Using webinars as a membership value add
The American Nurses Association is the only full-service professional organization representing the interests of the nation’s 3.1 million registered nurses.
The organization holds monthly webinars that are free to members, while non-members can pay a fee to attend. These webinars deliver important information of interest to nurses and additionally serve as a platform to earn continuing education contact hour credits.
By far, the ANA’s largest and most well-attended webinar is its annual National Nurses Week live broadcast held each May to commemorate the birthday of Florence Nightingale. When the new marketing director came to ANA, one of her first priorities was to improve the overall quality of this high-visibility event, which is used to recognize and celebrate nurses all across the U.S.
The search for a reliable platform that scales to the thousands
ANA’s other webinar platform had a cap of 2,000 registrants and was prone to technical issues. In one webinar with 900 participants, the system crashed, ANA could not reestablish a connection, and the event had to be cancelled.
ANA finally decided it was time to increase marketing to support the National Nurses Week webinar. Expecting a much larger audience, ANA felt they needed a platform that could:
- Reliably scale to the thousands of participants, with no technical issues or service disruptions
- Deliver a top-quality presentation, reflecting the organization’s professionalism and membership value
- Provide a superior, interactive experience for all attendees
ANA also recognized an opportunity to use the webinar as a membership recruitment driver and focused on reaching out to a large number of non-member participants, which made it even more important to have an event that was a positive reflection on the organization.