, I can be listening. If I start listening on my phone and then switch to my iPad, Audible knows and lets me jump to the right spot. In this case, even though I could have gotten the same audiobook for free, I chose to pay for the user experience.

    How do YOU compete with free?

  • What REALLY Matters for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

    What REALLY Matters for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

    I do a lot of SEO consulting for clients. Clients want to know: how to optimize their websites for Google, how to drive more organic traffic to their sites, and what keywords they should focus on for optimization.

    At Matrix Group, we spend a lot of time on the mechanics of our client sites so that search engines can easily find them and index content.

    But here’s the single, most important question I ask clients to ask themselves when developing their content and SEO strategy:

    What are people typing into Google where YOU and YOUR SITE are the answer?

    Because most people want to go direct to content AND because Google is so darn effective, a huge chunk of your members, customers and potential customers simply type a natural language query into Google. They will type questions like:

    When is the ABC conference?
    What do I need to do to become a ….?
    What is the best training for (fill in the blank) professionals?
    How many credits do I need to become a ….?
    How much does it cost to…?

    If you don’t know what your members and customers are typing into Google, find out by:

    • Looking at the incoming organic search terms driving traffic to your site. Most of this information is blocked by Google, but it’s worth looking to see what’s available in your Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.
    • Looking at the search terms and phrases people type on your site search. If you aren’t logging this, start now and look at the report monthly.
    • Asking your customers what they typed into Google recently where they either expected to find a link on your site or expected a resource related to your profession or industry.
    • Going to https://trends.google.com and researching the top queries related to your business.

    Once you have a collection of these valuable search queries, make sure you have content (and lots of it) that matches those queries. Heck, you should be writing blog posts, news items and FAQs that perfectly match your most important queries.

    Yes, your website should also be mobile-friendly, be well structured, have clean CSS, have permalinks, have alt tags, yada, yada. But all of these technical requirements mean nothing if you don’t have the content your target audiences are looking for. Give it to them and make it easy for Google to match your content with your customers.

  • The Checkbox War is Over: How to Pick a New AMS Partner

    The Checkbox War is Over: How to Pick a New AMS Partner

    checklist on clipboard graphicI was talking to my friend Ben Muscolino at Benel Solutions. Ben’s company does netFORUM implementations and other AMS integrations. Matrix Group has several clients in common and we love working with Benel Solutions.

    Anyway, we were talking association management software (AMS) companies, how the space is pretty crowded, and how difficult it is for associations to choose between vendors. At some point, Ben quipped, “well, the checkbox war is over, so how do clients choose their platform?”

    The checkbox war is over.

    I think Ben is absolutely right. The AMS market has reached such maturity that nearly all the platforms (MatrixMaxx from Matrix Group included) are able to check off the boxes in the RFPs that we receive. Yep, we let associations manage individual and company-based memberships, meetings, tradeshows, publication sales, digital downloads, sponsorships, subscriptions, fundraising, yada, yada.

    So how on earth does an association pick a platform? I think the answer is you don’t. You pick a partner instead.

    A partner that can help you:

    • Rethink your member experience
    • Work well with the other vendors in your digital universe
    • Guide your business process transformation
    • Get creative with your budget and needs

    Is YOUR AMS partner doing all this for you?

     

  • What Do I Need to Do to Become GDPR Compliant?

    What Do I Need to Do to Become GDPR Compliant?

    Guest post by Tanya Kennedy Luminati, MatrixMaxx Product Manager

    What are the next steps once you know what GDPR is?

    Officially start your security/compliance/privacy efforts

    This is your first step: Read about GDPR on the Matrix Group blog, and start to learn more.

    Track any efforts 

    Team meetings, staff meetings, webinars, research, actions. It is widely recognized that not everyone will be ready for the May 2018 enforcement deadline, so it is critical to show a good faith effort in starting your analysis process. Documentation of your efforts is critical to proving this.

    Learn more!

    Many groups and vendors are offering free webinars on GDPR. Sign up and attend one; the more you know the better informed you’ll be.

    A variety of organizations are hosting forums on this topic. For example, if you are an ASAE member, you have access to their GDPR collaborate forum.

    Figure out your organization’s role

    There is a shared responsibility for this between the Controller and the Processor.

    • A Controller is the person or organization that actually determines the purpose and means of processing personal data that they hold.
    • A Processor is the person or organization that processes data on behalf of the controller. (Matrix Group is a processor, along with countless other 3rd party vendors/providers that are providing services and systems like hosting, CRM, AMS, CMS, email marketing, marketing automation, etc.)

    Matrix Group, as a web services and software provider, is a Processor of data. Matrix Group’s clients are Controllers of their data. (e.g., The Association of Widget Makers, The Society of Professional People, ACME company, etc. are all Controllers.)

    In other words, we here at Matrix Group must provide tools to support the processes and procedures of GDPR, but Controllers have ultimate responsibility to determine how GDPR will impact them, and then use the tools vendors/processors (like Matrix Group) provide to put processes into place to comply with GDPR.

    For example, if a user requests access to all of their data …

    • The Controller is responsible for training staff to recognize this request for what it is and to gather necessary data from all systems (AMS, CRM, CMS, marketing automation system, email marketing system, etc.)
    • Matrix Group, as a Processor, is responsible for providing tools to help with this. (e.g., Our MatrixMaxx AMS has an Individual Participation Report that aggregates most of the data that we hold on the individual, and we’ll be upgrading it soon to include even more, such as the recent login and page request history)

    Do a gap assessment: Where are you and where do you need to be?

    The key questions to ask all revolve around your data:

    • Where are we getting data from?
    • What data are we storing and where is it being stored/
    • How are we using, handling, and securing the data while we have it?
    • Where are we sending data to?

    And once you’ve analyzed your flow of data, it is time to analyze what you need to do in order to comply with these new regulations. You may need:

    • Management resources, to help establish and enforce new policies for data collecting and handling
    • Technical solutions and tools to deal with the new rules
    • Legal advice to help rewrite your privacy policy or deal with the more complex aspects of the regulations

    Reach out to your vendors and partners

    At this point, any software/system partner should be thinking about their response to new privacy and security regulations like GDPR.

    Here at Matrix Group:

    • We have obtained our SOC2 certification in security. SOC 2 is an auditing procedure that ensures we securely manage data to protect the interests of our organization and the privacy of our clients.
    • Our compliance committee meets monthly and has been discussing GDPR for many months
    • Our IT team meets weekly and GDPR has been on the agenda for months
    • The MatrixMaxx AMS team has been working on multiple upgrades to ultimately allow clients to better comply with the GDPR regulationts:
      • We already have in place several reports that would allow the association to quickly/easily share information with anyone who requests a report of their data. (Individual Participation Report, Login Report, Page Request History report)
      • We are in the planning/development stage of an Anonymization function, which will allow the association to anonymize anyone who wishes to be forgotten, without losing the core transaction history in the record
      • We are researching and planning the best way to offer Consent functionality that complies with the double-verification requirement
      • We are monitoring and discussing with our 3rd party partners, like forums and email and marketing automation

    Is there a checklist for GDPR ‘compliance’? Can we all get certified as compliant?

    The concept of GDPR compliance certification has been established in the regulations, but it has not yet been fleshed out to the point of actually going into practice. So at this point, as of March 2018, if someone tells you they are certified compliant with GDPR, that is false.  

    Looking ahead

    We are moving into a permissions-driven economy. The days are vanishing when you can get a hold of someone’s email address and then send them endless amounts of email. You are going to need to politely and persuasively ask them for their data and explain how you are going to use it. You are going to need to be thoughtful about it. And you’re going to need to respect their desire for privacy while also wanting to utilize of your services.

    As marketers of services, this can initially seem frustrating. But turn it around and think about yourself as a consumer. Haven’t you griped about the amount of email you get? Haven’t you wished your name would stop being shared with companies you don’t care about?  These regulations are coming in effect to force a worldwide respect of individual privacy and to make the cyber-world better for all us as individuals. In time, we may even view this focus on privacy and security as an implicit expectation, in the same way organizations are now expected to be think about sustainability as a key operations value. All of this is a good thing.

     

    PLEASE NOTE:

    This is one of Matrix Group’s installments on GDPR, Privacy, and Security. We at Matrix Group are not lawyers or GDPR consults; do not take this info as absolute. Use this information as a starting point in:

    • Gathering the documentation, processes and tools you need to assess and support your obligations under GDPR
    • Planning for a future where respect privacy and security are implicitly baked into our all our processes and systems, regardless of country

     

     

  • The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Your Website: Part I

    The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Your Website: Part I

    Last year, my husband and I read Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.“ To say this book was life changing isn’t an exaggeration. Besieged by clutter, we went about decluttering our books, clothes, papers, kitchen accessories, and on and on. We gave away over 1,000 books, I donated 60% of my closet, we shredded mounds of paper, and we can finally see the floor in our garage. Are we done? Absolutely not! But I’m not overwhelmed by the clutter, the master bedroom is a sea of calm, and I love everything in my closet.

    Like closets and homes, websites need regular tidying as well. If you hear this from your members, “I can’t find anything on your website” or “I can’t find what I”m looking for because I get too many search results,” it’s time to tidy.

    Why The Clutter?

    First, let’s examine why our websites have become the equivalent of cluttered homes and self-storage units. This is what I hear from my clients:
    • We need a place to store our archives
    • Someday we might need that study from 25 years ago
    • We don’t know what’s valuable to our members or the public

    What Members Really Want

    And yet, in interview after interview with members, this is what we hear:
    • Just give me the best stuff when I do a search
    • I need my association to curate all the information on “x” topic
    • Tell me what I need to pay attention to
    • The navigation is overwhelming with too many choices
    • I just don’t know where to start looking

    Take the First Step Toward Tidying: What Are People Trying to Do On Your Website?

    This blog post is NOT about the art and science of information architecture. I can go on for day about that. This blog post IS about decluttering. If you want your website to be high performing, ask yourself questions like these:
    • What are people trying to do on my site? If your audience includes researchers who need the historical data, then please include a comprehensive library AND create an effective search. If you want to make the case for membership, chances are you need to do that in six pages or less.
    • Why do we have archives of the conference pages from the last 15 years? If people need the handouts, perhaps you’re better off creating a database of the presentations and creating a great search. If it’s just the staff that find the archive useful, take it offline and make it easily accessible on your local network.
    • Why do we have news and newsletters from the last 25 years? If people need the archives for research purposes, great. If legislative updates from even last year are irrelevant because Congress has a new set of priorities each year, ditch the detailed updated but do keep a list of your legislative priorities and what you’ve done over time.

    Over the past year, Matrix Group has completed about a dozen website redesigns. In almost all cases, the client, after reviewing the content inventory, looking at the analytics and discussing content strategy, ditched more than half of their old content. Tidying made content migration easier and less expensive, the information architecture is more streamlined, and site search is more effective.

    In the next blog post, I’ll talk about love. What’s love got to with your website and clutter? Stay tuned.

  • How to Make Your First Day Back at Work Productive After a Vacation or Leave of Absence

    How to Make Your First Day Back at Work Productive After a Vacation or Leave of Absence

    I used to dread my first day back in the office after vacation. After being away for a week or two (or more when I had my sons), I did not look forward to coming back and being buried in emails and getting caught by surprise by someone who needed my urgent attention.

    But not anymore. Not since Matrix Group started creating “while you were out” documents for anyone out of the office for more than a couple of days.

    Here’s how we do it:

    • We review who’s going to be out during managers meeting on Fridays.
    • If someone is going to be out for more than a couple of days, we create a shared Google doc called “While x was out, week of January 19, 2018.”
    • We put someone in charge of making sure the document is populated.
    • We ask specific team members to put in their notes about what happened during the week. We put in notes about anything and everything that the person on vacation would have been part of, or heard, had she been in the office.

    The update is ready the day before the person comes back from vacation or leave. An email goes out, telling the vacationer to “read this update first.”

    What do we cover in the “while you were out” document?

    • The update will vary, based on the person and role. For example, project managers get a summary of everything that happened on all of their client accounts. A Director gets a summary for the entire company. A developer gets a summary of what happened on his accounts and projects.
    • Beyond specific clients and projects, we also report on what was discussed during meetings. This is really important. If we discuss a project that’s been stalled and come up with a solution, it’s so helpful for the vacationing staffer to know how we got a project unstuck. If we don’t report on it in the brief, that knowledge may never get passed on to the manager or developer.
    • We also report on the social stuff that happens at the office, things like happy hours, birthdays, who got pranked, movies people are raving out, puppy visits to the office, who got engaged, and visits to the climbing gym. God forbid you be the person who didn’t know that Alex got married or that Roger got a new puppy!

    Why go to all this effort?

    • People coming back from any type of leave don’t have to spend all day reading their emails in order to know what happened while they were out. In fact, we often do not cc: the person on vacation so they don’t come back to hundreds of emails to process.
    • Returning staff can immediately be back in the swing of things.
    • People feel like they can get away without missing important events or milestones.

    It takes a whole team to write these documents, but they are so worth the time and effort.

    What do you do to make the transition back to work easier on your team members? 

  • A Good Site Search Requires an Investment of Time and Money

    A Good Site Search Requires an Investment of Time and Money

    I hear this a lot from prospects: Our website search sucks! It seems many organizations are in pain with search. Here’s the thing: a good site search requires an investment of time and money. This investment can be substantial and I think it’s worth it.

    In many ways, Google has spoiled us. Google is a free, powerful, really amazing, awesome, spot on search. “Why can’t I have a search like Google?,” ask many of my clients. Google used to license its search technology, but no more. So what’s an organization to do?

    There are many search options: free, open source, commercial, at all price points. Here at Matrix Group, we have developed expertise at implementing SearchBlox, Solr, Algolia, Zoom, WordPress and Sitefinity. 

    In our experience, a great site search involves:

    • Great technology
    • A good understanding of the desired search experience
    • Great data hygiene where pages have unique title tags, all content can be crawled, meta data is populated, etc.
    • Search analytics
    • Ongoing tweaks

    No search technology is fabulous out of the box, unless you were willing to pay $200K+ for Google, and even that’s no longer available, which is why you’ve got to invest in the steps listed above to have a great search. And yet I hear this time and time again:

    “Our site search sucks. We want and need a good search. An effective search is critical to my site’s success. But I’m not willing to invest staff on data hygiene, and money on good technology and services from a great vendor.”

    Yikes. What’s a vendor like us to do?

    Instead of thinking about how Google is free, think about how search is just as important to wayfinding as good navigation and user flows. And if that’s the case, shouldn’t you be spending at least as much on search as you do on information architecture, e.g., navigation review, wireframes and user testing?

    The next time you’re considering a website redesign, or remarking on how bad your site search is, think about the steps needed to have a great search and budget accordingly. If it’s a small site in WordPress, you won’t need to spend a lot of money to have a great search. But if you’re looking for a search that will index multiple sites, weight content according to your rules, display a members-only icon, support an advanced search and filtering of results, etc., etc., please, please budget accordingly.

  • A New CMS Won’t Fix Your Broken Web Strategy

    A New CMS Won’t Fix Your Broken Web Strategy

    I read a lot of RFPs (Requests For Proposals) for website redesigns, and I sit through a lot of demos and presentations. What strikes me is the number of projects where the focus is on the content management system, and not the goals and strategy of the project.

    Why do we have such an obsession with changing platforms and technology when a “website isn’t working?”

    I believe this is because we think the problem all along has been the platform. And I believe that in most cases, this approach is wrong.

    As a technology vendor and implementer of technologies and platforms, this thinking might seem counter-intuitive. But the truth is this: web content management systems have come a looooong way and most systems do more than any organization can ever hope to use. Yep, there are differences between WordPress, Sitefinity, Drupal, Sitecore and Ektron for sure, but today, I think these differences are at the margins.

    Ultimately, the things that really matter are the strategy behind the website redesign, the ability of an organization to rally behind the strategy, a solid implementation that includes lots of training, and the quality of the technology vendor.

    If your website isn’t working for your organization, investing in a new CMS with a fancy WYSIWYG editor, drag and drop interface and complicated workflow won’t’ solve your problems. They will help, for sure, but if your content strategy isn’t in place, if you don’t make a commitment to fabulous images, you don’t have a plan for marketing your site, you don’t measure results, and you don’t have the right team in place, you’ll be replacing that CMS in a few short years.

    BTW, don’t confuse my being CMS-agnostic with the idea that once you invest in a CMS, you can let it sit as is — forever. Content management systems must be upgraded on a regular basis so you have benefit of the latest security patches, new functionality, and vendor support. I tell clients to use the upgrade process as an opportunity to reevaluate their businesses processes, get staff trained and retrained, and make optimization tweaks to the website.

    The next time you find yourself saying, “our website sucks, we need a new CMS,” ask yourself this: Is it really the CMS or does your strategy, process and/or training need the reboot?