Post Convio conference wrap up

The photo has excitement all over it—nothing like a conference with 375 of my Convio peeps to elicit a sense of giddiness. But actually, it was pretty good.

On October 23^rd and 24^th, myself and 375 of my closest peers met in Washington, DC, for Convio’s first Customer Summit. Grant it, I wasn’t really looking forward to the 2-day event, but it surprisingly worked out pretty well.

A couple of interesting points to note of the changes on the horizon were 1) enhanced reporting (report writer) capability for clients, 2) benchmark reporting capability from within Convio’s client base—we can learn how we stack up to others of similar size and market niche, and 3) use of widgets for the finger on the pulse web 2.0 play—how many donating river lovers have an account with MySpace? Not sure about that one, but worth seeing where it goes.

I took a few pages of notes, but the coolest (like most events of this stature) part of the two-day conference was the interaction with folks in my position at organizations across the spectrum. I also seemed to add to my list of wants and needs for us to accomplish over the next month—primarily list growth.

For an organization of our size, we have a very small house file of usable email addresses. And, on that note, we’re actually going backwards—losing more people than we’re taking in through the online subscription page (though we recently overhauled the process—love the feedback if you subscribe).

In fact, our conversion rate is approximately 1%, while Convio’s ‘Environment’ clients’ conversion rate is about 4.7%. Typically 2-3% is considered good. We have some room to grow, to say the least.

So, I think the next step for us is to create a basic welcome email series for new subscribers as well just making sure what page you land on, you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Convio Customer Summit

Next Monday and Tuesday will be interesting. The first ever Convio Customer Summit is being held in DC and new 2.0 tools are being discussed (released?), kind of psyched to hear what's in store—though I'm cautiously optimistic.

On Monday, I meeting our Convio consultant who will hopefully put us track. Our relationship with Convio has been fairly tenuous and I get the impression we’re a problem child who just hasn’t lived up to expectations. This is true, but historically there has been a little bit of unhappiness with our Convio relationship.

Recognizing our inability to perform to the level we’re capable of (very small house file and make little effort to raise money online), Convio is providing eight months (2-month of strategic development, 6-months of action) of free consulting services. A welcome relief with added pressure to put us on track and begin showing a ROI—which we desperately need to justify the gigantic cost associated with the tools. Looking forward to the event.

A sprinkling of history

Let’s get it on the table right now: I’m new to American Rivers (as with my position), in fact, only 4 months old and I've seemed to have jumped on a moving ship. Honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing and it’s sort of nice to be the one added to momentum.

Late 2004, American Rivers began their search for a company that would basically run the online operation. All the big guys were thrown out on the table—Kintera, Get Active, Convio—for the job: provide a $6+ million organization with the technical capabilities to effectively manage a website, engage activists, and recruit donors.

Convio won the contract and the partnership began early 2005, not long after Convio and the Dean Campaign made national news with their online success. Convio has provided American Rivers (and many others: 100%+ growth since 2004) the technical tools to update pages, send action alerts, organize volunteers, and much more.

Convio is a one stop-shop type of thing, and for many years, just add water and instant campaign. Prior to Convio, American Rivers partnered with Bank First who, at the time, was dabbling with open source software and agreed to provide much needed pro bono services. When Bank First decided to dissolve, and pages needed to be migrated, American Rivers chose to saddle up with the proven propriety software giant, Convio.

For the last 18 months, we’ve updated pages, sent thousands of emails to Congress, recruited new supporters (and activists), and reached new audiences. However, with 2.0 taking shape, and peer2peer networks creating a buzz, times seem to be changing.

These next few months will be interesting as we have 21 months left on our contract, Convio launching 2.0 tools (know more on October 23^rd & 24^th at the Convio Customer Summit), and overseeing the build out of not one, two, or three websites, but potentially FOUR. Who do we work with? How do we plan beyond these 21 months? Do we manage all of our sites under one roof? How do we incorporate new and exciting tools (free ones at that!) in a closed box? There are a lot of questions.