April 21, 2022 • 14 mins
Did you hear the news? Higher Logic Thrive just launched! Our new platform makes it easy for associations to create powerful member experiences. Listen in to Beth's conversation with Chief Product Officer James Willey about how Higher Logic Thrive came to be. They’ll share everything it means for your association and your members. Here’s a sneak peek of what Higher Logic Thrive Platform enables you to do: engage members meaningfully throughout their lifecycle while saving time on key processes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to the member engagementshow with Higher Logic,
the podcast for association professionalslooking to boost retention,
gain new membersand deepen member involvement.
Each episode I'll bring on some experts.
We'll talk shop about engagement
and you'll walk away with strategiesproven to transform your organization.
I'm Beth Everitt, an association evanglist with over 25 years experience
(00:26):
in marketing and member engagementand I'm so happy you're here.
Now let's start the show
Welcome back.
Today, my guest is James Willey,chief product officer at Higher Logic.
If you haven't heard, it'sa pretty big week for us at Higher Logic
because we just launcheda brand new product on Higher Logic.
Right. How's it going today?
It is going great today.
(00:47):
Thank you.
So are you excited?
I am crazy excited. It's nice.
To be here at this day.
It's a really big day for us all.
Yeah.
It feels likeit's been a really long time coming.
It sure has.
It's a lot of people doing a lot of workjust a tremendous amount of insights from
our customers
and livingthrough their shared experiences.
(01:08):
It's great to be here.
Yeah.
Some of the customer calls and talkingto different people who've given us
insight and informationthat helped us build this
and then who have looked through earlyiterations have been so much fun.
So I am so thrilled that we finally getto show it to everyone.
What is Thrive in a nutshell?
Well, Higher Logic Thrive.
(01:29):
is a platform and it's really
an evolution of everythingthat we've done for 15 years.
It's looking at it's
creating a destination where the memberexperience can come to life
and looking at all those experiencelike we were just talking about,
whether it's finding a prospective member,nurturing them,
(01:50):
becoming a memberor worrying them, creating a destination
where they can come and engagewith each other.
And the notion of a communityand also they can collaborate,
share ideas,drive towards the same outcomes.
That's our ultimate goal here.
And then bringing all of that togetherwith member services
that help support the member.
So it's really about
creating a platform that supportsthat entire lifecycle journey.
(02:13):
Yes, I think that dovetails really nicelyinto talking about why we chose
the name Thrive. Well,
it sounds cool, right?
It's a great name.
It sounds really cool.
I think for me, ultimately,if you think about what
the mission of a memberbased organization is,
it is about serving the member,embracing the member
(02:36):
like we talked about, giving the insightsand driving that and creating the value
And it what personifies what we doand what we've done is creating that
foundation so that those organizationscan be successful, a.k.a.
A they can thrive. Right.
It sounds like it sounds so incrediblysimple, but it's so incredibly powerful
(02:57):
because that's really what our mission isand what it's always been.
We were purpose built for this world.
Our solution set is built aroundthe member experience and now
bringing all of it togetherwith use cases and content
in all of those experiences.
It's a great word.
It fits who we are and it fits what we do.
When I first heard that,I was just like, Oh, it's so perfect
(03:21):
because we want the associationsto thrive.
We want them to help each individualmember thrive, and that's what this does.
I love it.
It's a perfect name with that.
What are the highlights?
You know, why is Thrive so different?
I think what makes it different is it'sit's first of all, it's purpose built.
We just I sort of just saidthat about the world for the association.
(03:44):
So that level of engagementand driving those experiences.
It was built for that purpose.
Is feature function needs.
And more importantly,the configuration is built to do that.
And I think what makes ituniquely different.
It's unusual to be incredibly simple,but incredibly powerful at the same time.
Meaning you can start fast,go fast, experience, get value,
(04:07):
but you can also incrementally growso the system is designed to expand,
be where you need it to bewhen you need it to be there.
That's makes a difference.
And the other really unique thingis not just the features
that are built for association,but the pre built content based on
best practices.
Right before I thinkwe've talked about in our past,
whether it's
what types of onboarding campaignsdo we do
(04:28):
what are we going to drive for retention?
How are we going to doit? Event optimization.
It's more than tools.
It's the contentwithin the tool that supports it.
Yeah, I love that.
There's there's so much strategy built in.
There's campaigns have and thought out.
There's content for those campaigns.
You could drop in and just play with thata little bit.
(04:49):
There's so much association strategy
that is so helpful,particularly to small staff in marketing.
It's quite often these small staff,you know,
association and marketing membershiphave to do so.
Then you add in the eventsand having to do a website,
the fact that this is kind of all in oneand it has so much strategy
(05:10):
built in is just a game changer.
I agree.
And I also think it's just how it's done.
And these are things that were builtjust to be configured.
These were built based on best practicesthat customers have used forever.
Yeah.
And that and it's, it'ssort of coming to life.
And I think the simple thing,we want the system itself,
(05:34):
you know, we've all worked with differentapplications in our lives and jobs
and you know, we don't want this systemthat you only use 10% of it.
But, you know, it can do everything.
We wanted to build somethingthat's simple word
and the powerful word coming togetherbecause we want you to be able to
we want the systemto really work for you, right?
We don't want you to be servicing.
(05:55):
And what you mentioned everyone is shorttime and these things can be complex.
So making that word simple and powerful.
It was mission critical for us becauseyou can have the best tools in the world
if people aren't utilizing them,you can't build anything with them.
And I think that that really dovetailsinto apparently
my word of the day is dovetailsI think that really leads into kind of
(06:18):
how our logic thrivehelps association teams
because they are smalland they do have a lot to do.
And so do their members.
And being able to help themand have the work
for the association staff be cut backand be able to provide that journey
so that the member has to work lessto get where they need to be to.
(06:39):
Yeah, I mean, the member experiencehas to be intuitive, easy to use.
It has to be compelling.
You want peopleto have a reason to come back
and you have to make that,you know, that destination, right?
It's like a great vacation,but you don't want it ever to end, right?
We want people to come back,discover and relearn, regrow
and do whateveryou need to do to flourish.
(07:01):
I mean, we talked a little bitabout how it helps association teams,
but it really is differentfrom other software in the past, right?
Because it's five things.
And then you've got all of thispersonalization
yet I think the other thingthat it's kind of unique about, like
we're lucky to do what we do is
because it sort of drivesthis notion of that word engagement.
(07:23):
It drives it to the center
of what we're talking about,like we want to service the member.
Ultimately,that's what it's about, whether it's
what is your member look or your membertype look like wins your renewal
for all those things,
making that experience simple,but also fuzing those types of things with
things like giving learning opportunitiesor attending events.
(07:45):
And if it's all in one place,all in one experience,
ultimately that's moving thatto the center of the experience versus,
you know, having the collage
of multiple different thingsthat you're trying to go service and find.
So that's why I think it's important.
It's just it really is
so much helpfor association teams to help members.
(08:06):
But, you know,how does it provide value to members?
Has it prove that value to members?
Well, I think it's really aboutyou know, it's having information
and turning that into action.
Most member based organizationsare really striving to get service
or provide information to their membersbecause that's ultimately what
allows them to connect.
(08:28):
Associations are really, really uniquebecause it's
what I call the one demand model.
It's it's really about
if you create that environmentwhere that collaboration can happen.
And it's whether it's curated contentthat an association
is providing for its membersor as member to member
or group to member or advisorybased models, it can come from any place.
(08:48):
But that that iswhat creates the stickiness
and the, the senseof belonging that many associations have.
And that'swhere it's really uniquely different.
I mean, associations really iswhere engagement started.
And that's by no accident why we're here
and why we built what we built years agoin supporting that.
I still think this is even light years
(09:10):
better than whatwe've what we've built in the past.
And I loved what we built in the pastenough to come work here,
develop associations with it.
So for me to be saying that's pretty big.
But I do think that it's like we've spent
the last 15 years learning exactlywhat is needed and providing most of it.
And that is the culmination of that15 years
(09:33):
and of all of the associations we've left.
And I just think it's phenomenal.
It's so powerful, you know, we, we're,we're always building things right
software companies, we build things,but we need people to use things right.
And that's critical.
And I think for me,this experience, this release
and this launchis really about all of that learning.
(09:55):
This project is over a year and a halfin hundreds and hundreds of people,
thousands and thousands of hours.
But the other really critical thingwas gaining customer insights
along the journey.
So it wasn't built in a vacuum.
We talked to customers,but we also looked at not just like a,
you know, one little area of whatthat experience would be.
(10:19):
We looked at what are all of the systemsthat associations are using,
what's trending,
what's happened in the marketin the last two or three years,
we've had a lot of things going on. Right?
And how are the business dynamics changing
and what are the challengeson a lot of associations?
And we try to take all those experiences
and then wrap thatinto the solution as well,
(10:40):
because ultimately the abilityfor that associated to service
the customer is the missioncritical thing,
and we just want to make surewe hit it right.
We have lots of associations that donelots of things and built lots of things.
So if you take the best of a lotof those things and bring them together,
that's the culmination of this.
And I think that you see it inhow Drive Platform is able to sort of
(11:04):
help associations improve that experiencefrom every single stage of the lifecycle.
Absolutely.
It doesn't matter
whether you're brand newand you get into the automated onboarding,
something as simple as like,Happy Anniversary.
Thanks for being a memberall the way to Hey, here's the events
that you're going to find interestingbecause of what you've interacted with.
(11:28):
And then here's the paththat you need to take.
And so much of that is already thereand automated in helping people for
associations who might want to integrateother tools in the Thrive platform.
How do we support that?
Great question.
The basic thing is we do integrate.
We have integrated the foundationof our logic was built on the connectivity
to different systems, whether it's
(11:50):
an AMS
or CRMapplication, a learning management system.
We provide an open ecosystemthat allows connectivity,
integration, to those different systems,as well as we provide tooling
that allows you to take the insights
from from this engagement layerand providing it to other places.
So whether you're looking at user baseactivity,
what are they doingor things like gamification
(12:12):
and tying all those things together,we allow that and provide that.
Of course, we have all the cool technicalthings that go along with with the APIs
and all that.
But ultimately it's really about buildingan ecosystem where that engagement word
and thrive is sittingin the middle of that connecting.
So we have a great group of partnersthat we work with in the industry
(12:34):
and we will continue to explorenew things.
So anything from learning career services,job postings, those types of things,
ads, all of those different thingsthat have in different
markets and different needscan be brought in to that experience.
If you were to put just into sortof one sentence or one phrase,
(12:55):
the one thing you want listeners to
really know and take awayfrom this about thrive, what would it be?
I think for me, the most important thingthat what Thrive really is,
is about supportingand enhancing the member experience
and being the center of that memberexperience.
There's nothing more important.
I mean, that's really how associationsare focused and what the needs are.
(13:20):
And clearly, we've tried to take
all of those years and millionsand billions of emails, right, Beth?
That we can.
Yes, and hundredsof thousands of communities and just said,
what's the best thing that we can do?
And that's it.
It's it's really aboutit is time to thrive.
Right It's time to take the things thatwe've done and bring them all together.
(13:42):
That's a very long one short answer.
But no, but I think it's something thatI've really well, and if there's one thing
I know about you, getting a shortanswer isn't always the easiest thing.
No, it's not.
We're also proud.We're very proud of it, too.
We're proud of the work that everyone did.
So, yeah, it is hardnot to kind of gush about it a bit
because it's just so exciting.
(14:05):
Also, I think we're all a little bitsleep-deprived from all of the work,
especially down the homestretch.
Thank
you so much for being hereand really appreciate it.
I know that everybody listeningis excited to learn more about Thrive,
and they can do that by visitingour website and really appreciate
all of the time and effortI know you've put into this.
And I'm sure that once people that reallyget their hands on it, they will as well.
(14:28):
And we are certainly looking forward to itand we'll continue
learning and growing together.
Thanks, everybody for listening.
You can subscribe to the podcastif you want to make sure you get updated
in all the usual places,wherever you get your podcasts
and hope that you join us next week.
Welcome to the member engagementshow with Higher Logic,
the podcast for association professionalslooking to boost retention,
gain new membersand deepen member involvement.
Each episode I'll bring on some experts.
We'll talk shop about engagement
and you'll walk away with strategiesproven to transform your organization.
I'm Beth Everitt, an association evanglist with over 25 years experience
(00:26):
in marketing and member engagementand I'm so happy you're here.
Now let's start the show
Welcome back.
Today, my guest is James Willey,chief product officer at Higher Logic.
If you haven't heard, it'sa pretty big week for us at Higher Logic
because we just launcheda brand new product on Higher Logic.
Right. How's it going today?
It is going great today.
(00:47):
Thank you.
So are you excited?
I am crazy excited. It's nice.
To be here at this day.
It's a really big day for us all.
Yeah.
It feels likeit's been a really long time coming.
It sure has.
It's a lot of people doing a lot of workjust a tremendous amount of insights from
our customers
and livingthrough their shared experiences.
(01:08):
It's great to be here.
Yeah.
Some of the customer calls and talkingto different people who've given us
insight and informationthat helped us build this
and then who have looked through earlyiterations have been so much fun.
So I am so thrilled that we finally getto show it to everyone.
What is Thrive in a nutshell?
Well, Higher Logic Thrive.
(01:29):
is a platform and it's really
an evolution of everythingthat we've done for 15 years.
It's looking at it's
creating a destination where the memberexperience can come to life
and looking at all those experiencelike we were just talking about,
whether it's finding a prospective member,nurturing them,
(01:50):
becoming a memberor worrying them, creating a destination
where they can come and engagewith each other.
And the notion of a communityand also they can collaborate,
share ideas,drive towards the same outcomes.
That's our ultimate goal here.
And then bringing all of that togetherwith member services
that help support the member.
So it's really about
creating a platform that supportsthat entire lifecycle journey.
(02:13):
Yes, I think that dovetails really nicelyinto talking about why we chose
the name Thrive. Well,
it sounds cool, right?
It's a great name.
It sounds really cool.
I think for me, ultimately,if you think about what
the mission of a memberbased organization is,
it is about serving the member,embracing the member
(02:36):
like we talked about, giving the insightsand driving that and creating the value
And it what personifies what we doand what we've done is creating that
foundation so that those organizationscan be successful, a.k.a.
A they can thrive. Right.
It sounds like it sounds so incrediblysimple, but it's so incredibly powerful
(02:57):
because that's really what our mission isand what it's always been.
We were purpose built for this world.
Our solution set is built aroundthe member experience and now
bringing all of it togetherwith use cases and content
in all of those experiences.
It's a great word.
It fits who we are and it fits what we do.
When I first heard that,I was just like, Oh, it's so perfect
(03:21):
because we want the associationsto thrive.
We want them to help each individualmember thrive, and that's what this does.
I love it.
It's a perfect name with that.
What are the highlights?
You know, why is Thrive so different?
I think what makes it different is it'sit's first of all, it's purpose built.
We just I sort of just saidthat about the world for the association.
(03:44):
So that level of engagementand driving those experiences.
It was built for that purpose.
Is feature function needs.
And more importantly,the configuration is built to do that.
And I think what makes ituniquely different.
It's unusual to be incredibly simple,but incredibly powerful at the same time.
Meaning you can start fast,go fast, experience, get value,
(04:07):
but you can also incrementally growso the system is designed to expand,
be where you need it to bewhen you need it to be there.
That's makes a difference.
And the other really unique thingis not just the features
that are built for association,but the pre built content based on
best practices.
Right before I thinkwe've talked about in our past,
whether it's
what types of onboarding campaignsdo we do
(04:28):
what are we going to drive for retention?
How are we going to doit? Event optimization.
It's more than tools.
It's the contentwithin the tool that supports it.
Yeah, I love that.
There's there's so much strategy built in.
There's campaigns have and thought out.
There's content for those campaigns.
You could drop in and just play with thata little bit.
(04:49):
There's so much association strategy
that is so helpful,particularly to small staff in marketing.
It's quite often these small staff,you know,
association and marketing membershiphave to do so.
Then you add in the eventsand having to do a website,
the fact that this is kind of all in oneand it has so much strategy
(05:10):
built in is just a game changer.
I agree.
And I also think it's just how it's done.
And these are things that were builtjust to be configured.
These were built based on best practicesthat customers have used forever.
Yeah.
And that and it's, it'ssort of coming to life.
And I think the simple thing,we want the system itself,
(05:34):
you know, we've all worked with differentapplications in our lives and jobs
and you know, we don't want this systemthat you only use 10% of it.
But, you know, it can do everything.
We wanted to build somethingthat's simple word
and the powerful word coming togetherbecause we want you to be able to
we want the systemto really work for you, right?
We don't want you to be servicing.
(05:55):
And what you mentioned everyone is shorttime and these things can be complex.
So making that word simple and powerful.
It was mission critical for us becauseyou can have the best tools in the world
if people aren't utilizing them,you can't build anything with them.
And I think that that really dovetailsinto apparently
my word of the day is dovetailsI think that really leads into kind of
(06:18):
how our logic thrivehelps association teams
because they are smalland they do have a lot to do.
And so do their members.
And being able to help themand have the work
for the association staff be cut backand be able to provide that journey
so that the member has to work lessto get where they need to be to.
(06:39):
Yeah, I mean, the member experiencehas to be intuitive, easy to use.
It has to be compelling.
You want peopleto have a reason to come back
and you have to make that,you know, that destination, right?
It's like a great vacation,but you don't want it ever to end, right?
We want people to come back,discover and relearn, regrow
and do whateveryou need to do to flourish.
(07:01):
I mean, we talked a little bitabout how it helps association teams,
but it really is differentfrom other software in the past, right?
Because it's five things.
And then you've got all of thispersonalization
yet I think the other thingthat it's kind of unique about, like
we're lucky to do what we do is
because it sort of drivesthis notion of that word engagement.
(07:23):
It drives it to the center
of what we're talking about,like we want to service the member.
Ultimately,that's what it's about, whether it's
what is your member look or your membertype look like wins your renewal
for all those things,
making that experience simple,but also fuzing those types of things with
things like giving learning opportunitiesor attending events.
(07:45):
And if it's all in one place,all in one experience,
ultimately that's moving thatto the center of the experience versus,
you know, having the collage
of multiple different thingsthat you're trying to go service and find.
So that's why I think it's important.
It's just it really is
so much helpfor association teams to help members.
(08:06):
But, you know,how does it provide value to members?
Has it prove that value to members?
Well, I think it's really aboutyou know, it's having information
and turning that into action.
Most member based organizationsare really striving to get service
or provide information to their membersbecause that's ultimately what
allows them to connect.
(08:28):
Associations are really, really uniquebecause it's
what I call the one demand model.
It's it's really about
if you create that environmentwhere that collaboration can happen.
And it's whether it's curated contentthat an association
is providing for its membersor as member to member
or group to member or advisorybased models, it can come from any place.
(08:48):
But that that iswhat creates the stickiness
and the, the senseof belonging that many associations have.
And that'swhere it's really uniquely different.
I mean, associations really iswhere engagement started.
And that's by no accident why we're here
and why we built what we built years agoin supporting that.
I still think this is even light years
(09:10):
better than whatwe've what we've built in the past.
And I loved what we built in the pastenough to come work here,
develop associations with it.
So for me to be saying that's pretty big.
But I do think that it's like we've spent
the last 15 years learning exactlywhat is needed and providing most of it.
And that is the culmination of that15 years
(09:33):
and of all of the associations we've left.
And I just think it's phenomenal.
It's so powerful, you know, we, we're,we're always building things right
software companies, we build things,but we need people to use things right.
And that's critical.
And I think for me,this experience, this release
and this launchis really about all of that learning.
(09:55):
This project is over a year and a halfin hundreds and hundreds of people,
thousands and thousands of hours.
But the other really critical thingwas gaining customer insights
along the journey.
So it wasn't built in a vacuum.
We talked to customers,but we also looked at not just like a,
you know, one little area of whatthat experience would be.
(10:19):
We looked at what are all of the systemsthat associations are using,
what's trending,
what's happened in the marketin the last two or three years,
we've had a lot of things going on. Right?
And how are the business dynamics changing
and what are the challengeson a lot of associations?
And we try to take all those experiences
and then wrap thatinto the solution as well,
(10:40):
because ultimately the abilityfor that associated to service
the customer is the missioncritical thing,
and we just want to make surewe hit it right.
We have lots of associations that donelots of things and built lots of things.
So if you take the best of a lotof those things and bring them together,
that's the culmination of this.
And I think that you see it inhow Drive Platform is able to sort of
(11:04):
help associations improve that experiencefrom every single stage of the lifecycle.
Absolutely.
It doesn't matter
whether you're brand newand you get into the automated onboarding,
something as simple as like,Happy Anniversary.
Thanks for being a memberall the way to Hey, here's the events
that you're going to find interestingbecause of what you've interacted with.
(11:28):
And then here's the paththat you need to take.
And so much of that is already thereand automated in helping people for
associations who might want to integrateother tools in the Thrive platform.
How do we support that?
Great question.
The basic thing is we do integrate.
We have integrated the foundationof our logic was built on the connectivity
to different systems, whether it's
(11:50):
an AMS
or CRMapplication, a learning management system.
We provide an open ecosystemthat allows connectivity,
integration, to those different systems,as well as we provide tooling
that allows you to take the insights
from from this engagement layerand providing it to other places.
So whether you're looking at user baseactivity,
what are they doingor things like gamification
(12:12):
and tying all those things together,we allow that and provide that.
Of course, we have all the cool technicalthings that go along with with the APIs
and all that.
But ultimately it's really about buildingan ecosystem where that engagement word
and thrive is sittingin the middle of that connecting.
So we have a great group of partnersthat we work with in the industry
(12:34):
and we will continue to explorenew things.
So anything from learning career services,job postings, those types of things,
ads, all of those different thingsthat have in different
markets and different needscan be brought in to that experience.
If you were to put just into sortof one sentence or one phrase,
(12:55):
the one thing you want listeners to
really know and take awayfrom this about thrive, what would it be?
I think for me, the most important thingthat what Thrive really is,
is about supportingand enhancing the member experience
and being the center of that memberexperience.
There's nothing more important.
I mean, that's really how associationsare focused and what the needs are.
(13:20):
And clearly, we've tried to take
all of those years and millionsand billions of emails, right, Beth?
That we can.
Yes, and hundredsof thousands of communities and just said,
what's the best thing that we can do?
And that's it.
It's it's really aboutit is time to thrive.
Right It's time to take the things thatwe've done and bring them all together.
(13:42):
That's a very long one short answer.
But no, but I think it's something thatI've really well, and if there's one thing
I know about you, getting a shortanswer isn't always the easiest thing.
No, it's not.
We're also proud.We're very proud of it, too.
We're proud of the work that everyone did.
So, yeah, it is hardnot to kind of gush about it a bit
because it's just so exciting.
(14:05):
Also, I think we're all a little bitsleep-deprived from all of the work,
especially down the homestretch.
Thank
you so much for being hereand really appreciate it.
I know that everybody listeningis excited to learn more about Thrive,
and they can do that by visitingour website and really appreciate
all of the time and effortI know you've put into this.
And I'm sure that once people that reallyget their hands on it, they will as well.
(14:28):
And we are certainly looking forward to itand we'll continue
learning and growing together.
Thanks, everybody for listening.
You can subscribe to the podcastif you want to make sure you get updated
in all the usual places,wherever you get your podcasts
and hope that you join us next week.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!