Connecting Members With Online Community

The Challenge

CIWM, the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management, is the voice of the sector representing over 5,500 individuals in the UK and overseas. Expedited launch of a robust online community platform for its members was initiated in late March. Adoption of a fully CRM-integrated community solution was achieved in partnership with Cantarus, a leading provider of online community and comprehensive digital services to the UK membership sector. The community launch was implemented over just 17 business days following the initial project meeting. Member adoption and engagement were immediate and substantial.

In May 2020 the community generated 22,000 page views with over 700 posts.

CIWM leaders and members quickly recognised multiple substantial threats presented by the coronavirus outbreak. By mid-March, it was clear that the impact on organisational events, training courses, and meetings, as well as the subsequent revenue, would be significant, but also that a dedicated channel for rapidly responding to the crisis was vital to organisational relevance during the pandemic. While resources and waste management are broadly vital to the economy, it is critical to pandemic response as signified by essential workers' status being assigned to sector professionals. Industry best practices and news evolved by the hour. With hundreds of members on the front lines, communication and information sharing among members to distribute these learnings was essential.

Members recognised this and reacted, requesting more robust member sharing opportunities from the organisation. A handful didn’t wait, starting up a Slack instance for a vital knowledge segment. Over 100 members and non-members signed up for the Slack channel within weeks. This clearly indicated that getting online sharing right was both a response to a threat and an opportunity for CIWM.

Well before the pandemic, key CIWM leaders and staff recognised the opportunities presented by online community. Gemma Smith, Head of Marketing & Communications, led review of community opportunities. “CIWM had been in touch with Cantarus for years”, Gemma confirmed. “In fact, the very last out-of-office meeting I attended was a MemberWise seminar by Cantarus on online community. The virus pushed online community adoption from a longer-term consideration to a high priority for us. Speed was essential – our member need was urgent, and members were adopting piecemeal solutions without us, so we knew we had to act fast.”

CIWM turned to Cantarus to seek pragmatic, expert advice on delivering a sophisticated online community offering as quickly as possible. Initial conversation centred on goals, member value, timeframe, integration, and price. Mark Eichler, Cantarus Chief Product Officer and lead community strategist, guided the process. “We understand online community, community strategy and related technologies intimately,” Mark said. “CIWM brought three final critical pieces to the project – capable staff, leadership buy-in, and member appetite. The combined CIWM/Cantarus team had all the elements to make the project a success in a very short timeframe”.

Cantarus listened and proposed a community adoption strategy tailored to CIWM’s needs:

Platform: Discourse

The leading open-source online forum platform was seen as the right fit for features and time to deliver. The open-source price point allowed the budget to be applied to critical integration work, branding, and support.

Integration: CRM

CIWM adopted iMIS as its CRM years before the project was initiated. We proposed providing an integration to populate the community, confirm member security, and utilise the existing login platform. Our technical staff would achieve the integration with minimal staff time and without staff interaction or support from the CRM vendor.

Community Strategy

CIWM and Cantarus confirmed key performance indicators for community success. Guided by Cantarus, the multipoint strategy based on industry best practices included:

• Members Only – The future goals for CIWM’s online community include surfacing community content to non-members, with an initial focus on members to own “their space” before inviting in others.
• Community Structure – An initial “all members forum” would offer a single primary place for members to interact and engage. Rigid segments for specific subgroups would be avoided at the initial launch and brought following initial adoption.
• Community Management – Staff “owners” of the platform and specific tasks to perform across community lifecycle stages were confirmed; training provided.

With key CIWM staff, including CEO Sarah Poulter, taking a personal interest, the project progressed rapidly. Within two weeks the community platform was live, branded, and the initial integration performed. Key pre-release strategic objectives on content seeding were achieved and stakeholder recruitment had begun. Working closely as a single team allowed iteration on community and launch strategy on a number of points:

• More categories for community conversations including a “strictly social” channel for non-professional exchange and sharing
• A fully branded video tour of the platform offered to all members
• A home page welcome banner featuring a personal greeting from the CEO
• Launch day inclusion of an all-members webinar by CIWM staff and Cantarus
• The launch timetable would be expedited
  
  

With evidence of the platform both looking good and working well, CIWM leadership noted that member engagement in other channels was on the rise. Respecting CIWM’s grasp of their member appetite and acknowledging the staff commitment to community management and support of adoption, it was agreed to speed up the timetable. Under guidance from Cantarus, multiple days were cut from the project launch timetable by limiting influencer support activities, pausing the integration sync, and delaying changes from UAT and other feedback to post-release without impact on quality.