NAMB Case Study

The National Association of Mortgage Brokers employed Association Catalyst from ESX, Inc. to automate four key functions in their member renewal process that reduced staff time and delivers a higher value of service to their membership.

Overview

The National Association of Mortgage Brokers is the voice of the mortgage broker industry, representing the interests of mortgage brokers since 1973.  As the sole national trade association for this industry, NAMB is affiliated with 45 state associations and has more than 26,000 members.

Situation

NAMB manages a watershed membership database for 45 state associations that holds more than 26,000 member records. Membership renewals are solicited by state-level entities and managed nationally for efficiency. So member renewals arrive in batches, sometimes small and sometimes very large. One of the largest state groups, California, can drop as many as 900 member renewal updates at one time! Updating these renewal records manually was a gargantuan task and you can imagine how data entry errors could potentially occur in that scenario.  

Challenge

NAMB had a website that could collect data but it was not linked to the member database. Their challenge was two-fold: enable individual members to make personal data updates directly on the Web site and also make it easy to import state renewal updates to the national database electronically on a monthly basis.

Solution

"ESX, Inc. made it easy for us," says Katie Jones, membership manager for the NAMB. The Association Catalyst platform includes a custom import function that allows the states to send a simple Excel® spreadsheet and Association Catalyst does the rest. It takes only a half-hour or so. Association Catalyst looks for the ID number and updates the old data. If there’s no ID in the system, it creates a new record."

And, because Association Catalyst is integrated seamlessly with the NAMB.org website, "A member can go online, update his or her personal data on the website in a few seconds, and the changes are made directly in the membership database. This saves an enormous amount of staff time, and members can see their changes immediately in our online membership directories" Katie explains.

Katie enjoys a third aspect of the solution - content management (CMS) of the web pages without graphic designers and web programmers. "We were able to launch our 2006 Retention Rally Update racing themed page all in-house," she explains. "It only took an afternoon for me to create a webpage from scratch and get it all up and ready to go, and that's with limited HTML programming experience. I didn't have to wait for programmers or pay a designer. We saved money and it was fun!"

The hardest part, Katie reports, was searching and finding this animated GIF of a checkered flag to attract members to the Rally Page...

Everybody Benefits

National Association. Data entry time is vastly reduced and national staff can turn their attention to other important tasks, such as running a membership retention rally and other strategic issues.

State Association. Preparing the member data export is easy; it's done in a simple Excel® spreadsheet and can be emailed to the National office, saving the time and cost of postage.

Individual Members. Members enjoy a higher-quality experience because their own data is correct, they can find current data for other members, and they can do it all on a convenient, self-serve website.

"We manage renewals for more than 25,000 members with two data entry people - half as many as it would take the old, manual way."

Katie Jones
Membership Manager

National Association of Mortgage Brokers
http://www.namb.org/

Automate These Four Key Member Renewal Functions:

1. Electronic data import to member database from local, state or region
   
2. Self-service personal data updates on Web site for members; automatically flows into member database
   
3. Create your own membership focused pages on your website, on demand
   
4. Real time updates to online member directories with no additional staff time involved

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