Communities for education companies and associations provide a collaborative space for like-minded individuals to engage and share knowledge, learn what to do (or not do) in your business, and communicate with one another personally and professionally.
Mobilize Networks VP of Growth, Connor O’Brien and EAB Senior Associate of Partner Experience, Jessie Wurzer discussed in a recent webinar how EAB uses communities to engage with their networks, employees, customers, and professional audiences.
Jessie Wurzer helps connect higher education institutions to share their ideas and insights, based on their personal experience and expertise. As a Senior Associate at EAB, Jessie has experience managing and designing programs to serve higher education partners, such as virtual and in-person events, toolkits, networking programs, and onboarding. Her communication with higher education to instill best practices has greatly impacted the EAB community.
In case you’re not familiar, EAB is a research, tech, and consulting company that works with more than 2,500 institutions to drive transformative change through data-driven insights and best-in-class capabilities. From kindergarten to college to career, EAB partners with leaders and practitioners to accelerate progress and drive results across five major areas: enrollment, student success, institutional strategy, data & analytics, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I).
Topics that were covered included:
- How to create best practices using community software for your brand.
- How to put people before technology when implementing community software.
- How EAB boosted engagement and loyalty by 3x-5x when compared to traditional communities.
EAB’s mission is to make education smarter and its communities stronger by having a community for educational institutions to count on. In order to make this happen and bring their vision to life, they decided to upgrade from their more simple community platform to Mobilize, which offers a much more robust feature list.
After joining Mobilize, EAB was able to better create a value add by creating their Student Success Collaborative (a group of about 500 schools they work with) that gives access to others working at similar institutions being subjected to similar problems.
EAB’s Student Success Collaborative is invaluable for each school they work with, as members engage and collaborate with each other, working through similar issues they may be facing. With Mobilize, these connections made by school leadership and staff are able to be facilitated online 24/7, versus an in-person yearly conference or monthly webinar.
While working with Mobilize, EAB followed a few best practices in order to implement their online community, such as creating a Champions program. A Champions program is essentially a brand-ambassador group for an organization, full of people who are excited about the organization’s mission and values. Jessie notes that this was integral to building engagement in EAB’s online community, and that she is also a member of the Mobilize Champions program! If you’re interested in joining the Mobilize Champions program, contact your CSM.
To learn more about EAB’s success when implementing Mobilize as their choice for a modern community platform, watch the webinar here. And, if you’re interested in building an online community for your organization that can boost engagement by 3x-5x when compared to traditional communities, let’s have a conversation.